Having a hard time understanding だけしか

Japanese
#1

At first glance it seems that you should use it grammatically the same way that you use だけ or しか, but that doesn’t seem to entirely be the case. For example:

彼は野菜だけしか食べられません。

If we take out the だけ it still has more or less the same meaning.

However if we look at this example.:

土曜日だけしか忙しくないから、出来たら土曜日じゃないほうがいい。

Either way I look at it it would seem to me that Saturday is the ONLY day where you are not busy. However the opposite seems to be true. It appears that 土曜日 is 忙しくない, but that’s not the case.

Then with this example:
椅子はここにあるものだけしかありません。

We are back to the subject being the only option again.

The grammar point is just confusing me and I cannot seem to get my head around it for some reason. Can anyone lend a little insight?

#3

I would look at しか as meaning “more than” and then it is always negated later on with something - ない

So when you are saying だけしか~~ない you are saying “More than just A, does not exist” meaning ONLY A exists, which yes is the same as just a normal しか～ない however the extra だけ is emphasizing this even more, which is the whole point.

土曜日だけしか忙しくないから、出来たら土曜日じゃないほうがいい。
More than just saturday is not busy. — >
Only saturday is busy

This is also why しか gets talked about as being a “negative” only, whereas だけ is more neutrally stating “only”

だけ is objectively setting a limit, and saying it doesn’t exceed it, しか~ない is innately saying “more than A, it is not” so its inherently focusing on what you DON’T have.

My limit is 5$ (だけ）
I have no more than 5$ (しか～ない)

You can describe the second as a more negatively focused sentence as its talking about what you don’t have, the first is describing what you do have, just that it’s the limit of what you do have.

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#4

Thank you for taking the time to explain it. I understand the subjective and objective limitations, but somehow the sentence, "More than just saturday is not busy. " is just making my brain hurt. I guess I’ll just have to take some time and work through the logic of it.

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#5

I see the しか form (or だけしか） as a typical case of the importance of never trying to translate a language but rather learn to think in the language to assimilate it properly.

I remember being confused for a long while while I was studying, and always had だけ in a corner of my head when I heard しか (oh here comes the negative だけ/only！) Once I was living in Japan I just wouldn’t worry as I heard it constantly and it became natural by itself to know wether I’d use one or the other.
That may sound like a non-answer but I think this is key in Japanese as the way of thinking often can’t translate accurately at all for a lot of reasons.
しかない is an easy introduction to this concept as it is so common and simple, I would just trust time and exposure rather than overthink grammar lessons.

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#6

I asked two native speakers who both independently said that the sentence above doesn’t really make any sense to them either, so I sill stop worrying about it. Thanks to everyone who reached out to help!

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#7

The sentence has been changed to something less difficult to understand :+1:, sorry for the confusion!

だけしか can basically just be thought of as a strengthening of だけ, so the wording of the previous sentence made it a bit tricky to work out. The new wording should be much better!

#8

I see, thank you. That’s some nice response time! The new sentence makes it much easier to understand.

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#9

I think you might also be confused because it’s an adjective; I was too, at first, because we’re used in (most of) our native langage to have adjectives that do not conjugate, and might tend then to remember conjugated Japanese adjectives in a set way. So whenever you see 忙しくない, you immediately think “not busy” and automatically translate as “Saturdays are not busy”.

but しか demands the grammatical negative, even though the verb translates as a positive : " he can only eat vegetables", “the chair is the only thing here” even though you have 食べられません and ありません

So 忙しくない here is not “to be not busy”, it’s “to not be busy”, (“to be busy” conjugated in the negative).

If you wanted to say that Saturdays are the only day when you are not busy using だけしか, you would end up with something like 土曜日だけしか忙しくなくない, which is frankly horrible.

tl;dr : い-adjectives conjugate in Japanese, but we’re so used to adjectives not conjugating that we see them as a set phrase, and get confused with particles like しか which need a negative conjugation to express a positive (if restrictive) meaning

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#10

I can use しか more or less naturally, but the above sentence was odd in itself. A few native speakers said that it did not make sense. With the new example it all falls back into place.

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#11

I felt the same exact way when I first learned this grammar point. The easiest way to first get used to this would probably be to think of だけしか as just a stronger version of しか～ない. So,

土曜日しか忙しくない I am not busy except on Saturday.

土曜日だけしか忙しくない I am not busy on any day except Saturday and ONLY Saturday!

だけしかーない is probably like saying ONLY this and NOTHING else.

Then you have,

出来たら土曜日じゃないほうがいい I would prefer another day (that’s not Saturday).

With that said, it’s probably good to think of that sentence as saying: "Saturday is the one and only day that I’m busy, so, if possible, I would prefer (doing something) on a different day (ie, a day that’s not Saturday).

This may not be the most correct or orthodox way to explain this, but it helped me out, and now I am able to use this grammar in my daily life out here in Japan.

#12

oops. Just read the other comments. LOL