どんな危険 vs どんな危険も Confusion


Why does

どんな危険 - what danger

どんな危険も - any danger

Is this a grammar point, this is the sentence that confused me:

ここはどんな危険もないよ = There is no danger here

も is after the noun of 危険 , is the も still linking with the どんな?




I think you are comparing the wrong things. As you pointed out, どんな危険 is
indeed a question. But どんな危険 **も** no longer has anything to do with a
question.

Explaining the usage of も is really difficult as it carries a lot of nuance.
The basic explanation (that you will find in most textbooks) is of course that
も is used to list different things and group them together ( a parallel adder
of sorts):

休みの時は、山も海も人でいっぱいだ。This creates a single category out of moutain and sea, then
qualifies them as "full of people".

Using this explanation, we can offer a first interpretation of どんな危険も : どんな危険
is essentially a shorthand for ''any type of danger'' ( you could say
危険Aも危険Bも…危険Zもないよ, but that's absurd because you yourself do not know what
dangers are out there, so you just leave it up to the imagination of the
person you are talking to and use どんな instead). Given this, どんな危険 **も** ない
creates a category with _all_ dangers and says there are none.

Now, I mentionned も carries a more subtle meaning: it can be used to make your
listener / reader _imagine that_ there are other things without you
_explicitly_ stating them. This is one of the big differences with は。Consider
the two following sentences:

  * 今日もかわいいね。
  * 今日(は)かわいいね。

Can you see the difference? (If you don't, I advise you to try with a Japanese
girl. It will not disappoint!) Basically, も here implies that the following
statement (かわいいね) applies * not only* to today, but * also* to every other
day. On the other hand, は emphasizes 今日, essentially implying that the
statement might not be true the other days... hence the effect I was talking
above.

In that sense, if you were to say どんな危険はないよ, I would probably hear it as
"there are no dangers but... (there might be something else)" -- which kinds
of goes against the effect you were looking for (make me feel safe).

The are other usages to も、such as 簡単な仕事だったのに、500ドルも貰ったよ。, but I won't go over
them here as they do not relate directly to your question.

**Long story short** : there is more to も than meets the eye :)

