Quote:
Originally Posted by princessmarisa
If I am sending emails to my penpal who is 18 and Japanese, and I am 24 and English if I use plain form (never use ます form) and things like じゃ or じゃないよ do I sound like dirt, or is it just casual and OK?
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Hi.
When sending emails to your penpal, writing じゃないよ is good.
It doesn’t sound dirt at all.
Quote:
She sends me very casual English and when she writes in Japanese it seems very slangy and casual to me, I never knew that for foreigners it makes you sound of a lower class or anything! 
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Between friends, saying じゃないよ is OK. It doesn’t sound lower class or something like that.
I meant that when non-native people speak じゃ ＋ ありません, it sounds strange.
You know that ～ありませんform is polite, don’t you?
When they speak じゃ ＋ ありません, many of them pronounce it じゃあ～ありません。
They speak じゃあ～ too strong.
It doesn’t sound polite. Very strange and something like offensive to the ear, I feel.
I’ve been wondering why they prefer じゃあ～ありませんtoではありません.
Do you have any idea about it?
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I guess I feel that if someone can write in English slang over chat that it makes them sound more fluent and natural, so I thought it worked the same way?
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Writing じゃないよ to
your friends is OK.
When you speaking Japanese, you’d better not to say じゃありません because you may sound strange”じゃあ～ありません”.