中々(なかなか)Very, Quite, Considerably

Most Recent Replies (5 in total)

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  Ambo100

  The reference to the AIAIJ resource only describes the negative use of the grammar (なかなか~ない) meaning ‘not easily’ so I think it should be moved here instead.

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  hungryghost

  The “fun fact” section describes this word as having a nuance of “bulls-eye example” or “middle example” originally deriving from the kanji 中, meaning “middle”:

  Coming from the kanji 中（）, meaning ‘middle’, なかなか highlights that something is ‘a prime example of (A)’, or ‘far more (A) than expected’. If we imagine a dartboard, where the whole board shows the intensity level of a specific word, and なかなか represents the bullseye, this is basically the nuance. ‘(A) is the middle (bullseye) example of (B)’.

  I wasn’t able to find this nuance in my dictionary (旺文社国語辞典 第十一版) however and the etymology seems to be different:

  🈩 （副）
  ｟中心義－かなりの程度に事が進んでいる意を表す｠
  ① ずいぶん。かなり。相当に。「―上手だ」
  ② 容易には。とうてい。「―うまくできない」
  ③ ｟古｠なまじっか。
  ④ ｟古｠かえって。むしろ。
  🈔 （形動ナリ）｟古｠
  ① 中途はんぱなさま。どっちつかずだ。
  ② なまじ…しても無益だ。ばからしい。
  🈪 （感）｟古｠
  謡曲・狂言などで、相手の言葉を肯定する語。はい。いかにも。そのとおり。
  ㊀②はあとに打ち消しの語を伴う。
  【変遷】...

• 

  Asher

  Hi there, and thanks for getting in touch!

  Sorry for the confusion with the fun fact. Our goal was just to mention that it comes from the kanji 中, being that it is frequently written in hiragana. We try not to include any etymological information in the beginner level writeups.

  I can see how the way it was written would make it seem like we were talking about the “far more (A) than expected” section in a way that made them seem related to the previous “coming from …” clause.

  As the primary nuance that this particular point expresses is high intensity “ずいぶん。かなり。相当に。「―上手だ」” (either positive or negative), that is why the ‘middle’ example was given (with the bulls-eye indicating the highest level of intensity). As a ruler doesn’t imply any kind of ‘middle’, that is why we didn’t originally go with that type of explanation. Upon reflection though, we can definitely see how the dart-board analogy may also be a bit confusing, so will change it a spectrum analogy that i...