じゃありませｎ　vs. ではありません
 

I have been wondering lately what the difference is between じゃありません and　ではありません。　I have always used ではありません, I had never even heard じゃありません until recently. I had been wondering this, and decided to make a topic about it becuase I recently saw another thread about a different topic, address this question.

I did search for a topic like this one and couldnt find anything. I may not have searched the correct combination of words. Sorry if this has been answered.

So I guess my question is. Which is better? Does one sound more natural? Is one more formal?

Thanks for any help.

I'll keep my answer brief as I've done this same question a few times in the last several months.

If you've always used ではありません, that's great. Keep using only that one.

じゃありません is so often used by Japanese-learners, and we native speakers will even understand what it must mean. Do we say it ourselves? The answer is mostly negative. Some may say it occasionally, but if you write じゃありません in a compo for school, you will be corrected 100% of the time. Educated Japanese-speakers couldn't stand the funny-sounding imbalance between the sloppy, colloquial じゃ and the fairly formal ありません.

ではありません is just perfect and natural balance-wise, which in turn means that if you change one part of it, you'd better change the other part as well. You can't mix a formality and sloppiness in a short phrase like this in any language, I would say.

If you must use じゃ, you could say じゃない、じゃないの、じゃないんだ, etc. In fact, じゃ is so informal that a dialectal phrase often follows it.
じゃないじゃん
じゃねーな
じゃねーよ

All of these mean ではありません in texbook Japanese. These are the factors that make じゃありません sound unnatural. It's just the wrong and forced combo of words.

Thank you very much! Sorry about the repeat question.

I don't mean to question anything here as this is just a continuation thing. But is there differences in it's uses in different dialect thing because your from Toukyou?

I always trust your judgement on speaking Japanese it's just that I've seen another native speaker who writes as a language tutor for Japanese who said that じゃありません is common in casual conversation. Is it possible that it is more common in other parts of the country. I have also seen ではない used, which is obviously the other way around. Does ではない sound natural?

I don't feel too confident in answering your first question regarding the dialects. I've lived in two cities (Nagoya and Tokyo, over 20 years in each :eek: ) and I have visited 44 of the 47 prefectures. Still, I can't say that I've noticed a major regional difference in the use of ではありません/じゃありません.

The more I think about this, the more I remember when I was learning English. I was strictly taught to say "he doesn't", "it doesn't", "John doesn't". When I was 19, I happened to visit America for the first time and heard someone say "he don't". I heard it on TV as well from a contestant on a gameshow. All this happened within two days of my arrival. I felt exactly how you must be feeling right now. "Have I been taught wrong back home?"

The answer would be mostly no, I'd have to say. I don't regret that I've been using "doesn't" with a third-person, singular subject. You won't regret that I kept yelling at you to use ではありません, even though I can't prove it right now.　

I have no interest in telling how people should talk or write to their friends and families either in their own language or Japanese. But it would be extremely irresponsible of me if I told you that you could freely use じゃありません in business and other formal occasions. Yet this is internet. I shouldn't expect to have more influence on you than someone physically near you.

If a teacher from England told his Japanese students that it's up to them to choose between "he don't" and "he doesn't", he would be seeing the headmaster soon, wouldn't he?

These are my standards and guidelines when answering language questions on JF.
_______

Yes, ではない sounds natural.

The problem I have had with learning Japanese is that for many things people say different things and a lot will tell you that there way is the right way and what you should say. It can be very confusing when you first start learning.
When I first came to Japan, I was learning things like counting. When it came to counting floors 一階　二階　三階　四階　 I was told by my GF that it must be ikkai, nikai, sangai yonkai etc. When asked about why it must be gai for 3 instead of kai she said that sankai would be too difficult to say (what about 三回　sankai, 3 times I said to no response). Subsequent teachers told me only sankai, only sangai, both are okay & I was confused to put it mildly (read politely) Typing on a computer if I write sankai or sangai they both come up with the kanji 三階 so I assume both are used. My point is so many people say different things, just like in any language. I know native japanese speakers who cannot understand anything that high school students say. I know high school students who can't understand what the next group of high school students are saying ;)

It's a difficult language often made more difficult by teachers and textbooks.

I know a lot of people who studied Japanese at school in Australia or America, then came to Japan and nobody has a clue what they are saying. Too textbook you might say :D

My advice is to first work on how to communicate and not worry about sounding natural, then when you have reached a certain level, worry about sounding natural.

じゃありません　though I have never heard and my PC doesn't want to convert it either. Still, I bet some kids have started saying it and it might be the next big thing.

I'm confused as to why so many textbooks (written by Native speakers) would teach じゃありません over ではありません. There must be some reason =/

You guys seem to be ignoring the fact that Nagoyankee has given you a very logical reason not to use じゃありません. じゃ is colloquial and ありません is somewhat formal.

Unfortunately I live in the north of england and the nearest very big city (Manchester) is over an hour away, which is the only city I found locally with Japanese tutors in it. I wish I had one, but I have to learn on my own.

And on the subject of saying don't instead of doesn't, don't is definetely incorrect and I never say it but I hear it very often from other people. The problem though is no one can speak English in England. If you ever come here (and I would advise anyone not to) expect to here the mixing round of 'were' and 'was', lot's of double negatives, people using the word 'like' for no reason multiple times a sentence, people saying things like 'the most stupidest' and phrases such as 'well good' replacing every positive adjective in the whole language. Also there is just the complete lack of any correct grammar and sometimes even sentence order. Sorry about the rant, but as you can tell I have intense distaste for England. But what I was getting at is that it's so common to say don't that you would not be taken to the principle and some of the teachers might even say it themselves.

And thanks for the explanations. I think I'll definetely make sure that I use ではありません instead of ではありません.

You are ignoring a simple fact: you learn a language to communicate with people, not textbook-correct grammatical robots. If people say "he don't," then you must learn it at some point.

Prescriptively, yes, "he don't" is incorrect. However, descriptively, it is correct.

Whatever "correct" means for you. If you think about it, the only way you judge correctness in a language is based on how people use it, not how some dictionary tells you to speak.

People stuck in your rigid mindset have the most problems learning languages. "Wait, my textbook says XXX, so why do people use YYY???" Simple: Your textbook or study materials are rigidly focused on teaching "essay language" and not "how people actually talk language."

In other words, your textbook be wrong, yo ;)

On a side note: Even in Texas, "ain't" is taught as 100% wrong usage when in fact "ain't" is the correct contraction for "am not" (well, technically "an't" was the original, but you catch my drift). One example of people with too rigid grammatical rules ruining words.

Another stupid rule is "don't put prepositions at the end of a sentence." This rule was invented in only about 100 years ago or so when teachers were trying to import Latin grammatical rules into English.

Regardless, such a rule is one up with which I shall not put. ;)

It's not rigid it's just called speaking the language correctly. Also 'am not' is only used in the first person perspective meaning ain't is incorrect as you would use I'm instead. Plus it's not about one text book saying one thing and another textbook saying something else I was asking about how common uses of the different thing. The difference between じゃありません / ではありません and he don't / he doesn't is that even if one isn't commonly used or sounds a little weird both じゃありません and ではありません make sense grammatically but 'he don't' doesn’t.

Also I don't have problems learning the language I just want to get it right first then I can worry about slang and dialects after I can speak it correctly. There is a difference between complete incoherent garbage and slang or casual speak.

So I asked my teacher about the ではありません・じゃありません thing to get her opinion. After saying a few sentences using each, she said that ではありません "Sounds more polite." I told her that I was talking with a different Japanese person and they said that じゃありません isn't actually used/sounds weird but she didn't seem very surprised and said that it could be a regional thing because apparently it is fairly commonly heard when she is in Japan. She's originally from Kyoto.

=s

I suppose I'll just start using ではありません because I like the flow better and I guess it is better to sound more polite anyways.

Also, regarding the "He don't" thing... I very rarely hear anyone say something like "He/She don't" and if I did I would immediately regard them as undereducated in basic English skills. My stepsister often says things like "that there" and "funner" which are more commonly heard, but the same reaction still comes out. Native speakers frequently make mistakes in their own language, so if Japanese speakers are surprised to hear things like "he don't" after being told that it is wrong... They should be glad to know that they are better at speaking English than some native speakers.

This doesn't surprise me at all and is something a long the lines of what I thought since the book I'm using is written by people people from the Kansai region and it mentions じゃありません (and of course also ではありません).

I just saw this じゃありません and didn't understand what it is. :confused: I can say it sounded strange to me. Can you first tell me what ではありません or じゃありません mean?

ではありません and じゃありません are used to negate a sentence. So if I wanted to say I am not a cat, I could say, 「僕は猫ではありません。」

じゃ is a like a contraction of the sounds of では.

That's precisely my point. Who decides what is "correct"? Society.

If society deems something correct, it is correct.

Rule #1 of any composition/language use is to use the language your target audience expects you to use. If you are lecturing high school students, you wouldn't "forthwith explain your inner monologue," no matter how "correct" this is.

Language exists for one purpose: communicating ideas. If your usage impedes this purpose, it is bad. If it facilitates, it is good. This is why you modify your speech to a target audience.

Believe it or not, there is no "natural rule book" for any language. There is only societal judgement.

Speaking of "judgement," note my spelling there. In the US, judges and lawyers would tell you that is wrong because we spell it "judgment" instead. However, other groups of society spell it with the "e," so I chose to use the "e."

This demonstrates why it's important to know your audience when writing.

Obviously communicating is main object of conversation but I often hear people go through multiple sentences without communicating any ideas at all.

That has absolutely nothing to do with following your prescriptivist rules, though. It's a non sequitur—a valueless statement.

I'd also like to point out, preemptively, that I don't have a prejudice against using "correct" English because of some personal deficiency—I was an editor for an academic journal before I received my doctorate.

This thread really reminds me back when I had to struggle through the "it's this way/it's that way" rules of Japanese. Back when I was thinking more rigidly and wanted to accept that there was a "right" way. When you think about it, our best language learners, children, have no concept of "right" and certainly have no rigid preconception of how language rules are followed.

I started off learning the safe textbook language, but then I followed suit and simply learned from listening.

Btw, I've heard of those examples (じゃありません / ではない) in anime before... But I learned very quickly that anime should not be a reference to normal conversation.

Think about it this way. It's a common thing (and it annoys me that people do this) for people to make fun of foreigners for nuances in their English speech even if the ones making the jokes aren't great speakers themselves. I don't want to become one of those people that others make fun of for some stupid grammar reason I didn't iron out.