ってAs for, Speaking of, Casual は (Sentence topic marker)

Most Recent Replies (6 in total)

• 

  IcyIceBear

  スマホって 高くないですか？
  Smartphones, are they not expensive?/aren’t they expensive?
  (Almost in a rhetorical way, like speaker already knows or suspects they are indeed expensive )

  スマホって 高いですか？
  Smartphones, are they expensive?
  (Sounds like they genuinely don’t have any clue whether they are cheap or not)

  I would expand but it’s 2 am and I’m tired lmao hope this helps so last a little bit

• 

  Isurandil492

  I see, the question tag carries the negative form, so it’s just that the translation is a bit loose. Question answered, thank you very much.

• 

  Alloran

  You can use スマホって高くなくない？ to mean “Aren’t smartphones inexpensive?” ない with rising intonation is often used, without a particle, in casual speech merely to indicate a question (and is overwhelmingly the commonest pattern for invitations). Also 高くないじゃない？

  With a touch more distance, スマホって高くなくないですか?

  You can also nominalize the relative clause with の or, more casually, ん:

  スマホが高くないんじゃない？This is like “Isn’t it that…” and would be very likely if e.g. their cheapness was the cause of something you were just talking about.