Quote:
Originally Posted by Barone1551
I have been wondering lately what the difference is between じゃありません and ではありません。 I have always used ではありません, I had never even heard じゃありません until recently. I had been wondering this, and decided to make a topic about it becuase I recently saw another thread about a different topic, address this question.
I did search for a topic like this one and couldnt find anything. I may not have searched the correct combination of words. Sorry if this has been answered.
So I guess my question is. Which is better? Does one sound more natural? Is one more formal?
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I'll keep my answer brief as I've done this same question a few times in the last several months.
If you've always used ではありません, that's great. Keep using only that one.
じゃありません is so often used by Japanese-learners, and we native speakers will even understand what it must mean. Do we say it ourselves? The answer is mostly negative. Some may say it occasionally, but if you write じゃありません in a compo for school, you will be corrected 100% of the time.
Educated Japanese-speakers couldn't stand the funny-sounding imbalance between the sloppy, colloquial じゃ and the fairly formal ありません.
ではありません is just perfect and natural balance-wise, which in turn means that if you change one part of it, you'd better change the other part as well. You can't mix a formality and sloppiness in a short phrase like this in any language, I would say.
If you must use じゃ, you could say じゃない、じゃないの、じゃないんだ, etc. In fact, じゃ is so informal that a dialectal phrase often follows it.
じゃないじゃん
じゃねーな
じゃねーよ
All of these mean ではありません in texbook Japanese. These are the factors that make じゃありません sound unnatural. It's just the wrong and forced combo of words.