Can anyone tell me the difference between those two? - Feed Post by JQKAndrei

• 
  mog86uk

  I don't really know, but I'm fairly certain both are OK. The first one might have to be in response to something previously said though, but maybe this is not the case.
  
  I know in your previous post you said that saying "despite" twice sounds wierd in English, but I think we still say it, just that we would probably normally use two different words with that general meaning.
  
  "You picked Japanese as the foreign language you wanted to study?!"
  "Yes... Even though Japanese is difficult... Despite that though, it is fun!"
  
  In English, I could still have said "despite" instead of "even though"--both of which have essentially the same meaning.

  July 14, 2015 at 9:01pm
• 
  JQKAndrei

  Thank you very much. It's good to know there's some speech elasticity,
  I'm trying to focus on how changing stuff modifies the meaning of the sentence, just to be sure I don't mess up :D

  July 14, 2015 at 9:19pm
• 
  JQKAndrei

  Thank you very much. It's good to know there's some speech elasticity,
  I'm trying to focus on how changing stuff modifies the meaning of the sentence, just to be sure I don't mess up :D

  July 14, 2015 at 9:19pm
• 
  beee_17

  I've never seen anyone using のに twice like that. Besides, it's supposed to connect two sentences, so it doesn't make sense ending one with it. The second one seems ok, though.

  July 15, 2015 at 1:41am
• 
  mog86uk

  As soon as I submitted my post earlier, I realised something about my example sentence...
  
  "Yes... Despite Japanese being difficult... Despite that though, it is fun!"
  
  The first "despite" is referring to his decision to learn Japanese:
  "Despite Japanese being difficult, I picked it as the foreign language I wanted to study."
  
  The second "despite" is referring to "Japanese being difficult", not what the same thing as the first despite was specifically referring to.
  "Yes... Even though Japanese is difficult... Despite that though, it is fun!"
  
  I'm wondering now whether the Japanese sentences work like that. Maybe the のに at the end of the first sentence could be referring to something previously said (but not explicitly mentioning it again). The なのに at the start of the second sentence is only referring to the first sentence itself, right? So couldn't the のに both be referring to different things? If that was the case, could they ever be referring to exactly the same thing?
  
  (This is way too difficult to describe clearly what I mean...)
  
  
  @beee, I had never seen it before either, and it is not easy to search for, but I managed to find some pages where it was used.
  
  (な)のに / なのに is very similar to the situation with (だ)けど / だけど.
  
  You can end a sentence with けど or が, even though they are conjunctions. ^^

  July 15, 2015 at 4:20am
• 
  mog86uk

  Actually what I wrote about what the two "despites" my example sentence are referring to doesn't make sense.
  
  The first despite is clearly despite "Japanese being difficult". The second despite is "despite that", where the "that" = "Japanese being difficult".
  
  I meant something slightly different, but ended up just posting a confusing mess lol.

  July 15, 2015 at 4:26am
• 
  beee_17

  @mog Yeah, you can end a sentence with them. But ever noticed that, when people do it, it's kinda like an "incomplete" thought?
  
  Examples:
  
  「それもいいけど」
  
  or
  
  「あんなに頑張ったのに。。。」
  
  In his case specifically, he ended the sentence with のに and followed right after with the sentence that was supposed to be connected. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but doesn't make much sense to me, specially when written xD

  July 15, 2015 at 10:54am
• 
  mog86uk

  I understand well about it being an incomplete thought. But it could be similar to my example English sentence, where each "despite" pointing out two different things:
  "Despite Japanese being difficult, I chose to study it."
  "Despite Japanese being difficult, it is fun."
  
  Or it could be that the original intention was to stop after the first sentence, then the speaker decided to add more--maybe with a bit of a pause before the next sentence.
  
  I don't really know at all. However here are a couple of pages I found where it definitely is used:
  http://ca-palette.jp/story/8103361
  
  You might think that one above is a weak example, but this next one doesn't even have a full stop (period).
  http://sp.okwave.jp/qa/q7660940.html

  July 15, 2015 at 7:15pm
• 
  beee_17

  I understand, so there's really no problem using it. But I felt, in these two examples, particularly on the first one, that it was used for dramatic purposes, to reinforce the idea. I could even hear her 泣き声 xD
  

  July 15, 2015 at 10:49pm
• 
  mog86uk

  I was watching a science documentary blu-ray just now. It only had English audio but it had lots of different language subtitle options--including Japanese! Because of the type of speech used, the scientists naturally used lots of conjunctions; things like "but", "therefore", "because", etc.
  
  My original purpose for watching it had nothing to do with Japanese at all, but after this conversation I decided to turn the Japanese subs on in hope I might see some good uses of (な)のに. But in the whole hour and a half duration, not once was it used! They even said "in spite of that" and stuff like that in the English but didn't use it... There were lots of しかし, が, でも, だが, そして, ので, ...pretty much every conjunction in the Japanese dictionary except のに! xD
  
  This seemed like a decent method to understand (な)のに better. If it had been used, it would have been easy to understand exactly what it meant in English and why it was used. I have other English blu-rays which have Japanese subtitles, like Fast and the Furious 1-3, but a documentary seemed like a decent place to see lots of different conjunctions being used. Just wanted to share this idea. ^^

  July 16, 2015 at 8:33am