LEARN + JAPANESE / Note 158 JLPT N4
Both This and That (も〜も)
Attaching も to two nouns in a row, in place of the particles they’d normally take, links them together evenly, “both X and Y.” With a positive verb it means “both”; with a negative verb it means “neither.”
Naoki likes both sushi and sashimi.
Saya plays both tennis and golf.
In Real Life
寿司も刺身も replaces the plain object marker を entirely, listing two items on completely equal footing, distinct from と, which lists items as a fixed group, “sushi and sashimi” as one set, while も〜も treats each one separately, “sushi, and sashimi too.”
It's not especially delicious or bad, really.
It's not especially lively or quiet.
In Real Life
い-adjectives drop い for くも, 美味しい becomes 美味しくも; な-adjectives and nouns take でも, 賑やかでも. Paired with ない at the end and 特に (particularly) up front, this becomes a natural way to describe something as thoroughly unremarkable, neither one extreme nor the other.
It's neither the bullet train nor the bus. It must be the car.
In Real Life
Xでも Yでもない rules out two possibilities at once, “it’s neither X nor Y,” often followed by a confident conclusion about what it must be instead, pairing naturally with はず, which you already know.
Vocabulary
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| sashimi | |
| golf | |
| tennis court | |
| high school | |
| unappetizing, bad-tasting | |
| particularly | |
| far | |
| close | |
| second time | |
| for the first time | |
| equally | |
| both | |
| both, either | |
| ordinary | |
| unremarkable, plain | |
| to exclude | |
| candidate, option | |
| conclusion | |
| to reason, deduce | |
| process of elimination |