So I was studying this book called 日本語生中継, and there was this question where
you're supposed to choose the inappropriate word among others. And I got stuck
at this sentence:

私は、パソコンが(得意だ.わかる.上手だ.)

The book says the correct, or rather, incorrect answer, was 上手だ. But I don't
seem to understand why, as all three seem correct to me.
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2012-09-13T22:22:22.467
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question
usage words
パソコンが　得意だ/わかる/上手だ
I am a native Japanese speaker so I think I have been properly differentiating
these two words unconsciously, but I couldn't really articulate what makes
them different, so I looked up. Here I briefly summarize the article cited
below.

The difference between 得意 and 上手 can be illuminated most when you translate
into Japanese the following sentence: "This novel is well written."

> この小説は上手に書けている。
>
> この小説は得意に書けている。

While the former is perfectly natural, the latter is simply wrong. This is
contrasting with the sentence from the OP. The question is, why the
difference?

It appears that 得意 is used to describe the (good) skills to do/produce
something, while 上手 is used to describe the results of the (good) skills put
to use. In the example above, the former sounds natural since the novel is a
product of the writer's skill. On the other hand, the latter does not make
sense since the novel itself is not a skill; it's a product of a good skill.
Perhaps, a similar reasoning leads a somewhat rigid Japanese language teacher
to think that 私はパソコンが上手だ to be technically wrong, since a personal computer is
not a product of skill itself.

However, I find it's totally natural to hear that sentence myself. After all,
many Americans say "I don't have no money." While it's grammatically
incorrect, it sounds natural and accepted to a certain group of people, right?
:P

Seriously, in a way, 私はパソコンが上手だ is perfectly natural since you could argue
that here it's totally expected that パソコン means パソコン（を使うこと）, and a variety of
skills can lead to using a computer well, such as drawing on Photoshop,
programming games, making music, using Excel, etc. So the reason why we feel
the usage is natural could be because our notion of using computer has
changed. Computer can do a lot of things, and we attach a lot of different
meanings to (using) computer. Just my feeble thought...

参照元: <http://home.alc.co.jp/db/owa/jpn_npa?sn=28>
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answer