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In the following, I feel it should be 会話が出来 **る** どころか.

> ジムは日本語で会話が出来ないどころか、簡単な挨拶も出来ない。  
>  Jim is not only unable to converse in Japanese; he cannot even make simple
> greetings.

I was expecting the sentence to end talking about how well Jim can speak
Japanese. If this is a valid usage, can you please give a more literal
translation?
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2011-09-16T12:40:01.510
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2022-09-12T15:02:22.120
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question
grammar usage particles conjunctions
Is this a valid use of どころか?
**Edit** I changed my answer after considering Tsuyoshi Ito's answer. As he
says, having an affirmative should be preferrable as given in his answer (But
that was a different point from your question).

It is grammatical, but may not be completely natural. It is ungrammatical to
end it without the latter part. A literal translation is

> As for Jim, not to mention whether he is not able to converse in Japanese,
> he cannot even make simple greetings.

which reflects the unnaturalness in the original Japanese. See Tsuyoshi Ito's
answer for the correct sentence, which I translate as

> As for Jim, not to mention whether he is able to converse in Japanese, he
> cannot even make simple greetings.

As the example

> 成功するどころか、失敗ばかりしている

shows, the construction does not depend on the existence of a negation in the
latter part, so the feeling of denial against the first part seems to come
from `どころか`. However, also in the makeup of `どころか`, there is no morpheme you
can attribute the meaning of negation. I take it that the first part of this
construction is not negated, but is a neutral proposition, and is excluded
from consideration. The English translation will include `whether`. Since
negation under `whether` is redundant, that causes the unnaturalness Tsuyoshi
Ito points out.
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2011-09-16T13:35:19.350
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2011-09-17T13:29:27.560
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answer
It is not unseen, but it is incorrect, or at least different from the
traditional usage of どころか. As you said, the correct expression is

> ジムは日本語で会話が **できる** どころか、簡単な挨拶もできない。

Another correct way is

> ジムは日本語で会話ができない **ばかりか** 、簡単な挨拶もできない。
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2011-09-16T14:31:56.427
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2011-09-16T14:31:56.427
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answer