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- "うたはうたいません。"
"うたはうたいません。"
Translation:I do not sing songs.
58 Comments
歌い is the nominalized form or 連用形(れんようけい)of the verb 歌う. It's used to create the masu form of the verb 歌う.
As in:
歌います
歌いません
歌いました
歌いませんでした
The form can also be used when connecting two main sentences (kinda like if you use "and" between two sentences in English).
As it's a nominalized form, when it comes to some verbs, it can also be used as a proper noun. However, maybe also since the noun 歌 exists, 歌い is not used as a standalone noun.
1378
歌う (うたう) is the plain form of the verb to sing, for which the polite level form is 歌います (うたいます). Because the plain forms are the ones you'll find in a dictionary, you could also them the dictionary or citation form. They can be used when neither the polite level or fancier honorific or humble forms are called for, on the basis of one's relationship with the person one is speaking to and/or about.
As someone else (whose name unfortunately doesn't show in my DL app) mentioned the polite level forms are formed with うたい. The basic plain forms are: 歌う (うたう) pres. 歌わない (うたわない) neg. 歌たった(うたった) past 歌わなかった (うたわなかった) neg. past 歌たって(うたって) -te form
No, it literally means "[I] do not sing songs".
In theory you could be singing other things than songs, perhaps not so much in English because the English word "sing" is strictly tied to "songs", so it sounds superfluous to specify what you are singing, but the Japanese word 歌う has a slightly wider meaning and includes what in English would be "recite" and "chant", which is probably why it makes more sense to be more specific in Japanese. For comparison, by the way, in English you would say "I recite a poem", even though the only thing you can recite (that I can think of) is actually a poem, so logically it would be suffice to say "I recite", but we don't usually shorten it that much (probably because people don't really recite all that much nowadays) and instead use the full expression "I recite a poem".
942
This is a great comment (+1) but we can recite many things in English, a pledge or oath, a speech, lyrics, a quote, an alphabet, it's a somewhat flexible word.
I don't know if it happened here, but sometimes you make a mistake, and because there are several possible translations for the sentence, the example correct answer uses (for example) a different subject, like we instead of I
So it looks like that's the correction, but you actually got a different part wrong - maybe just a typo. It's something to watch out for, it's happened to me a few times! Especially on the mobile app with a feisty autocorrect
See @Aki-kun's comment above:
"歌い is the nominalized form or 連用形(れんようけい)of the verb 歌う. It's used to create the masu form of the verb 歌う.
As in:
歌います
歌いません
歌いました
歌いませんでした
The form can also be used when connecting two main sentences (kinda like if you use "and" between two sentences in English).
As it's a nominalized form, when it comes to some verbs, it can also be used as a proper noun. However, maybe also since the noun 歌 exists, 歌い is not used as a standalone noun."
It's because duolingo kinda makes everything confusing. Essentially duolingo is just a somewhat elaborate flashcard system, so duolingo mercilessly chops up words so that you can have a separate clickable tile for ます. And personally, I think Aki-kun's comment uses too many fancy words and introduces too many concepts at once making it even more confusing. For now, what you have to remember is that: 「歌い」 is not a word in itself. 「歌う」 is the dictionary form of the verb "to sing", but also the plain form, you can theoretically just say "歌う" and it's gonna mean "I will sing". 「歌います」 means the same thing except it's a polite version of it. 「うた」 itself just means "a song".