Is it FURI SOO NI NAI 'it does not look like it's going to rain' or FURANASA SOO DA 'it looks like it's not going to rain'? :

A Report on a Gap between Japanese Learners' Knowledge and Textbooks' Treatment of the Negative Expressions of soo da 'it looks like'

Abstract

Soo da 'it looks like' is known to have many negative expressions. Although Japanese textbooks list soo de wa nai and soo ni (/mo) nai as its negative forms, it is also common among native speakers to use soo da with the negative form of a verb as in furana(sa) soo da. Through a questionnaire survey, this study investigated how learners of Japanese understand these different negative expressions of soo da. The result has shown that their understanding of na(sa) soo da is generally higher than that of soo de wa nai and soo ni (/mo) nai, implying a gap between the content of textbooks and learners' actual knowledge.