Here in これは、ずいぶんな御挨拶だなあ ずいぶん is a adjective right? So it express something negative… - Feed Post by Annick

• 
  mog86uk

  At first I just thought 御挨拶 only meant a greeting. So I went straight on to looking up ずいぶんな on JMdict, and it says it means "contemptible; reprehensible".
  http://jisho.org/search/%E3%81%9A%E3%81%84%E3%81%B6%E3%82%93
  
  So, "a reprehensible greeting"?
  
  This seemed like an odd thing for someone to talk about. So I looked up 御挨拶 and it says it has another meaning:
  
  "A fine thing to say (used as part of a sarcastic response to a rude remark)."
  
  If it is this meaning, then the sentence should be a sarcastic response to a rude thing someone said before it. And it means the rest of the rest of the sentence should be sarcastic too.
  
  So I looked ずいぶん up in a couple of different J>E dictionaries:
  http://www.excite.co.jp/dictionary/japanese_english/?dictionary=NEW_EJJE&block=62277&offset=158&title=%E3%81%9A%E3%81%84%E3%81%B6%E3%82%93+%E9%9A%8F%E5%88%86
  http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/38608/m0u/
  
  These dictionaries show there's a sarcastic way of using ずいぶん. This is what we need to fit that second meaning of 御挨拶!
  
  So it looks like 随分な御挨拶 may be sarcastically saying "what a fine thing to say". The understood meaning being this sarcasm being a criticism of the rude/thoughtless/horrid thing said by the person you are responding to.
  
  I could have got this completely wrong, but it was fun looking into this difficult question. ^^

  September 8, 2015 at 4:26am
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  Annick

  Yes it was not a nice greeting, but usually we see ずいぶん as an adverb used with verbs, adjectives and meaning "lot, quite"
  here it's a na adjective used with a noun.

  September 8, 2015 at 4:53am
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  mog86uk

  Yeah, I think I've come across ずいぶん before, but only as an adverb, never as a na-adjective.
  
  Some online dictionaries and sites like wiktionary only mention the adverb usage of ずいぶん. The last two links I listed earlier show the na-adjective use tagged as〈反語〉and〔皮肉に〕to indicate its use in sarcasm.
  
  If you look ずいぶん up in the Daijisen, it lists its use in three parts of speech: na-adjective (形動), adverb (副), and even as a noun (名)!
  http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/116784/m0u/
  
  
  (Wish we could edit posts. Keep tryping weird mistakes, like "being" instead of "behind" and repeating stuff.)

  September 8, 2015 at 5:38am
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  Annick

  That's okay I didn't even notice the mistakes. Thanks for the info =)

  September 10, 2015 at 3:28am