"What sports do you like?"
Translation:何のスポーツが好きですか？
18 Comments
709
"何のXX" is Which XX, while "何" without "の" is What used as a pronoun. If we ask "何" only, it can be anything. The nuance is probably in English, as when there is a finite set of choices, Which instead of What should have been used.
I think "what kind of" should be used, not "which". "Which" implies choice from some given set of options. Like "which of the winter Olympic games do you like". But if there is no implicit or explicit definition of options, then it should be "what kind of".
It looks to me like you've just asked "What is it about sports that you like?" Which doesn't have the same meaning. の is a strange particle that usually links two things in a general to instance way from left to right.
みどりの本 can be read as the book which embodies green, the book of the green type, green's book, and so on.
In our example, 何のスポーツ would be "sports of what type." スポーツの何 would be "What within sports."
Order affects meaning.
The の can sometimes be thought of as "possessive": ie, "watashi no bouken" translates to "my adventure" or "adventure of mine", but "bouken no watashi" would translate to "the adventure's me" or "the me of the adventure" (this could mean "the me at the time of the adventure", i think...). In the case of 何it's not helpful for understanding meaning, but it does help illustrate that order matters.
何の is a single particle, meaning something like "what kind of", not two separate words that can be interchanged.
「が」and「は」both have the almost exact same meaning. There are many nuances of coursex but as a beginner you don't really need to know them all. One of the most important nuances in my beginner opinion is the fact that 「が」is preferable over 「は」if what you are describing is new/recent (i.e: "It's raining" is a good example to explainit. It hasn't ALWAYS been raining, it's a relatively recent fact, hence you'd use 「が」).
Hm... I also got it wrong with the は instead of が, but i thought maybe the reason is that there is no question if you do like sports, only about what kind of sports do you like. On the other hand, if the liking itself was being questioned, then が can be swapped with は. I hope it makes sense.
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yeah you are correct in your logic, the が is being used to make emphasis in "what sports" do they like. It's like trying to make the person think about the list of sports they know and asking them what sport in specifically do they like.
That said you can also use は in this example, it doesn't really makes that much of a difference, both are correct but duolingo only accepts が probably because is the usual one.
Why does スポ一ツ Cause you the answer to be wrong? Using 一 （Ichi）Will cause the answer to be wrong but there is no other way for me to type it. Su Po O Tsu Or Su Po U Tsu Will not display the correct word. I am typing on mac's hiragana keyboard. How would I write Sports? according to google this is the pronunciation which if typed it exactly like it sounds should give you the correct word on mac: Supōtsu Help please?
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“Sports of what is liked?/ Do you like sports of what?” Doesn't make much sense
