• Hoimo@ani.social
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        14 hours ago

        Yeah, I was just thinking there’s no way that etymology is true. Ne is part of a whole class of these particles and appears in combinations to form even more specific “response-inviting” markers. A loanword for some traded good I’d believe, but not a grammatical feature like this, especially not because the Portuguese missionaries weren’t all that popular in Japan.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      Yes, it’s a part of speech that’s formally in the standard language. Japanase is full of these ‘case markers’, that don’t exist in English. Japanese doesn’t have articles or noun inflection, so you need them to determine what function words are in a sentence, or if it’s a question.

      In English it’s slang. Hence you won’t find it in a textbook.