Grammar Info

N5 Lesson 7: 1/13

だけOnly, Just

Structure

Verb + だけ
[い]Adjective + だけ
[な]Adjective + + だけ
Noun + だけ

Details

  • Particle

  • Adverbial Particle

  • Standard

About だけ

だけ is used in Japanese in a similar way to 'only' or 'just' in English. The basic meaning of this word is that 'while there are/were several possibilities, only (A) is true/was chosen'. だけ is used by attaching it to the base (dictionary) form of any word, except for な-Adjectives, which require when being used adjectivally.

Due to な-Adjectives being able to be used as either a noun or an adjective, the meaning of a sentence will be different depending on whether だけ is used with the noun form, or the adjective form.

Basically this difference just highlights whether something is being discussed in a measurable way (an adjective), or an immeasurable way (a noun).

Synonyms


Antonyms



Examples

--:--

  • 一人(ひとり)だけです

    Only one person.

  • それだけです

    Only that.

  • サッカーだけ()

    I only like soccer.

  • (わたし)だけ()きます

    Only I am going.

  • その映画(えいが)(なが)だけ

    That movie is just long.

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          Page 93

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          Page 244

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      だけ – Grammar Discussion

      Most Recent Replies (22 in total)

      • wlan8051

        wlan8051

        Is the structure ~たいだけ a separate grammar point? See example:

        お父さんは出張で疲れているだろうから、ねたいだけねさせてあげよ。

        I understand that it translates to “… let him sleep as much as he wants”. Is this usage explained somewhere on Bunpro? I could not find it.

      • John-Bunpro

        John-Bunpro

        Welcome back to the forums!
        You raise an interesting question that actually gets to the heart of what だけ really means in Japanese.

        It’s typically translated/glossed as ‘only’ or ‘just’, but the fundamental idea of だけ is that it’s indicating an extent.

        For example, if you take this sentence from the writeup on だけ:
        日本語勉強するのは、月曜日だけです。
        I study Japanese only on Mondays.

        Basically, what it’s saying is ‘the extent of when I study Japanese is on Mondays’.
        In these terms, the だけ of 寝たいだけ isn’t doing anything significantly different. 寝たいだけ寝る means ‘to sleep to the extent that one wants to sleep’, which would be equiavalent to ‘as much as one wants’.

        So it’s less that ~たいだけ is functioning in a completely different way, and more that the ‘extent’ nuance of だけ shifts a bit depending on what’s around it.

        I do agree that this isn’t really covered at the moment in the grammar writeup for だけ. ...

      • wlan8051

        wlan8051

        @John-Bunpro your explanation makes a lot of sense, thank you for sharing.

        However, in my head if I try to understand だけ as “to the extent of …” its meaning will sometimes overlap with ほど、ぐらい or まで. Maybe in some use cases, they are interchangeable but I guess in most of them they are not. I will need to depend on the amazing explanations from the Bunpro staff to clarify those differences

        Good to hear that Bunpro is still evolving, your work is much appreciated.

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