Tae Kim’s Blog

「それどころじゃない」 is one of those strange phrases whose meaning isn’t obvious by the words themselves. I guess those things are called idioms, a word that looks suspiciously similar to “idiot” as in “only an idiot wouldn’t know what it meant”. Well excuse me but we’re not all native speakers, you know.

In any case, I thought of this expression when I contemplated updating my blog. My life is rather hectic right now so updating my blog is the least of my concerns. So here I am, in the ultimate of ironies, updating my blog to talk about a phrase that perfectly expresses how I can’t update my blog.

You: 最近、ブログを更新してないね。
Me: それどころじゃないんだよ！

However, I will post all your submissions for September’s Blog Matsuri sometime near the end of this week. There’s still time to write and submit something to me! Just email me at taekim.japanese AT gmail.com

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost 3 years so I decided it’s high time to get it out the door finally.

「逆に」（ぎゃくに） is one of those expressions that is used all the time. Even if you decide to stop reading the rest of this post because you hate me for being so cool, you’re probably going to pick it up somewhere along your studies.

「逆」 by itself means, the “reverse” or “opposite”, and is a pretty useful word by itself as you can imagine. It is used as a noun as shown in the following (admittedly cheesy) dialogue.

田中）　明日、レポートをちゃんと提出するんだな？
みき）　あっ、はい！
田中）　あんまり仕事をサボるんじゃないよ。
みき）　はい！わかりました！
Aさん)　田中さんは、なんでいつもみきちゃんに厳しいのかな？みきちゃんのことが気に入らないとか？
Bさん) その逆だと思います。

Loose translation:
Tanaka) Going to submit your report tomorrow, right?
Miki) Um, yes!
Tanaka) Don’t slack off too much.
Miki) Yes! Understood!
A-san) I wonder why Tanaka-san is always hard on Miki-chan? Maybe he doesn’t like her or something?
B-san) I think it’s that exact opposite.

It’s slang, it’s not supposed to make sense!

While that’s all fine and dandy, you wouldn’t think adding 「に」 and making it an adverb would be a very useful construction. I mean, how often do you say “oppositely” in English? But in Japanese slang, it doesn’t have to mean what it actually means!

みき)　このレポートのせいで、今晩のデートはだめになっちゃったよ。
Aさん)　逆にいいんじゃない？彼氏と別れたいって言ってたでしょ？
みき）　それはそうなんだけど、残業よりましよ。

Loose translation:
Miki) Thanks to this report, my date tonight is ruined.
A-san) Isn’t it oppositely good? You were saying you wanted to break up with your boyfriend, right?
Miki) That is true but it’s better than doing overtime.

As you can see from my crappy translation, 「逆に」 doesn’t have to be the direct opposite of anything in particular, really. It can be used to describe a result that might run counter to what you would normally expect. It can also be used to turn the tables around on someone (much like the title of this post).

彼女に振られたと聞いて、慰めようとしたら、逆に怒られちゃったよ。

I heard he got dumped by his girlfriend and when I tried to cheer him up, he oppositely got mad at me.

In fact, one very popular slang is 逆ギレ, which is when someone who is in the wrong turns around and gets angry at the person who confronted him or her.

Aさん）　遅いよ。もう３０分も待ってたよ。
Bさん）　電車が止まってたから、しょうがないだろう！！
Aさん)　・・・（逆ギレかよ）

The 「日本語俗語辞書」, which I talked about in my last post has additional similar slang such as 逆ナン and 逆セクハラ but I’ll let you figure those out for yourselves. I’ve done enough damage already, I think.

This is a question I hear often and one that I had myself at one point.

What is the difference between the potential form and 「～ことができる」？

As you know, the potential form is a relative straight-forward verb conjugation indicating that one is able to do that verb. The only strange exception is 「する」 which becomes 「できる」, a completely different verb to indicate “one is able to do”.

The situation gets a little bit murkier when you normalize a verb with a generic event 「こと」 and use 「できる」 instead of just using the potential form. Ultimately, it seems like there’s two methods of expressing the potential. (Don’t complain, Chinese has… oh I don’t even know how many.)

The natural question for any learner of Japanese would be, “What’s the difference and when do I use one instead of the other?” Indeed, an excellent question! What’s even more confusing is when the original verb is 「する」 therefore becoming 「することができる」. Hey, isn’t that redundant??

It’s longer

The first and easy answer is, the 「～ことができる」 version is longer. Ha ha, aren’t you glad I’m here to clear everything up for you? Seriously though, the fact that you have another particle in there allows a lot more flexibility. Nobody says you have to use 「が」, that’s just a sentence pattern simplification.

Saburooさん, author of the 現代日本語文法概説, has some very excellent examples.

読むことしかできない - Can only read it.
読めしかしない - ????

Semantic Differences

Besides the obvious grammatical differences, what the original question is really asking is whether there’s any differences in meaning and usage. I would say the differences in nuance is so subtle, it’s debatable whether discussing them would even help learners of Japanese. The short answer is they are pretty much interchangeable and you can stop reading here.

For the rest of you who like to torture yourselves like me, let’s think about it for a second. 「～ことができる」 uses a generic event 「こと」 and a generic verb 「できる」 to say that the event is able to be done. Doesn’t it sound a bit… generic? In fact, I think using 「～ことができる」 makes it sound more like a general statement about feasibility.

電車で行けますか？ - Can you go by train?
電車で行くことができますか？ - Is it possible to go by train?

You can take this idea further to talk about general rules and policies.

タバコを吸うことはできますか？ - Is smoking allowed (for anybody)?
タバコを吸ってもいいですか？- Is it ok to smoke? (I want to smoke.)
タバコは、吸えますか？ - Able to smoke? (Are you asking if I can smoke? Otherwise, why are you asking me if you can smoke?)

In a similar vein, you can see examples of when you might want to use 「することができる」. It can sound a bit more formal since it addresses a larger audience than you personally. In fact, companies might decide to substitute even more former-sounding words such as 「可能」 in the place of 「できる」. You can’t do this with the regular potential form.

インターネットで登録することができます。- It is possible to register on the internet.
インターネットで登録することが可能です。- It is possible to register on the internet.
インターネットで登録できます。- You can register on the internet.

Conclusion

This is an example where not worrying about every little detail and just getting a lot of input might be the better approach. However, I think it is worth the time to examine what words are being used and what they mean by themselves (in this case 「こと」 and 「できる」).

I hope this short explanation can at least give you a general idea of the slight difference between the potential form and 「～ことができる」. As I mentioned, they are very similar and often interchangeable. My final suggestion is to keep things as simple as possible. For instance, don’t say 「することができる」 if you can help it. Why make things more complex than they need to be?

I was just working on an article (one of my 80 drafts) about the difference between the potential form and 「ことができる」 when an amazing insight hit me! I didn’t want to clutter up that article so I decided to write about it separately in this post.

I was discussing the potential form and how only 「する」 had this curious exception of using a completely different verb: 「できる」. While I never thought much about it these many years, with some Chinese under my belt now, I suddenty realized that “出来” was also used in Chinese to indicate potential!

In Chinese, “出来” means to “come out” and you can see various examples of this here.

叫全家人都出来, 我好给他们拍照。
Ask the whole family to come out so that I can take their photograph.

You may be wondering what this has to do with 「出来る」 but what the dictionary doesn’t tell you is that this “出来” is often combined with a verb to indicate that the verb is able to be performed. For example, “听得出来” means “able to hear”, basically the same definition as 「聞こえる」 in Japanese. The listening is coming out, therefore you can hear it. I guess it does kind of make sense, in a weird Chinese sort of way.

I harvested the following example from Google since my Chinese is not too good. So I hope I’m not making any mistakes here in the translation.

你能听得出来什么歌吗?
Can you hear what song it is?

Some of you may be wondering why there a “能” in there as well which seems redundant. Yeah well, sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. (See, I told you I wasn’t very good at this.)

Chinese grammar (if indeed, there is such a thing) doesn’t seem very consistent but my guess is when you have a subject (in this case 你), you need 能 to act as the verb. The 得 (which is kind of like の but only for verbs) kind of rendered 听 a description rather than a traditional verb, hence the need for 能.

So things are a bit different for the negative case because you use 不 and don’t need 得. Here’s another similar example I pulled from Google.

你听不出来我是谁吗?
Can’t you hear who I am?

Please feel free to correct me on any of this as I’m pulling these explanations out of my ass as I’m writing it.

Chinesepod has a great podcast discussing “不出来” and “得出来” so I encourage you to check it out. You can also find many additional podcasts with dialogues using “出来” by using the search box. Sorry, I can’t give you a direct link to the search results since it seems to POST and not GET. (John, this is a tiny suggestion for you.)

Conclusion

Anyway, I hope you can see how “出来” means more than just “come out” and is used to express potential as well. So the fact that Japanese uses a verb with the exact same kanji for a similar purpose seems a bit too much for mere coincidence. Could 「出来る」 be some kind of weird Japanized version of “出来”, originally derived from Chinese? Sounds like a good topic for a research paper. All I can say is it’s mighty suspicious that only 「する」 has this weird exception of becoming 「出来る」 unlike every other verb in the whole Japanese language.

Update

Kim pointed out something that I completely forgot about. Another odd potential exception is 「あり得る」 from 「ある」. Is the use of the kanji 「得」 here just another coincidence? The suspicion is growing…

「中」 is one of those essential kanji that anybody who knows any kanji will more than likely already know. Beginners will probably learn it first as 「なか」 and in compounds such as 「中国」. However, in this intermediate post, I’d like to discuss two other usages that I’ve had to figure out on my own. Now you don’t have to.

Using 「ちゅう」 instead of 「～している」

「中」 can be attached to a noun, in order to indicate that the noun is currently taking place. This essentially takes the place of 「している」 and means pretty much the same thing. In this usage, 「中」 is always read as 「ちゅう」. This may be obvious but the noun must be an actionable item such as “search” or “investigate”. Basically, it’s any noun that can be followed by 「する」 such as 「仕事」 or 「勉強」. You can’t say for example 「体中」（からだちゅう） because 「体する」 or “doing body” makes no sense.

検索中 - searching
勉強中 - studying
考え中 - thinking

「考え中」 is an interesting example because it is a noun that came originally from a verb. But this is not commonly done universally. For example, nobody really says 「思い中」 or 「売り中」. I would consider 「考え中」 as an expression of it’s own.

１) 今考え中だから、ちょっと静かにしてくんない？ - I’m thinking now so can you be a little quiet?

This usage of 「中」 is simply a more concise way to say [noun]をしている. You will often see it used as simple status updates such as computer wait screens (or my current Twitter status).

Using 「じゅう」 as throughout or all over

Another usage is to attach 「中」 to a noun to talk about the noun throughout or all over. In this usage, the reading is 「じゅう」 and you can tell the difference from the previous usage because the noun is not actionable. Instead, the noun must have some kind of length whether physical or in time. Unlike the previous example, 「体中」（からだじゅう） is a perfectly correct example. In this case, it means “all over the body” and not “doing body”.

１） 事故のせいで、体中が傷だらけだ。 - Due to fault of the accident, body is full of injuries all over.

Another common usage is with periods of time such as 「今日」 or 「一日中」 to indicate throughout the entire time period. One interesting thing to note is that 「今日中」 means “within today” while 「一日中」 means “the whole day”.

１） 今日中にやらなければならない。- I have to do it by today.
２） 一日中やっても終わらない。 - Won’t end even if you do it all day.
３） 一晩中カラオケで遊んでいた。 - Was playing all night at Karaoke.

Overall, this usage tend to be more established expressions so I wouldn’t arbitrarily attach it to time spans without seeing some usage samples. But at least now you’ll know how to read it properly and know what it means should you encounter it.

In every language, there’s a common pattern of the most useful words being the most complicated and confusing. This is a natural consequence from the fact that the word must cover many different types of usages and meanings in order to be so useful. Due to its usefulness, it will also often go through various types of abbreviations and shortcuts to facilitate speaking, further complicating the issue. This post will cover what could arguably be the most useful and hence the most intricate word in Japanese: 「いい」. We’ll see that this word is much more expansive in scope and usage than the English equivalent word “good”. Just learning the definition is barely scratching the surface of this useful word.

Briefly on Conjugation

I’ll assume that most readers are already familiar with many of the discrepancies in the conjugation rules for 「いい」 and so I’ll just briefly mention that the discrepancies are all caused by the change from 「よい」 to 「いい」. This word is so useful and so often used that even the slight pursing of the lips to pronounce 「よ」 seemed to tax Japanese speakers and was eventually changed to 「いい」. The newer version has the added convenience of removing one pronunciation completely and replacing it with a single longer pronunciation of 「い」. The older version is now considered formal and old-fashioned. Unfortunately, many of the conjugated forms such as the negative （よくない） failed to transition over to the new pronunciation hence creating a number of discrepancies which annoy Japanese beginners to this day.

To get the full scoop, check out my page on adjectives on my grammar guide. Now let’s look at the various ways this adjective can be used. You’ll also see how these patterns translate to very different things in English and yet is just a simple adjective with some grammar patterns in Japanese.

Using 「いい」 for permission

The usage of 「いい」 for asking and granting permission is just another example of the fundamental difference between Japanese and English, as well as, a great example of how vital it is to understand how 「いい」 is used in various grammatical patterns.

In English you use words like “can” or “may” to ask for permission, in Japanese the word 「できる」 is reserved only for the ability to do something, not on whether it’s permitted or not. (This is similar to the difference between 能/会 and 行 in Chinese.)

In Japanese, you ask for permission by asking literally, “Is it good even if I…”.　I’m sure many of you in Japanese class learned the phrase: 「トイレに行ってもいいですか？」 This literally means, “Is it good even if I go to the bathroom?” Your teacher may respond by saying either 「いいです」 or 「だめです」 (or the very formal 「いけません」). There’s a logical discrepancy here in that the positive answer is 「いい」 but the negative answer is not simply the negative: 「よくない」. This is because the 「てはいけない／てはならない／てはだめ」 grammar pattern set for saying you can’t do something is separate from the one that says you can do something.

However, while saying “can” versus “can’t” is not as easy in Japanese as saying 「いい」 versus 「よくない」, there is one very useful way to use negatives with the 「V～てもいい」 pattern. You can negate the verb in front to have 「～なくてもいい」. Let’s see how this translates literally for the example: 「行ってもいい」.

1. 行ってもいい。
- It’s good even if [you] go.

2. 行かなくてもいい。
- It’s good even if [you] don’t go.

Can you guess what the examples translates to in English? The first means, “You can go” while the second means “You don’t have to go”. Once again, you have two completely different grammar patterns in one language while the other is just the negative and positive version of the same grammar pattern. Except this time, it’s the other way around. This is another example of why it’s best to work in the target language as opposed to trying to tie everything into English.

Let’s look at the following example short conversation at a training seminar.

Aさん)　トイレに行ってもいいですか？
Bさん)　いいですよ。これは授業じゃないから、聞かなくてもいいですよ。
Aさん)　じゃ、戻らなくてもいいですか？
Bさん）　だめです。

This next dialog shows how slang can hide these grammar patterns but still have the same meaning. In the dialog, Aさん is not asking if the pen is a little good.

Aさん）　そのペン、ちょっといい？
Bさん）　だめ。俺、使っているよ？
Aさん）　いいから早く貸して。

Using 「いい」 for good result

There are many variations to this usage but the basic idea is to show a good result as a result of something. The most basic example of this usage is to make a suggestion.

例）　病院に行った方がいい。
- The side of going to hospital is good. (You should go to the hospital.)

例）　どこに行けばいいですか？
- If [I] go, where is good? (Where should I go?)

Notice the non-literal translation uses the same word “should” but as you can see, the word “should” has many meanings which are expressed differently in Japanese. The first is a general suggestion such as “you should see a doctor” or “you should get some more sleep” while the second is conditional on the situation such as “Which way should I go if I wanted to go to the mall?” or “Where should I write my name?”

You can also use the past tense to talk about what you did (relief) or should have done (wishful thinking).

例）　早く予約してよかった！
- [I] made reservation early and it was good! (Good thing I made the reservation earlier!)

例）　早く予約すればよかった！
- If [I] had made reservation early it would have been good! (I should have made the reservation earlier.)

Again, you really can’t directly translate English phrases like “Good thing I…” or “I should have…”, you have to use a grammar pattern and 「いい」 to express a similar thing.

Here’s another example conversation.

Aさん）　頭が痛い。
Bさん）　コンビにで薬を買った方がいいよ。
Aさん）　どこのコンビニに行けばいいの？
Bさん）　駅の近くにあると思う。
Aさん）　今日仕事休めばよかった。

Conclusion

In writing this article, I surprised even myself on all the various hidden but essential ways 「いい」 is used in the Japanese language. It can be expressed to indicated things you should do, things that are allowed, things you don’t have to do, and much more. I hope this article helped you realize the importance mastering the many uses of 「いい」 and why it’s better to approach it from Japanese instead of from English.

Am I missing any important usages here? Let me know in the comments!

Some things in Japanese just seem to lose their cool when translated into English.
I’m sure there are examples where the reverse is true but it’s much easier for me to come up with these examples.

Fighting words
「ぶっ倒してやる！」 (Cool) -> “I’m going to beat you!” (Not cool)

Technique/Spell/Summon Names
「螺旋丸！」 (Maybe Cool) -> “Spiraling Round [Thing]!” (Definitely not cool)

語尾 (technically 終助詞)
「くるぞ！」 (Brave) -> “They’re coming!” (Scared)

Expressions and Cultural Phrases
「がんばれ！」 (Uplifting) -> “Do your best!” (Dork)

Heavily Girly Style of Speech
「嫌だもん！」 (Pouty Cute) -> “I don’t like it!” (Complainy)

Finally, basically all of Death Note in English is just awkward.

みなさん、日本語で書かれている面白いブログ、ご存知ないですか？英語のブログをたくさん読んでますけど、日本語のブログは全然です。

人気ブログランキングがあるんですが、範囲が広すぎて、面白いブログを探すのがめんどくさいです。有名人のブログも人気あるようですが、個人的にはあまり好きじゃないし、私みたいな凡人よりもっと面白い人生を送っているようで、なんかムカつきます。

ちにまに、私が読んでいるブログは、この日本語教師のブログぐらいです。日本語に興味なくても、なかなか面白いですよ。

コメントで面白いブログをシェアーしましょう！

最後に．．．（もう遅いけど）

あけましておめでとうございます！

今年もよろしくお願いします。これからも、コメントをじゃんじゃん書いてね！

I love to write about parts of Japanese that are almost always left out of the standard Japanese language curriculum. This usually applies to vocabulary that can be considered “inappropriate” for the classroom. I also like to talk about topics where the explanation is usually glossed over or oversimplified because the concepts are too difficult to explain in English. I say “bah humbug!” to all that, which is why you can come here after class to get the full, unadulterated version.

So when I thought back to Japanese 101 and the time the teacher told us to only use the negative with 「あまり」 I thought, “Hey, wait a minute!” I now know that you can use 「あまり」 with the positive, the only difference is that you get the opposite meaning of the negative version. Makes perfect sense, right? Of course things aren’t actually that simple, so read on if you want to get the full scoop on 「あまり」.

Sorry, we’re all out of whatever it is you’re looking for

「あまり」 is a pseudo adverb/adjective version of the verb 「あまる」（余る）, which means for something to be left over. So, when you use 「あまり」 with the negative, you are essentially saying there is nothing left over. For example, 「あまりよくない」 literally means there is no “goodness” left over. Ok, so that doesn’t make much sense. A more natural definition would be the one we all learned in Japanese 101, “not very” or “not that much”. However, it is useful to know where 「あまり」 originally came from to see how the meaning changes if we don’t use the negative tense.

Those leftovers are excessive, man!

If the negative tense means there’s no leftovers, the opposite would obviously mean that there are leftovers. In other words, something is so excessive that there are leftovers you can’t deal with. As opposed to 「あまりよくない」、 「あまりにいい」 means that something is so good that the goodness is just overflowing with leftovers. For example, 「あまりにいい天気」 means “weather that is excessively good”. This is slightly different from 「天気がよすぎる」 meaning that the weather is too good, which has a negative connotation. 「あまりにいい天気」 just means that the weather is really, really good. It’s so good that the goodness is just overflowing and the leftover goodness is just strewn about all over the floor.

１） 天気があまりよくないので、散歩するのをやめた。
- The weather wasn’t very good so I quit going for a walk.

２） あまりにいい天気だったので、１時間も散歩をしました。
- The weather was so good that I took a walk for a whole hour.

You may have noticed the positive version uses the 「に」 target particle as in 「あまりにいい」. This is normal because you need to use the target particle in order to make adjectives into adverbs such as 「上手に」 or 「簡単に」. The irregularity instead comes from the lack of any particles for the negative case. I first described 「あまり」 as a pseudo adverb/adjective because you don’t need to use any particles when using it with the negative tense. It is very similar to 「同じ」, which also doesn’t require any particles to use as an adverb/adjective. Words like 「あまり」 and 「同じ」 are difficult to categorize for this reason. However, with 「あまり」, when you are using it for the non-negative tense, the normal rules apply and you do need attach the 「に」 particle in order to use it as an adverb.

A) 日本語はあまり難しいよ。
- Japanese is so difficult, you know. (grammatic error)

B) 日本語はあまりに難しい。
- Japanese is so difficult.

A) ほら、難しいでしょ！
- See, it is hard!

More fun with 「あまり」

Since we’re having so much fun, I thought I’d mention a couple other things related to 「あまり」. First, because the Japanese are always trying to come up with easier way to say things, we have the casual equivalents: 「あんまり」 and 「あんま」. I would say 「あんまり」 is used even more than 「あまり」 in conversational Japanese while 「あんま」 sounds a bit masculine due to it’s short length.

１） 時間があんまりないんだよね。
-Hmm… there’s not much time.

２） 時間があんまないんだよな。
-Hmm… there’s not much time.

As for using this slang for the non-negative case, while googling for 「あんまりに」 did yield a sizable number of results, 「あんまに」 didn’t turn up much so I suggest using 「あんま」 only for the negative tense.

Finally, 「余」, the kanji for 「あまり」 is also used in a some very useful words like 「余裕」 and 「余計」. 「余計」, in particular, is a word you’ll see all the time once you learn it. It’s very useful for when somebody says or does too much. Essentially, you can use it to tell people that it’s none of their business.

１） 余計なお世話だよ！
- None of your business! (lit: You’re unnecessarily taking care of me!)

２） 余計なことを言うんじゃいよ。
- Don’t say things that are none of your business. (lit: You don’t say unnecessary things, you know.)

Conclusion

As we have seen, there is a lot more to the word 「あまり」 than what is normally taught to beginning Japanese students. I suspect this is the case because 「あまり」 is most often used with the negative tense and covering any more would confuse the poor students. Apparently, Japanese students are very easily confused and should not be exposed to the scary parts of the language so that they can stay in their safe and comfortable cocoon of polite, “proper” Japanese (whatever that means) .

I think I learned 「別に」 probably around the same time I learned how to say “yes” and “no” in Japanese. That’s how awesome and useful this expression is. Unfortunately, it’s not the type of thing that’s taught in a classroom so I’m putting this one in the “Colloquialism” category, which is just my way of saying, “I take no responsibility for what you do with this stuff.”

Don’t get me wrong. 「別」 is an incredibly useful character and is used in a variety of perfectly legitimate words. I would definitely put it in the top 100 kanji list. For instance, 「別れる」 means to “breakup” or “to part from”, a word just as useful but not as harsh as 「振られる」, which means you were dumped or more literally, “shaken off” (ouch). Or just repeat the same character and you have 「別々」, which is essential for when you don’t want to pay for everybody else’s meal. (”Going Dutch” is, unlike Korea and China, customary and quite common in Japan.) And finally, we have 「別に」, the topic of today’s post.

Don’t try this at class

「別に」 is an expression that is very similar to 「微妙」, in many ways. It has a perfectly normal and standard usage but it can also be considered slang, if you use it a certain way.

A lot of people learning Japanese at school have probably already learned 「特に」, which means “especially” or “particularly”. It’s an useful expression particularly because you can use it with the negative to express a lack of preference.

A） なんか食べたい物ある？
- Is there anything you want to eat?

B) 特にないけど･･･
- Not particularly.

Now, that’s all fine and good but what if we wanted to express a lack of preference for positive answers, for instance, like the following dialogue?

A) Can I borrow this?
B) Whatever, sure.

In Japanese, when somebody asks you if something is ok to do, you normally respond with 「いいよ」 (or いいですよ). But 「特にいい」 doesn’t really work here, because it is not a negative response and you end up with, “It’s particularly good”. That doesn’t make much sense. So how do we translate the, “whatever” into Japanese? Well, why don’t we take a look at the following dialogue?

A) これ、借りていい？
- Can I borrow this?

B) 別にいいよ。
- Whatever, sure.

「別に」 actually means “apart from” but you don’t really need to include from what exactly. So you can use it in place of 「特に」 such as the first dialogue to say pretty much the same thing.

A） なんか食べたい物ある？
- Is there anything you want to eat?

B) 別にないけど･･･
- Nothing really.

The “nothing really” is a loose translation but it reflects the fact that you are literally saying, “nothing, apart from” and being vague about what exactly is separate.

If you were wondering how to express your apathetic, non-caring, and sketchy personality, 「別に」 is just the ticket.

A) 本当に行かなくてもいいの？
- Is it really ok to not go?

B) 別に行かなくてもいいよ。
- Whatever, I don’t have to go.

A) チョコが好き？
- Do you like chocolate?

B) 別に。
- Whatever.

Conclusion

So next time somebody is badgering you with questions, you can just reply with 「別に」. Make sure you say it with plenty of spit and a look of complete contempt while you’re at it. It’ll be like you’re saying, “Uh uh, whatever“, all shaking your head, with one hand on your hip and the other waving a index finger at your victim.

Oh wait, was this the part where I was supposed tell you not to do that?