Hi!
I came across the following sentence in one of my reviews:
彼はあの人が好きみたい. (It seems like he likes that person)
But I couldn’t figure out what is wrong with the following alternatives:
彼はあの人が好きそうです or 彼はあの人が好きそうだ
Aside from the politeless levels, what is wrong with using そう here?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that sentence per se. Did you get an error or a hint when you typed そうだ into the field? Usually you should get a hint when you use a very similar grammar, but in the end it’s up to the devs.
Right, I’m used to seeing some sort of hint or comment that they want a different grammar point, but it just gave me “wrong”, so I thought I might be missing something. Thanks for confirming!
I just asked ChatGPT and I am flabbergasted at it’s ability to explain grammar…
The difference between “彼はあの人が好きみたい” (Kare wa ano hito ga sukimitai) and “彼はあの人が好きそうだ” (Kare wa ano hito ga sukisō da) lies in the nuances of expression.
彼はあの人が好きみたい (Kare wa ano hito ga sukimitai):
This sentence expresses the speaker’s observation or perception that “he” seems to like that person. The use of “みたい” (mitai) indicates a conjecture or assumption based on external signs or indications. It suggests that the speaker is inferring the person’s feelings of liking based on their behavior, words, or other observable cues.
彼はあの人が好きそうだ (Kare wa ano hito ga sukisō da):
This sentence also conveys the speaker’s perception that “he” seems to like that person. However, the use of “そうだ” (sō da) adds an element of speculation or hearsay. It indicates that the speaker’s conclusion is based on what they have heard from others or gathered from indirect sources, rather than their direct observation.
In summary, “好きみたい” suggests a personal observation or perception, while “好きそうだ” implies a speculative conclusion based on external information or hearsay.
That’s pretty impressive and (I believe) correct. I’m normally skeptical of chatGPT though, because I saw a video of youtuber “Sayuri Saying” where she asks chatGPT to create a dialogue in japanese, and it comes out full of weird and/or slightly wrong expressions that she then corrects.
I have also played with it before and found at least a couple kanji that it was reading incorrectly.
But I do believe the explanation is right, and since bunpro doesn’t specify the context, it should probably not mark one of them as wrong; maybe just point to the other instead.
But I do believe the explanation is right, and since bunpro doesn’t specify the context, it should probably not mark one of them as wrong; maybe just point to the other instead.
Yeah that would be ideal, but things like that can be overlooked and it’s for us to point them out I guess. Hopefully they implement it.
As for skepticism, yeah after using DeepL for a long time I agree they’re absolutely not perfect. But I think I will switch to ChatGPT as it seems vastly more useful. This was my first time using it and I got too excited, especially because it confirmed what I thought 
To add, みたい is the casual / conversational variant of ようだ. It isn’t an alternative for 〜だそうだ
I could agree with the first part of this explanation, after that I am not sure. Because “そう” rellies on visual information and you could say that is “direct observation”. I would say is more like making an uninformed assumption of something based on your first glance/impression. With the nuance of not being totally sure, like a feeling.
The element of hearsey would work better in something wrote in the form of “好きだったそうだ”.
That’s true. And there goes my hype.
This, there is a difference between そうだ as a suffix/inflection/auxiliary verb, or そうだ as a modified noun.
Its easier to see with い形容詞
美味しいそう・美味しそう
I heard it was yummy ・ It seems yummy.
Yummy Subjectively ・Yumminess obtains.
It is a odd distinction, but its the same for な形容詞 as well.
好きだそう・好きそう
I heard its likable/they like it/etc.・It seems likable.
Generally it’s distinguishing between your opinion, or a received opinion from others.
tbh I assumed they were going for 好きだそうだ and just mistyped it, but now I’m not so sure
I agree, this does seem to be something that should give a warning rather than being straight up wrong. This is a challenging grammar that I still get confused.
If they wrote 好きだそうだ then yeah it should be a straight mistake. But they wrote 好きそうだ which has pretty much the same meaning so I think it should give a hint.
I don’t think it’s the same meaning either way
彼はあの人が好きみたい “It seems he likes that person”
彼はあの人が好きそうだ “That person seems likable”
The first implies they actively like / love the other person
The second just implies that it isn’t decided whether they like them or not, but it’s at least a possibility
All good points raised. I’ll make sure a hint gets added here and will check the other questions in the same tree to see if they need a similar hint. As for distinguishing what the meaning is based on how words change, perhaps this little tidbit I noticed a while ago may or may not help.
Auxiliaries and particles tend to join to word stems when modifying the experience of the speaker themselves, and tend to join to full words when describing the viewpoint of another. This is one of those ‘nature of the language’ things that doesn’t really make sense in English cause we don’t think of things that way, but I’ll give just one example -
危ないそうだ (this is heard from another source) 危ない is complete, therefore adding そう to it doesn’t make sense if it’s the speaker’s own thoughts. It’s like saying ‘That is seems dangerous’. ‘Is’ and ‘seems’ counteract the definitiveness of eachother.
危なそうだ (this one is the speaker’s own opinion) 危ない is incomplete, because the speaker themselves doesn’t know enough to label it as such.
The そう and よう etc etc etc is always something related to the speaker’s viewpoint, while the form of the word coming before it illustrates who else is involved. This is why you see だ come between な-Adjectives before そう, because someone has already labeled it as something definitive, but the speaker themselves can’t, so they put their uncertainty (そう) on the end of someone else’s certainty (だ).
… I have no idea if this even makes sense or is helpful, but it’s a feature of the language that gives you a lot of information about who is doing what if you look out for it. Basically-
Things attached to full words = definite features.
Things attached to stems = altered states of features.
Makes sense, but are you confident this is always the case? That seems way too convenient I will have to be on the lookout for those. Anyway as far as the usage of そう goes, this explanation makes perfect sense to me. Thanks!
彼はあの人が好きそうだ “That person seems likable”
I don’t think this is the correct translation for this sentence. Did you mean “That person seems likeable to him”? Even then I doubt a Japanese person would phrase it like this. As far as I know they are very strict when it comes to how they express what other people think. Anyway, arguing this is like arguing the difference between “seems like” and “looks like”. Obviously there is, but that’s not the problem here.
It is the case often enough that I would be pretty confident in classifying it as a feature of the language. Keep it in the back of your mind while doing a bit of quality-testing and let me know your thoughts again in a few days 
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As in, “To me, that guy seems to like the person over there.”
Also this is a really good video that attempts to demonstrate the difference:
Thanks for linking that video, which is very helpful. I did get confused (it happens a lot) again though, because the video explicitly says that “そうだ” means 100% confidence, whereas bunpro says:
そうだ always implies that the speaker is not 100% certain about the validity of the information that they are conveying.
What am I missing?
Again, this is the difference between (だ)そうだ and 〜そうだ。
If I say 美味しそうだ。 I am saying it seems yummy, I cannot be 100 percent certain.
If I say 美味しいそうだ。 I am saying that I have heard that it is yummy from someone else.
In the video she is speaking about (だ)そうだ which means that you are 100 percent sure that someone else said it. Not that the underlying material is 100 percent true.