ですかorですが？which one is correct?


While playing League of Legends with some Japanese friends on the JP server, I
noticed something interesting. Some of them use "ですが"in chat instead of the
correct ”か” I asked them about it and they say that its just that they're lazy
and type it the way they hear it, so is it similar to どうして usually being typed
as どして because that's how Japanese people pronounce it in speech, differently
from the way its written? i tried searching online for "desuga" and found no
results, so its almost certainly incorrect, but native Japanese people are
using it so...




どうして can indeed become どして in a hasty and slangy conversation/chat, but ですか
never contracts to ですが. It's no shorter in the first place!

Both ～ですが and ～ですか are perfectly valid Japanese with completely different
meanings.

  * そうですか。 "Oh, is that so?" / "I see." / "Okay."
  * どうしてですか。 "Why is it?"
  * そうですが。 ≒ そうですけど。 "That's true, but..." / "Yes, but..." (sort of hedging)
  * どうしてですが。 (typo. doesn't make sense.)

Sentence-end が/けど is asked and answered in several existing questions in this
site. Please take a look at these.

  * [けど at the end of the sentence?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2086/5010)
  * [が and けど at end of a sentence](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/27542/5010)
  * [けど usage in this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/32824/5010)

