Noteworthy Experience

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Japanese has a sentence construction indicating noteworthy experience. It's most often used in questions. Examples:

saburinasanhate-burunouedeodorukotogaarimasuka. "Sabrina, have you ever danced on top of a table?" Dancing on tables is a noteworthy experience, not a normal event, so the sentence construction VERBkotogaaru is used.

inuwotaberukotogaarimasuka. "Have you ever eaten dog?" Japanese, unlike Koreans, do not eat cats or dogs, so this is an even more unusual experience than dancing on tables.

The auxiliary verb is always aru (in its "ownership" sense - the person owns his or her experiences), and even though the enquiry is about past events it's in the present tense.


The ndesu pattern is also used, colloquially, to express surprise, and is another pattern which can be used when talking about noteworthy (specifically, surprising or unusual) experiences.


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