The Highest of What?

[Dariat]

Hello.

I have encountered the following sentence in a news article and I have questions about the meaning of the highlighted part:
姫路城では、２０１０年１２月から城でいちばん高くて立派な建物「大天守」の工事をしていました。

1. Does it say that the grand castle tower is the highest building of Himeji Castle or of all castles?
2. Whichever is the correct meaning, how would you phrase it to reflect the other?

Help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[thegooseking]

Dariatさん,

I think this refers to the highest building of the castle, rather than of all castles. 城 can, of course, be plural, but even if it is, you wouldn't automatically think it referred to all castles in general.

To say the highest building in any castle, I think you would say.
どの城でものいちばん高くて...
But I'm not 100% sure about that. This form どの[noun]でも means "any [noun]" or "no matter which [noun]", but I don't know if the translation would be too literal.

小狼

[Dariat]

Thank you, thegooseking. That's what I suspected, too. And thank you for the tip about どの[noun]でも. I'll look into that expression.

[community.japanese]

Dariatさん、
I agree with 小狼 san, I think several building there and the highest and finest building has been under construction.

Regarding どの（Noun）、the correct expression is どの城でも.
You don’t need to put のafter でも.

小狼さん、
いつも助けてどうもありがとうございます。

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[Dariat]

Thank you, Yuki, for the help and clarification.

[thegooseking]

ありがとう、由紀先生

I knew about phrases like 世界いちばん that don't have a particle in them, but I'm not sure why I thought they were the exception rather than the rule.

小狼

[community.japanese]

Dariat san,

You are welcome. どういたしまいして.

小狼さん、
世界でいちばん　and 世界いちばん are same.
Basically when a particle is omitted, the sentence is informal.


Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[thegooseking]

由紀先生、

Ah I see. I think mainly where I had difficulty was in thinking of で as translating to 'in', rather than what it is, which is a particle that indicates context. I didn't want to say どの城でもで because while "in any castle" is perfectly good English, I was confused about the fact that we're now talking about more than one location, and how で works with that. So I decided to try and say "of any castle" instead, which is where the の came from.

But actually, I guess どの城でもで would be good, because it's just indicating that "any castle" is the context for what's going to follow, and we don't really need to worry about the specifics of the 'in' translation. The problem I had was an example of "thinking too much in English".

Or, like you say, you can just informally drop the で.

小狼

[community.japanese]

小狼さん

You are really studying hard.

However, as you know direct translation sometimes doesn’t work.
Even if you want to say どの城でもで which means “any castle or in any castle”, it’s incorrect.
This is not because an informal expression.
どの　Noun　でも is not followed by particles.
For example,
どの色でも好きです。
どのスポーツでもします。

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[thegooseking]

ありがとうございます、由紀先生。

Oh, I see. I guess it's really that でも itself doesn't take a particle. It is itself a particle that 'overrides' other particles and replaces them, whether it's preceded by どの[noun] or not.

What about other particles that can come after an interrogative? We know that どの城でも ("any castle") doesn't take a particle. I would guess that どの城も ("no castle") doesn't take a particle, since も normally replaces other particles, too. But I'm really not sure about どの城か ("some castle"). I'm just remembering the ending theme song of Pom Poko: 「いつでも誰かが」

小狼

[Dariat]

I don't think that you can map the English construction determiner + noun (e.g. any castle, some castle, no castle) to equally uniform constructs in Japanese. It seems that in Japanese you need entirely different grammatical constructions to convey the same meaning.

So, instead of associating certain particles with certain determiners, it's probably more helpful to simply know that も after question words conveys the meaning of 'any'/'every' for positive predicates and 'no (one, thing …)' for negative predicates and that か, when attached to a question word/construct, gives it an indefinite meaning.

も is a focus particle and か (in this context) is a question particle. They are used very differently.

[thegooseking]

Dariatさん,

I don't think that you can map the English construction determiner + noun (e.g. any castle, some castle, no castle) to equally uniform constructs in Japanese. It seems that in Japanese you need entirely different grammatical constructions to convey the same meaning.

Oh, it is a Japanese construction.

Interrogative + でも means 'any'.
Interrogative + も usually means 'no' (except いつも means 'always', not 'never'). This negative is usually used with a negative verb. If it's used with a positive verb it might also be exceptional.
Interrogative + か means 'some'.

So 誰 is 'who', 誰でも is 'anyone', 誰も is 'noone' and 誰か is 'someone'.

It's fairly regular. As you can see with いつも, there are some exceptions (for instance, どう ('how') becomes どうにも ('no way') rather than どうも, and いくら ('how much') does become いくらも in the negative, but it means "almost none", rather than "none"), but most of the time that's exactly how it works.

小狼

[Dariat]

You can of course remember it that way but then you also have to remember all the exceptions, which I find rather tedious.

[community.japanese]

小狼さん and Dariat san

interrogative + でも　＋　pronoun + paritlce
いつ　　　　でも 誰か　　　が is grammatically correct.

Using particles is difficult so if you have questions again, please feel free to ask us.

Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com