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- "よくもわるくもないです。"
"よくもわるくもないです。"
Translation:It is neither good nor bad.
17 Comments
I put "I am neither good nor bad". Which is just as correct as what they have but it was marked wrong.
I think it wouldn't work because the context is already established that you're talking about the weather in this lesson.
I think this answer is incorrect. The question is what do you want to say with an answer like that? I think that in English there are two possibilities:
1) "I am neither good nor bad (as a person)." However, in Japanese you do not say that someone is simply いい, you have to say いい人.
2) "I am neither good nor bad (at something)." In Japanese you would say 上手 and 下手.
Yep. いい was originally よい and changed, but its various forms kept the よ for their constructions.
Yes, the word ii is a modern derivation of yoi, so when you conjugate it you use the old form:dropping the -i and adding -ku. Then and -nai forba negative.
From my understanding leaving the second も would make the sentence grammatically ambiguous, like saying "it is not bad and good" instead of "neither bad nor good"
I think that makes sense. If I may attempt to break it down:
よくもないです。"It also isn't good," or maybe "it isn't good, either."
わるくもないです。It isn't bad, either.
On their own, these seem to be referring to some other quality "it" was stated to have earlier. Like "well, it isn't spicy," and you respond "it also isn't good!"
So when you say them in the same sentence, they play off each other, literally becoming "it also isn't good and it also isn't bad." Without that second も it definitely is ambiguous. It might just be an incomplete sentence, since the わるく isn't part of the も list and yet よく is sharing its ない.
That's the other thing this sentence is teaching us, I think: く-form adjectives aren't always followed immediately by ない. In lists, as this example shows, and probably other times as well.
I think the nature of も requires that the other thing also be negative, if this one is negative, or positive if this one is positive; they must match. So you probably wouldn't say 「つらくないです。おいしいもです。」
Using も in a list like here means "X as well as Y", the ない negates the whole thing, so you get "Neither X nor Y".
Is Yoku an adjective - yoku na as often, and Yoku as in good from an adjective yoi?
621
いい or よい is the adjective, and よく is the adverb. (Same for わるい and わるく, and all the i-adjectives when い changes to く)
よく means well or often.
Yoku and waruku are the negative forms of ii and warui respectively? And then you put nai at the end of the list? (Do you form negatives by making both things negative, like in spanish?)
I'm asking because my initial guess would have been よくないもわるくないもです。
- 621
You can alternatively say よくもなく（て）、わるくもない. The もmust stick between the adverb form of the adjective ("よく" and "わるく" are adverb forms of いい and わるい) and ない.
