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If I'm not wrong, そうだ is used when you hear something from someone else and
you are trying to relay it forward to another person. For example, you hear
なつみさん say that 高田さん is sick. So when the teacher asks you wheres 高田さん、 you
reply: "高田さんは病気で休んでいる **そうです** ". But what about ようだ? What if you replaced it
and said "高田さんは病気で休んでいる **ようです** "? What difference does it make?

Ive also heard that ようだ is used when you notice something. For example, you
see your friend 若宮 laughing with your elder brother, and you are shocked. You
silently think to yourself: "若宮さんは兄貴と仲がいい **ようです** ね..." Similarly, does it
make a difference if i replace ようです here with そうです?

All in all, what are the differences and similarities between ようだ and そうだ?
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2017-05-18T07:23:38.933
47543
2017-05-18T10:24:54.877
22134
question
grammar
Difference between ようだ and そうだ
I often had this problem myself when I was translating some manga and
sometimes I still do. Based on my encounters with these words, I also know
that when you use  
そうだ it means that you are talking/relaying about something based on what you
heard from other sources, just like in your example above  
(You have heard that apparently Takada-san is sick). I would often had
problems distinguishing this そう with the one that means "it appears", "looks
like").  
  
As for ようだ, I think it's used when **you** are witnessing/observing something
at the moment, just like you said in your example, you observe your brother
and friend laughing and they **_look as if / seem like_** to get along based
on what you are seeing and deduce from the event.  
Perhaps you also confused sometimes the そう of hearsay and the one that means
_"looks like"_ such as in the example: "This dress looks expensive" このドレスは高そうだ
(or です depending how polite you want to make the sentence).  
I hope I didn't make things more confusing, but I encountered the same things
as well and I wanted to share my experience with these structures as well.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-18T10:24:54.877
47547
2017-05-18T10:24:54.877
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47543
answer