Hi everyone,
Today I was accidentally rude to Bunpro. I’m sorry Bunpro-san!
I’m sure Bunpro-san will forgive me, but unintentionally offending someone is a big fear of mine. Does anybody know what the theory here is? When does a か cause a rude nuance? I want to avoid this pitfall if possible.
I recall seeing in some youtube video that adding an unnecessary か to plain form question sentences could have a sort of “interrogation” vibe.
I’ve searched for the video, but I can no longer find it. It was a random side sentence in something I watched long ago.
Tofugu has a good writeup here!
When a question is asked in the polite form, adding か to the end is pretty standard. When か is added to a question in the plain form however, it can sound very direct, especially if pronounced with rising intonation. This isn’t a particularly common way to ask questions, but is found in masculine Japanese.
In summary, it is rising intonation, not particle か, that indicates a question in spoken Japanese. For this reason, you can ask a question with nothing more than rising intonation, both in the plain and the polite form.
Basically what the writeup for か mentions here. It can just be very direct, or also interrogative like @thelizard mentioned.
Ahh, so that’s it. Thank you very much for the help everyone!
So this is even mentioned in the Bunpro N5 lesson, is it? I must have completely forgotten. Those yellow warning messages really are a huge help.
Adding onto this question, is のか also considered direct/blunt? I have in my notes that のか is a standard casual question form whereas か has the potentially rude implications mentioned here. Now I’m wondering if that’s correct.
