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.”

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.”
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.
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

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