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I lived in Japan for two years, and studied the language, and it was amazing how that sentence always brought any discussion to a conclusion. Grammatically, it
by impendia 11y ago
I lived in Japan for two years, and studied the language, and it was amazing how that sentence always brought any discussion to a conclusion.
Grammatically, its negation would be "Shikata ga aru", but I never heard this said once.
- sliverstorm 11y agoSounds like it's a thought-terminating cliche- of which we have many in English.
- kazinator 11y agoMaybe that negation would be too obviously related to the idiom. There are other ways to say there is a way; e.g. instead of shikata, there is houhou： 方法 （方法がある）. The counter-idiom, if you will, to "nothing can be done" might be "where there is a will, there is a way": 意志のあるところには方法がある。 If someone says しょうがない or しかたがない, and you don't agree, that might be the thing.
- sdrothrock 11y ago> The counter-idiom, if you will, to "nothing can be done" might be "where there is a will, there is a way": I've always thought of the counter-idiom as being やればできる (yareba dekiru) -- "you can do it if you try."