よEmphasis (Sentence ending particle)

Most Recent Replies (5 in total)

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  mrnoone

  @GregX999
  Like @nekoyama says, を can indicate the location where motion begins and can also mark a movement through some area.

  から can be also used, but if the goal/destination of motion is stated, から is better than を.

  Example:

  家を出る
  to leave house

  空を飛ぶ
  to fly through the sky.

• 

  xuzab

  In response to someone who asked, 今日、何曜日ですか, wouldn’t it be kind of rude to say, 今日は水曜日ですよ？ I know that it’s “new information,” but for some reason have the impression that in this case, it’d be sort of presumptuous to present it as such. More generally, when should one refrain from using よ？

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  nekoyama

  I think this situation is one of the least rude ways to use よ, assuming the question is sincere and the person asking really doesn’t know the answer. よ expresses that the speaker has more knowledge or authority. It’s easy to interpret that as presumptuous, but another way to look at it is that in this sentence the よ emphasises that the speaker actually knows what they’re talking about. When answering a request for information, that’s a good thing.

  I find that when よ is rude, it’s often not directly because of the “new information” nuance. Of course that’s possible too, but but it’s much easier to be rude with よ in other ways. For example, let’s say we get used to agreeing to propositions from friends by saying something like いいよ. Then, one day, our boss asks us to do something and we reply いいですよ - acting as if we actually had a say in which requests from our boss we accept. (The correct answer would be something like わかりました. We do not answer requests from the boss from a poin...