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Is "da" used often in the casual speech? Or is it often omitted whenever it's possible? For example:

1) Genki (da)?
2) Suki (da)?
3) Ke wa atsui (da) ne?

Chocolate
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Oskar K.
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2 Answers2

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It is difficult to give a precise answer to this question. In cases where the speaker has a choice between "da" and just ending the sentence, both have their own nuances. Omission may be more "feminine" and addition of da might be more "masculine". In some cases, da can be used for emphasis. Usage patterns vary by gender, age, social situation, and possibly by region/dialect as well.

There are many other casual sentence enders besides just "da"/"" (nothing). You'll also hear stuff like "genki na no?" -> "genki da yo". There's also "kai" and "dai" for questions, "wa", "jya" and many others. In fact, sometimes personal choice of sentence enders is used to "project" a certain "personality type". It is something you develop an "ear for" the more you speak to a variety of people.

Note that there are grammatical limitations, however. For example, as per Yuuichi Tam's comment, you wouldn't use "da" as a question end. For a question, you can replace "da" with "ka" (but this can sound sharp or rude in some cases, so be careful) eg "genki ka?", or just end the sentence with rising intonation "genki?". There's also other question forms like "___ (na) no (ka)?" eg "genki na no?" but that's a more advanced topic.

About the example sentences:
As statements, all three would be okay with da or without. As questions, the first two are wrong if you use "da". The third one sounds weird to me but is close.. if you said something like "atsui da yo ne?" that would probably be okay, but that's because it is more like a statement followed by a request for confirmation: "atsui da yo" (statement) + "ne?" (question)

WeirdlyCheezy
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  • Even though です is a polite form of だ, 元気ですか is grammatical but 元気だか is not. I am still wondering why this kind of rule exists. – Second Person Shooter Jun 13 '16 at 17:44
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    I think I was reading somewhere that だ and です actually have somewhat divergent different etymologies, despite the similar appearance. Actually, some interesting posts about it on this stack, see: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12373/history-of-%E3%81%A0-%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99-and-%E3%81%A7%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B and http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11074/where-does-%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99-come-from. – WeirdlyCheezy Jun 13 '16 at 18:04
  • As for 元気だか？, one way to look at it might be that か eats だ in this case, much like は eats が. By eat, I mean they semantically compatible but syntactically incompatible, so one "wins" out and appears in grammatically correct sentences. So you can have 元気か？ with the "meaning" of both だ and か (warning: be careful using this kind of "naked" か in casual speech, it can feel "rude" or "sharp"). However, です is a different beast, almost like です is actually the thing taking the particle か. This might be further evidence for です being a contraction of something like でございます, but... I don't know. – WeirdlyCheezy Jun 13 '16 at 18:11
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    "genki da?" isn't grammatical? is it true only for genki? – Oskar K. Jun 13 '16 at 21:30
  • @Oskar K. "Genkida" is a coloquial form of "Genki-desu " as in ”彼 (選手たち、ポチ）は元気だ.” Of course, it's gramatical. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 13 '16 at 21:36
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    @YoichiOishi He means in the question form. – WeirdlyCheezy Jun 13 '16 at 21:40
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    @Oskar K. "元気だ" is an afirmative form to say "I'm (he / she is) well. Its interrogative form is "元気か？” or ”元気ですか？" "今日は暑いね" isn't an interrogation. It's saying "It's hot today. Isn't it?" It's simply stating the speaker's feeling as a monologue or asking a nod of the person he is speaking to. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 13 '16 at 23:00
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    @Oskar k. You can omit "だ” in coloquial interrogative form as in "元気？””リンゴ好き？"外は暑い？" But it sounds awkward if you add "だ" to these, like "元気だ？””リンゴ好きだ？"外は暑いだ？" Did I take your question rightly? If not, I'll give up answering to your question. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 14 '16 at 07:31
  • I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this kind of thing... On the one hand, it sucks that it's so hard to decide and know starting out what words and ways of speaking to use when, but on the other hand it's *really* cool that there's a sort of deep "feeling" fluency you can get. – obskyr Jun 14 '16 at 14:09
  • @WeirdlyCheezy I think it's a bit confusing to say they have "divergent" etymologies. Originally, だ = である and です = であります. ある and あります are the same word, so the etymology is the same/parallel. It's not really a mystery. However, だ is a quite unstable form, as you've rightly noticed. Both です and だ are now technically 助動詞, so they don't behave according to their etymology. But, despite what Tae Kim says, です is indeed the polite form of だ. It's just that that doesn't mean they automatically behave exactly the same when even when followed by other words. JSL by Jorden goes into depth on this topic. – weirdalsuperfan Feb 16 '21 at 09:48
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“だ-da” is a colloquial form of a predicate, "です" - used in both written and spoken form and "である" - used mostly in written form.

“だ” also can be replaced with “だよ,” which sounds softer than “だ.” The feminine version of “だよ” is "だわ" and “だわよ” that you often hear from woman speakers.

You say 今日は暑い（ね）, but should never say "今日は暑いだ" and "暑いだね." It’s odd and ungrammatical.

Yoichi Oishi
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    Maybe we should point out that feminine speech is minority and not standard. – user4092 Jun 14 '16 at 00:44
  • @user4092. You cant say feminine speach which is spoken by 50% of Japanese is a minority's speach. だわ、だよ、だね are equally spoken by women regardless age. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 14 '16 at 02:06
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    現実世界で「わ」（女言葉）を使っているところを聞いたことがあるのは50代の上司くらいでした。たぶんその辺が下限なんじゃないかと個人的には思ってます。 – broccoli facemask Jun 14 '16 at 07:28
  • I wouldn't argue this any further. But we hear "わ" quite often even today. For instance. "今日は暑いわ、”びっくりしたわ、もう、””大きな世話だわ.” Maybe my fiends are mostly my contemporary. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 14 '16 at 07:40
  • Does it include わ with falling intonation? – user4092 Jun 14 '16 at 09:54
  • @user4092. When you want to emphasize the preceding adjective (暑い), （だめ）, verb (びっくりした), and noun（大きなお世話) before "わ", you take up-pitch. Sometimes you emphasize "わ” by turning it "わァ." When you add "わ" just casually to the tail of the precedent, it takes a flat or falling tone in lower voice. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 14 '16 at 11:51
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    少し変ですね。「お世話」「だめ」には接続しませんよね？「だ」を介してということでしょうか。それに、女性的でない「わ」はたとえ強調しても直前の音節からのピッチの上昇はないはず。 – user4092 Jun 14 '16 at 16:05
  • Haven't you ever heard women blurt out "嫌だわァ" with a rising pitch on わァwhen we give a dirty joke before them. Maybe you're square man, In the same token、 余計なお世話だわ、迷惑だわ、もう駄目だわ、それ、腐った牛乳だわ、女みたいな奴だわ、you can name it. There are tons of examples of noun +だわ, as well as adjective / verb +だわ、like そんな話、もう何度も聞いたわ.、奴さんもう死んじまったわ、こんなバカな話もう止めといたわ、その話お釈迦になったわ、このサイト、しつこい奴が多いわ - I can continuee giving example all night. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 14 '16 at 20:31
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    問題点は２つあって、非女性的な「わ」と女性的な「わ」を区別してないこと、それと、"rising pitch" を理解してないこと。 – user4092 Jun 15 '16 at 03:03