Breakdown of hutatu no kotae ha mattaku tigaimasu.
Questions & Answers about hutatu no kotae ha mattaku tigaimasu.
How do you read this sentence aloud?
A natural reading is:
ふたつ の こたえ は まったく ちがいます。
Without the learning spaces, it is normally written:
二つの答えはまったく違います。
Pitch accent and rhythm depend on speaker and region, but that reading is the standard one to learn.
Why is 二つ used here instead of just 二?
What does の do in 二つの答え?
Why is は after 答え?
Why does the sentence end with 違います?
Japanese sentences usually end with the main predicate, and that often comes at the end.
In this sentence, 違います is the main predicate. It expresses the idea of differ / be different.
So the structure is:
- topic: 二つの答えは
- predicate: まったく違います
That is very normal Japanese word order.
What exactly does まったく mean here?
Here, まったく means completely, entirely, or totally.
So:
- まったく違います = are completely different
A useful thing to know is that まったく is also very common with negatives:
- まったく分かりません = I do not understand at all
So depending on the sentence, まったく can mean either:
- completely / totally
- not at all when used with a negative form
Is 違います a polite form?
Yes. 違います is the polite present form.
The plain form is:
- 違う = to differ / to be different
Polite form:
- 違います
Past forms:
- 違った = was different
- 違いました = was different (polite)
- 違わない = is not different / is not wrong depending on context
- 違いません = polite negative
Is 違う a verb or an adjective? It feels like different in English.
In Japanese, 違う is a verb, not an adjective.
That is why Japanese says something closer to:
- The two answers differ completely
rather than literally using an adjective like English different.
This is very common in Japanese: sometimes an idea that is an adjective in English is expressed with a verb in Japanese.
Could this sentence use が instead of は?
Yes, 二つの答えがまったく違います is possible, but the nuance changes.
Very roughly:
- は = marks the topic; more neutral or contrastive depending on context
- が = marks the subject more directly; can feel more like identifying what is different
Compare:
二つの答えはまったく違います。
As for the two answers, they are completely different.二つの答えがまったく違います。
It is the two answers that are completely different.
In many situations, は is the more natural choice if you are just talking about those answers as the topic.
Why doesn’t Japanese say something like answers are different from each other more explicitly?
Japanese often leaves things understood from context.
In English, we might say:
- The two answers are completely different from each other.
In Japanese, 二つの答えはまったく違います already naturally implies that the two answers differ from one another. You do not need to spell that out.
If you wanted to be more explicit, you could say something like:
- 二つの答えはお互いに違います。
But in this case, that would usually sound less natural than the original sentence.
Are the spaces normal in this sentence?
No. Normal Japanese writing does not use spaces between words.
So the standard written sentence is:
二つの答えはまったく違います。
Spaces are often added only in textbooks, beginner materials, or dictionaries to make the structure easier to see.
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