Questions about わりぃけど 今は 忙しいんだ。

Japanese
#1

Hi everyone! Working through Game Gengo’s N5 Grammar Video Textbook right now. The sentence in question, わりぃけど 今は 忙しいんだ, is from timestamp 20:56.

I have two questions. Is the little ぃ in the first phrase just for pronunciation? The character pronounces it わりい instead of わるい. Is it just conveying disrespect, or is it a slangy way of speaking? Would this ever be used in real life and in what context?

Secondly, how does 忙しいんだ work? My current understanding is that while 忙しい is an い-adjective, んだ is short for のだ, where の would turn 忙しい into a noun (nominalize), which lets it be used with だ. Is that correct?

#2

Check out this link for ～んだ

with regards to わりぃ its just a more casual way of saying わるい. The character might have been speaking to their friends in this situation. the little vowel is to show an extension/elongation of the vowel sound that came before it

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#3

I see, thanks. The link says that ん makes a sentence more explanatory, right? But I know that 忙しいだ is grammatically incorrect, since you can’t use い-adjectives with だ or です. So what exactly makes using an い-adjective with んだ, のだ, んです, or のです okay?

#4

I’ve read somewhere that です with an い adjective is technically incorrect, but tbh it seems like most Japanese people missed that memo. You’ll often hear people using い adjectives with です, but not だ

の would typically nominalize a verb or phrase. you can definitely use です and だ with a noun. so in this case you can view it as if the adjective is being nominalized and the です is being added to state it as a fact. It comes across as, “the thing is, I’m busy”

you’ll often see this usage of の when emphasis/explanation is required.

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#5

I see, thank you so much!! Your explanation really helped me!!

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#6

In order to better understand why だ is not used with i-Adjectives, you have to think of them (i-Adjectives) as Verbs. If you’ve studied Japanese grammar long enough, you’ll notice that i-Adjectives and Verbs share the same rules, at least for the most part since there are exceptions. For example, you don’t use だ after a Verb either. Similarly, Nouns and Na-Adjectives share the same rules (again, with a few exceptions). IOW, sentences ending with i-Adjectives are already complete. No need for だ.

That said, you CAN attach です to i-Adjectives in order to make the sentence polite (the same way you do with the plain form of Verbs).

As for the のだ ending, notice that you can attach this to sentences ending with Verbs, which means you can also attach it to sentences ending with i-Adjectives. Case in point, check out the rules for Verbs/i-Adjectives vs Nouns/Na-Adjectives from the んだ grammar link that @drunkgome posted above. This is a very common pattern, which makes learning Japanese grammar easier to remember.

HTH!

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#7

I see, this makes it a lot clearer as well! Really appreciate the help!

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