Could you explain to me what donna means?

[gab.ranucci_515382]

Hi everyone,

I'm a bit confused about the word donna どんな. Could you possibly explain to me what it exactly means?
Also, in the book where I'm studying there is the following dialogue:

A: どんな　スポーツ　が　すき　です　か。
B:　テ二ス　が　すき　です

And I can't figure out why A said " どんな　スポーツ ", I would have said " どの　スポーツ "

Thank you.

[thegooseking]

gab.ranucciさん,

There are two answers to this, really. One is about tone, and one is about scope.

Perhaps the easiest way to think of it is that どんな is to どの as そんな is to その. So where その means 'that...' and そんな means "that kind of...", どの means "which...?" and どんな means "what kind of...?"

There's a very common sentence そんな　こと　が　ない (so common, in fact, that it's often abbreviated to just そんな on its own). We use it to mean "That's not true" but it literally means "That kind of thing isn't true". It's just a bit less direct than literally saying "that's not true", which is the Japanese style.

So どんな　スポーツ　が　好き　です　か would be "what kind of sports do you like"? Compare with どの　スポーツ　が　好き　です　か - "which sports do you like?"

Again, it's less direct, so it's a more "gentle" question. But also, どんな implies you are free to give any answer you want, while どの might suggest you must choose from a certain set - maybe only certain sports are available.

It might be easier to see the difference in scope if we talk about clothes instead of sports, so imagine we're out clothes shopping.
どんな　ふく　が　好き　です　か？ - "What kind of clothes do you like?" I might ask this as we're heading out, maybe even before we go into any stores.
どの　ふく　が　好き　です　か？ - "Which clothes do you like?" I might ask this if there is a choice of clothes in front of you, with the expectation that you'll choose something out of what's been presented, and not something totally random.

Does that make sense?

小狼

[gab.ranucci_515382]

Thank you very much.

Your explanation is very clear

[community.japanese]

小狼さん、
こんにちは。
Thank you for helping さん.

san,
konnichiwa.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us.


Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com