70626
I am studying Japanese grammar and believe that ならでは generally translates to
"uniquely applying to" or "special to" the noun that proceeds it. I can
translate most example sentences but had difficulty translating the below
sentence:

この味はおふくろの手作りならでは出せない味だ。

My tentative translation of this sentence is: "This is **not** the same taste
that is special/unique to my mother's handmade food."

Does this seem like a reasonable way to interpret this sentence?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-07T12:01:20.463
70621
2019-09-07T16:36:36.890
35289
question
grammar
ならでは (uniquely applying to, special to)
On my phone so this will be an abbreviated answer, but ならでは has two (related)
usages:

> １ （多く「ならではの」の形で）ただ…だけ。「日本ならではの習慣だ」. ２
> （多く、下に打消しの語を伴って）…でなくては。…以外には。「下町ならでは見ることのできない光景」

You are probably trying to apply meaning 1, but it’s meaning 2 here (as can be
seen by the accompanying negative). It is indeed odd that the meanings are
almost opposite one another, but I think it can be sort of unified if you
think of #1 as ならでは(できない)→以外には(できない)→だけが(できる). I don’t know if that’s the
etymology but it seems possible. Perhaps it’s useful to imagine an abbreviated
ない or できない after the ならでは.

This makes your sentence mean something like

> この味はおふくろの手作りならでは出せない味だ。  
>  “This taste doesn’t exist outside of my mother’s homemade cooking” (loose
> translation)
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-07T16:30:01.350
70626
2019-09-07T16:36:36.890
2019-09-07T16:36:36.890
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answer