Question about ね


Once I read that the sentence ending particle "ね" is not only used when we are
asking for an agreement or expressing our agreement, but it is also used when
we are talking about our experience, our thoughts even if the listener doesn't
know anything about it. Can someone make it clear? I don't understand how to
use ね with that meaning.




This is basically the same post as
<https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/27583>

I'm going to explain about sentence ender ね (not interjectional ね).

It has several usages and some of them can be interpreted like English tag
question. But the function that's shared by all those usages is to indicate
that information accompanied with な or ね is your impression or conclusion
through observation (including recollection or imagination of your own) in the
moment.

(Difference between な and ね is that the former is cut out for monologue while
the latter is aimed at other people. If you use な in speaking to other people,
it sounds rough.)

For example, when you are talking to your friend on the phone, you can say
声きれいだね (which can be translated to "you have nice voice, right? / indeed /
after all") . However, if you say 髪きれいだね ("you have pretty hair…"), s/he will
be surprised and respond as "Are you watching me!?".

That's to say, you can't use it like tag question unless you share the context
with the listener. (To say another example, In order to be able to say おいしいね
as a tag question, the listener has to be actually eating it, not only present
there.)

On the other hand, 髪きれいだよね works well even in that scene because よね can refer
to what is not present in the context.

In the situation where you can say 声きれいだね, if you nevertheless use よね and say
声きれいだよね, it feels a little uncertain compared with one without よ.

