progressively
steadily・rapidly
building up
more and more
Structure
- どんどん + Phrase
どんどん → swift change
だんだん → more gradual change
How is dondon a more swift change in this case? Why can’t you use dandan here?
I interpreted dondon as something that builds up while dandan is something that is just slow or perhaps it can build up as well?
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You can use both answers here (With slightly different nuances)
As you know, the difference lays in tempo - だんだん would be slower, while どんどん is more rapid. Also, どんどん (comes from drumming noise) sometimes is understood to express continuous change, while だんだん (段々 - kanji used for stairs/steps is used) to express the change that happens in small increments.
This is why どんどん is most of the time translated as “steadily, rapidly, more and more” while だんだん as “gradually, by degrees, by steps, more and more”.
When the last translation is used, the nuance is kind of lost though.
I hope it helps,
Cheers!
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だんだん → more gradual change
I keep confusing these two so the way I’m trying to think about them now is:
どんどん - Also used as Japanese onomatopoeic in Katakana for a drumming and banging noise, so typically fast.
だんだん - Derived from the kanji form 段々, you can think of this as ‘step by step’ so typically something more gradual.
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Thanks for those explanations! I feel like they point me in the right direction, but I’m not sure how to differentiate between “steadily” and “rapidly”.
E.g., どんどん日本語が上手になりたい。( I want to steadily get better at Japanese.)
If someone tells me that they want to “steadily” get better at it, it feels like “consistent change”, but not necessarily fast. But does どんどん日本語が上手になりたい。 always have the connotations of both “consistently” and “quickly” at the same time? How would I know which one? It feels like most contexts would make both equally likely.
Same problem with 日本の人口がどんどん減る。(The Japanese population will steadily decrease.)
After reading the Japanese sentence, I would’ve expected it to decrease rapidly, but from the English sentence I would expect it to be constant, but not super quick.