# 아니던가? vs 아니에요? nuance



## 82riceballs

Hi all! I'm trying to understand the nuance of ~던가... I heard it in the following conversation:

Two Koreans are talking about how difficult it is to find Korean food abroad. One says to the other, 
*"한국 음식이 그리울 때, 가장 찾기 쉬우면서도 진짜 진짜 맛있는 것을 찾기 어려운 게 김치 아니던가요?"
*
1. How does this sound different from the following? Is there anyway to capture this nuance in English?
*"한국 음식이 그리울 때, 가장 찾기 쉬우면서도 진짜 진짜 맛있는 것을 찾기 어려운 게 김치 아니에요?"*

2. Are the following sentences (my own tries) correct? [If there are more natural-sounding ways to say it, please do tell me]
a) 대학생활에서 제일 좋았던 건/(보람이 있었던 건?) 공부가 아니라 동아리 아니던가요?
"Don't you think the best thing about college was the clubs and not the academics?" [Two recent graduates reminiscing college]
b) 해리포터 시리즈에서 제일 좋았던 건 해라가 결혼한 게 아니던가요?
"Wasn't the best part of the Harry Potter Series when Harry got married?"

Some notes below:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I learned from here that there are multiple ways to use 던가, and I'm assuming it's the first one:
 
1) it's used when you ask someone about his or her past experience. 
(usually uttered by higher or older person to lower and younger person)
영화 재미있던가? 
Was the movie interesting? 

2) a rhetorical question, not really asking for an answer. 
우리가 그동안 얼마나 지구를 더럽혀왔던가? 
How (much) have we polluted the Earth? 

3) when you talk to yourself, refering to what happened in the past. 
내가 그런 말을 했던가? 
Did I say that? (I don't remember or I shouldn't have said that) 

4) when you mention your rough guess or bits of thought. 
어젯 밤에 비가 왔던가 보다 
It seems that it rained last night.


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## Rance

I found a comprehensive chart for conjugating verb 아니다.
Sadly it's in French and I could not find one in English.
I don't know much about French, but based on my personal experience in Roman languages(and examples are in Korean), let me try to deduce the terms into English.
I might be little off, so if anyone finds any error, please correct me.

Registre formel = Formal expression
Registre informel = Informal expression
Non poli = without honorific
poli = with honorific

Non passé = not past, I guess it means present tense
passé = past tense
Indicatif = Indicative
Évidentiel = Evidentiality (for details ,check out wiki)
Spéculatif = Speculative
Assertif = Assertive

Déclaratif = declarative
Interrogatif = interrogative
Aperceptif = perceptive
Euphémique = euphemistic

I highly doubt above are the official English linguistic terms, but it should give general idea for most people what these categories are.

Anyhow going back to original question.

*1)*
If we look at the meaning of -더냐, original form of -던가요,

*-더냐* 
 			 				 					 						 [어미] 						 						 						 						 							 							 							 							해라할 자리에 쓰여, 과거에 직접 경험하여 새로이 알게 된 사실에 대한 물음을 나타내는 종결 어미.


Also as you can see from the chart, they are all the same except that one is indicative while other one is evidential.
The implication is that if you use ~아니던가요 you have evidence(this would be personal experience in most case,) about the statement (한국 음식이 그리울 때, 가장 찾기 쉬우면서도 진짜 진짜 맛있는 것을 찾기 어려운게 김치다 ).
So if you use ~아니에요, it means you just consider the statement as a fact but no evidence/personal experience to back it up. You are simply asking whether this statement is true or false.
While if you use ~아니던가요, you have personal experience and are requesting implicitly for an agreement to your statement.
To simply put, ~아니에요 is impartial interrogative expression while ~아니던가요 is partial interrogative expression.
(But obviously voice tone, sometimes facial expression, can alter the meaning in real conversation.)

*2)*
They all sound fine.

*3)* About your notes.

I had to think little more whether -더냐 refers to speaker's experience and/or listener's experience.
By which I mean, 
Case A) Is the question simply asking whether listener has such experience to back up the statement?
Case B) The statement is backed up by speaker's experience and the question is asking for agreement from listener's own experience?

I think original example is Case B.
It might be easier if I come up with another example.

영화 재미있던가요? 
Implications are:
- Speaker hasn't seen the movie.
- Listener has seen it.
- Speaker wants to know whether movie was worth watching.
Here it is case A(which corresponds to Case 1 from your note).

If we twist previous example into negation:
영화 재미있지 않던가요?
Implication are:
- Listener have seen the movie.
- Speaker has good opinion/expectation about the movie(He may have seen it or heard good reviews)
(영화 재미있지 않던가요? 전 재밌게 봤는데 or 영화 재미있지 않던가요? 다들 재밌다고 그러던데)
Here it's Case B and doesn't belong to any of four categories.

I think it's also similar if you ask in English.
_Did you find movie good?_ vs _Didn't you find movie good?_
When question is in negative form, meaning sometimes changes slightly.
Hence 아니던가요 may not perfectly fit into those categories.


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## 82riceballs

Perfectly clear now! And thank you for always providing a dictionary entry as well. It's always hard to find dictionary entries in Korean!


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## Rance

Just realized the link for the chart is missing. 
Here's the address...
http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Annexe:Conjugaison_en_coréen/아니다


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## dhchong

82riceballs! 

"아니던가요?" and  "아니에요?" have the same meaning. It means "isn't it"  in "A is B, isn't it?", maybe you already know. 

It is more polite way to say "아니던가요?" than "아니에요?"


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## 82riceballs

Thanks!!


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