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- "What sports do you like?"
"What sports do you like?"
Translation:何のスポーツが好きですか？
35 Comments
1272
"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.
何の = どの (According to Jisho, 何の can also be pronounced どの rather than なんの。However, どの is usually written in kana.) = which; what (way)
https://jisho.org/search/%E3%81%A9%E3%81%AE
何の＝なんの= 1. what kind; what sort 2. any (negative sentences)
https://jisho.org/search/%E3%81%AA%E3%82%93%E3%81%AE
There is also どんな= 1. what; what kind of
https://jisho.org/search/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA
In school, I learned that どの mean = ”which” and どんな = ”what kind of” but this is the first time I've heard なんの。
So, I'm not entirely sure about how all these differ exactly, but this seems straightforward:
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".
I agree that "which" is asking about a set of options. But "Which sports... " is valid. "What kind of...", to me, is asking about a category, as in I like E-sports and other sports that involve a lot of sitting.
「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.
yeah, you are correct in your logic, the が is being used to make emphasis on "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 specifically do they like.
- 292
Can someone please explain why ga is used here instead of wa? I thought wa is always used when asking a question.
Short version, the 何の～ part can be considered a question word, hence it cannot be marked by は as it represents the unknown, grammatically speaking.
Long answer, is because the speaker wants to know what kind of sport does the listener likes, not whether they like or not sports in general. Consider the dynamic of focus in the grammar for は and が as the focus of the sentence is thrown around depending on who is present and what is marking what.
So if you use は the focus goes to anything else that is not marked by は usually to the right of the sentence; If you use が then the focus is thrown into the element that's marked by が.
focus → ●
「『○何のスポーツは』『●好きですか？』」
「『●何のスポーツが』『○好きですか？』」
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.
- 81
In this case, it HAS to be 「が」, that's why it might have been flagged wrong. It's also 「か」at the end.
But I would also like to know if one can use 「どんな」
- 704
Do you specifically need to include "ga"? I left it out and it was incorrect, but I don't know if it should have been marked wrong or not.
Just a hint: I kept getting marked wrong for this and similar questions because every time I typed "nan no" into the IME it would convert it to 何お - you need to hit space after 'nan'.
I tried 『何のスポーツが好きなの』as an informal way to ask this question and I got it right. I think this 『な』here is because 好き is an Na-adjective. Someone correct me if I am wrong, pls.
好き isn't a verb, it's an adjective effectively meaning "liked", which applies to the subject. I.e. "What sports are liked", with the implication that it's the listener who's doing the liking.
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?
“Sports of what is liked?/ Do you like sports of what?” Doesn't make much sense
