なぜ

Japanese

Alternative spelling
何故

Alternative forms

Etymology

/nani semu ni/ → */nanzenni/ → /nazenni/ → /nazeni/ → /naze/

Derived from Old Japanese 何せむに.[1]

Pronunciation

Adverb

なぜ • (naze) 

  1. (formal, literary, poetic) why ... ?, how ... ?

Usage notes

  • This term is often spelled in kana.
  • This word mainly belongs to formal (e.g. academic essays) and written (e.g. song lyrics) language, and might sound appropriately stiff or poetic in spoken language, even 丁寧語 (polite language), if it is in a context where formal style is not normally used. The synonym befitting most contexts is どうして.

Synonyms

References

  1. ^ Kotobank(コトバンク)
  2. ^ NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, editor (1998), NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 [NHK Japanese Pronunciation Accent Dictionary] (in Japanese), Tokyo: NHK Publishing, Inc., →ISBN
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.