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wakanai or wakkanai?

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sodapple
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Joined: February 5th, 2008 12:44 am

wakanai or wakkanai?

Postby sodapple » October 16th, 2008 5:41 pm

みなさん;
おはようございます!元気ですか?
Sometimes in the anime I hear the word 「 わかない 」 or「 わっかない 」I don-t know well how to write it, And I would like to know if this word means 分からない in a short form. What could you tell me about?
ありがとうございます! :wink:

QuackingShoe
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Postby QuackingShoe » October 16th, 2008 7:18 pm

It's 分かんない, but yes. It's very common to shorten らない into んない, with some words more than others (this is a frequent one). This means negative verb conjugations, but also adjectives that share the negative pattern (and probably got started as negatives), like つまらない - つまんない.
As you may or may not already know, して(い)る also likes to turn into してん and していられない like to turn into してらんない. They really just seem to like replacing 'r' phonemes with an ん, heh.

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Psy
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Postby Psy » October 16th, 2008 9:30 pm

Just for fun, let mee add that you'll also sometimes hear ない get turned into ねぇ, which is rough sounding but it'll turn up in tough-guy talk all the time. わかんねぇ, しらねぇ, つまらねぇ, うるせぇ, etc. I've also heard commands like するな slurred to すんな.
High time to finish what I've started. || Anki vocabulary drive: 5,000/10k. Restart coming soon. || Dig my Road to Katakana tutorial on the App store.

Javizy
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Postby Javizy » October 16th, 2008 10:11 pm

It's just easier to use ん a lot of the time, isn't it? I don't even think it's considered particularly rough in cases like 分かんない. Words like みんな and まんま roll off the tongue a lot easier than their more formal equivalents as well.

Since we're on the topic of contractions, when you're using は emphatically with the masu-stem of verbs, there is a contraction that could really throw you off if you don't know it (haven't seen it covered very often).

Group 1
行きはしない > 行きゃしない
飲みはしない > 飲みゃしない
Group 2
見はしない > 見やしない

wccrawford
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Postby wccrawford » October 17th, 2008 12:13 pm

I'm just at the point that questions like this (and their answers) are starting to mean something in my head. I just wanted to thank all 3 of you for your answers now and in the future.

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