Clarification on -다가 post
So 으면서 and 다가 are similar in translation, but 다가 has a more negative connotation? Because if you wanted to, couldn't subsitute the beginning usages (while doing something) with 으면서?
This is a good question, and I actually need to clarify something about that post after talking with some other learners and native speaking friends.
I had two sets of sentences with “while...” translations, so I’ll look at them separately here. The first was these two as examples of interruption in an action:
요리를 하다가 접시를 떨어트렸어요. (While cooking, I dropped a plate.)
영화를 보다가 잠들었어. (While watching a movie, I fell asleep.)
In these cases, -다가 has more of a feeling of something suddenly changing, yet you could more or less exchange them with -(으)면서 with no problem except losing that small nuance. It’s a really fine distinction. As for -다가 having a negative connotation, it is no more positive or negative than -(으)면서, so they really are very interchangeable.
As for these sentences, about doing two things simultaneously:
화랑 씨는 숙제를 하다가 친구들과 전화도 했어요. (While doing his homework, Hwarang also talked with his friends on the phone.)
수하 씨는 오랜만에 못 본 친구랑 통화하다가 울었어요. (While on the phone with a friend she hadn’t been able to see in a long time, Suha cried.)
After spending some time hashing this out in detail, these two examples that I gave would more likely be interpreted as interruptions, and if you genuinely want the sentence to mean that the two happened simultaneously, at exactly the same time, -(으)면서 must be used. I will edit the original post ASAP to reflect this.
Thank you for asking! Everyone, if you ever have any doubts about anything that I have posted or any questions like this, feel free to ask!
