Da yo ??

[drone]

Im new to Japan, And am trying to learn the language.
My Japanese girlfriend says "da yo" alot.

She says it has no meaning...but its driving me crazy!!
It must mean something... She is having trouble explaining it to me.

If anyone can explain this to me...would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[metablue]

da is a casual form of "desu" - "to be". Like "is".
yo is a particle that you put at the end of a sentence when you're telling someone something you think they don't know. ie giving them information.

eg.
Tenki ga warui da. = The weather is bad.
Tenki ga warui da yo. = The weather is bad. (You mustn't realize that otherwise you wouldn't be heading out without an umbrella. Better take one!)

Your gf might just say it habitually though. Like some people say "you know" a lot.
"It's raining outside, you know!"

<edit>
Now that I think about it, the one Japanese person I know never uses "da" by itself. He uses "dayo" (we type our conversations and that's how he spells it) when he says something out of the blue. Otherwise he leaves it off altogether.

eg
nemui dayo~ (that's meant to be a tilde. I'm sleeepyy!)
or sometimes just
nemui~ (nemuiiiiii = I'm sleeepyy)
but usually he only leaves the "dayo" off if we're already talking about how we want to go home.

[Jason]

Tenki ga warui da...etc

You can't use "da" with i-adjectives.

[metablue]

No wonder it sounded a bit weird! I mustn't have heard it before. You would just leave it off altogether, or is there another desu variant?

[Bueller_007]

No wonder it sounded a bit weird! I mustn't have heard it before. You would just leave it off altogether, or is there another desu variant?

You don't use anything at all.

Plus, as I recall (sorry if I'm wrong), you're a girl/woman/lady/female (choose whichever you find appropriate), right? Women usually don't use "da" at the end of their sentences. It's not particularly femine. Some younger women do it, but they generally grow out of this habit.

As a general rule:
Women use "desu" to be polite, otherwise they use nothing.
Men use "desu" to be polite, otherwise, they use "da" for -na adjectives, and nothing for -i adjectives.

As Jason said, "da" doesn't follow -i adjectives. I once said "tsugou ga warui da" before I knew this rule, and I was told that this mistake sounds very childish, like baby Japanese.

[metablue]

Plus, as I recall (sorry if I'm wrong), you're a girl/woman/lady/female (choose whichever you find appropriate), right? Women usually don't use "da" at the end of their sentences. It's not particularly femine. Some younger women do it, but they generally grow out of this habit.

Yes, I gave it away in the boku vs ore thread didn't I. ^^

I read that women tend to stay away from declarative statements, and I guess "da" makes it more declarative. This genderized speech is going to take some getting used to. My one consolation is the boku vs ore thing, which is a little like having to choose between miss vs mrs. Leaving aside watashi and ms (which also convey something, even if it's just that you chose not to use one of the others), you can't simply refer to yourself without giving away some personal information.

[Outkast]

Not that it matters, but "da zo" is the rougher, male version of "da yo" if anyone is interested. And I've heard "da tou" used before also, but I think that's more of a regional thing.

Used like as in "Nan da zo?!" or "Nan da tou?!" (Kind of like "What the fudge?!")

[Satsujin]

da yo ...on its own could probably be a sign of agreement to whatever the other speaker is saying. It could often be combined with "da yo ne".

So if your gf says "da yo" a lot she is probably agreeing with what you are saying. Don't expect to hear this too much if you get married.