Ukeru · real Japanese from comedy
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Questions without か: の？, っけ, でしょ？ and a rising voice

Casual Japanese questions usually drop か. Learn how の？ asks for an explanation, how っけ checks your memory, and how でしょ？ asks for agreement.

Ukeru notes · counts are from the current library (1,905 routines, 174,812 machine-transcribed lines) and update as it grows

Where did go?

Textbooks teach one simple rule: add to the end of a sentence and it becomes a question. means "Are you going?" and means "Are you a student?" The rule is correct, but it describes polite speech. Among friends, family, and comedy partners, most questions have no at all. They end in , or , or they are plain statements said with a rising voice.

The counts below come from machine-made transcripts of the 1,905 routines in our library, so treat them as rough guides rather than exact figures.

is alive, but mostly polite

has not disappeared. In our library, lines ending in appear on 2,373 lines. Many of those are polite questions: , , or the clipped junior-style (see ). In speech, is most at home after and .

after a plain form is a different story. or sounds blunt, and in everyday speech it is traditionally associated with a rougher, more masculine style. Plain with a falling voice often has a different job altogether. It can be a suggestion (, "shall we head home"), or someone talking to themselves (, "I see").

A rising voice is enough

The simplest casual question is a plain statement with the pitch going up at the end:

The words are identical to the statement. Only the intonation tells you it is a question. One trap: you cannot keep in a rising question. is not natural, so drop the and say just

Short reactions work the same way. ("What's that?!") has no particle at all, and it is a classic line a comedian fires at a partner's strange idea. See .

: "what's the story?"

One of the most common replacements for is . Lines ending in appear on 2,458 lines in our library, from 224 of the 283 comedians. That is about as many lines as end in , roughly 1 to 1.

is the casual form of . Like , it does more than ask yes or no. It asks for an explanation of the situation in front of you:

After a noun or a -adjective, insert : ("It's a café?"), ("You like it?").

Because asks "what's going on here?", it suits the reactions of a straight man to a partner's nonsense. A at the front turns it into a challenge: ("Why on earth would you…?"). Combine it with the contractions from our note on casual contractions and you get , which ranges from a friendly "what are you up to?" to a sharp "what are you doing?!" depending on the tone. See .

The rough version is . Aimed at someone instead of , it can sound pushy or confrontational.

: "…again?"

is what you add when you know you once knew something but can't remember it now. It most often appears as or as after a past form. With a plain present verb, use () rather than adding directly:

The last example is often muttered to yourself rather than asked. In comedy, shows up when a character fakes a memory lapse or checks a detail that doesn't add up. It also has a polite form, or , which works with coworkers: ("Sorry, what was your name again?").

We won't give a count for here. In the transcripts, the same letters also appear in ("cool"), ("pricey") and ("put on top"), so the raw number overstates it. Browse lines with and instead. More on .

Audience laughter in this scene0:11
Dacquoise · College Starts Today

One person learns that a friend failed the college entrance exam, yet the friend is here anyway.

The words appear when the audience laughs.

Wait, is that allowed again?

Textbookそれでいいのでしたか？「いいのでしたか」 becomes 「いいんだっけ」: 「の」 shrinks to 「ん」, 「でした」 turns plain 「だ」, and 「っけ」 checks a half-remembered rule.

Speed: fast
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: "right?"

is the shortened . Textbooks teach as "probably", but in casual questions it does something else. With a rising voice, it asks the listener to agree with something the speaker already believes:

In our library, appears on 314 lines from 113 comedians.

With a falling or pressing tone, the same stops being a question and becomes "See? I told you" or "Obviously!": ("That's wrong, obviously!"). It also appears in ("No way!"; see ／). The rougher partner of is , which sounds blunter and is common in comebacks; see .

Audience laughter in this scene0:19
Sonmin Daihyo Minamikawa · The Recorder

Someone explains why they won't switch to an electronic wind instrument, then complains about tax increases.

Culture note Japan's consumption tax has been raised several times, and people often complain about it.

The words appear when the audience laughs.

These days, Do through Fa is all tax, right?

Textbook今はドからファまで税金でしょう？「でしょう」 clips to 「でしょ」, presenting a fact the listener should already know: 'it's all tax now, right?'

Speed: fast
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Using them yourself

For more on what happens at the end of a line, see our note on , , and friends.

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