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I came across a task in which I had to complete different sentences by putting correct case indicators. Everything seemed to be fine until I reached a sentence which made me think a lot about what case indicator to put. So, the sentence is this:

私の答えは山口さんの答え (case indicator) ちがいます。

At first I thought that と would be a good option because I saw this sentence "私とちがう考えの人はいませんか". I'm not sure whether this is actually related to my situation but it seemed to be a good enough. I also was considering ほど to be put there but since it only can be used with a negative form of predicate, this is not the option I need. Now I think that it's が but am not sure.

P.S. I'm having zero problems with comparative constructions that use より, の方, etc. so far, but the one I mentioned above makes me ask a lot of questions.

P.S.S. I also would like to know what case indicators work with this verb and their meaning.

Tawahachee
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  • By the way, ほど doesn't indicate case, and neither does は. –  Jan 23 '19 at 19:58
  • I may confuse some things or name them in an unproper way because of lack of knowledge of the terminology.

    ほど doesn't, right. It's functional word. But は、が、の、へ、より、で, etc. do. Probably those have different names in English but I'm using Russian sources for learning Japanese, and in Russian those are called cases (genitive, nominative...)

     – Tawahachee Jan 24 '19 at 00:10
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    Most of those are cases, but it’s incorrect to refer to は as a case marker. It differs grammatically, so if your book says that then it’s wrong, regardless of which language it’s written in. –  Jan 24 '19 at 07:57
  • I agree that it differs grammatically, but at this point it is called a case because its use is pretty limited as for now (or author just didn't want to talk about all its functions at once because it might confuse beginners). Anyways, I understand that は is not always the case, and may serve as some different things. – Tawahachee Jan 24 '19 at 14:14
  • Related or duplicate: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/12515/9831 – chocolate Jan 24 '19 at 14:43

1 Answers1

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I also asked for help on another language exchange forum and was told that the sentence "私の答えは山口さんの答え (case indicator) ちがいます。" has to have と in it. That being said, if I need to say that "A is different from B", I use the verb 違{ちが}う with case indicator と.

Here are some speech patterns:

1) AはB「と」ちがう。- A is different from B - この犬はあの犬と違う。

2) AとB「は」ちがう。- A and B are different - 犬と猫は違う。

Tawahachee
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    You can think of this type of と as a "comparison target marker". See: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/57077/5010 – naruto Jan 24 '19 at 02:56