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Usage of zannen (unfortunately) If you want to express that you are unhappy about something you use unfortunately as follows in English: Unfortunately, I got born in the Netherlands Why can you not say this in Japanese? I made the following sentence and my sensei said it is wrong. zannen oranda de umaremashita She corrected me as follows: zannen nagara oranda de umaremashita Why do I need nagara? Can someone explain the meaning and the grammatical usage of this?
Jul 24, 2014 6:07 AM
Answers · 2
1
I think Misaki's answer is good. "Unfortunately" is an adverb, so in Japanese "zannen nagara," or "zannen na koto ni," We don't say only "zannen" as an adverb. "Unfortunate" is an adjective, then we say "zannen na + noun" Its ordinal word "zannen" is "形容動詞" in Japanese, and it's hard to explain because English doesn't have such a term. Or, 形容動詞 is a part of adjectives and we divide adjectives into an adjective and 形容動詞. I'll be glad if it would be helpful for your understanding.
July 25, 2014
I always see zannen used like this at the beginning of the sentence: - zannen nagara,.... - zannen desu ga,.... - zannen na+noun.... (e.g zannen na koto...). And (zannen desu/da) if it's at the end of the sentence. So I think you can't use zannen only at the beginning of the sentence (maybe because it's a noun?) See more examples on tangorin.com http://tangorin.com/examples/%E3%81%96%E3%82%93%E3%81%AD%E3%82%93 I'm waiting for an answer from a native speaker too.
July 24, 2014
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