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I'm having trouble understanding sentences containing 「なんて」

Here are some of them that I've encountered today:

漫画なんてつまらない

and

あまりにも刑事なんて職業に似合わない

chlenix
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  • I have read through the answers there and from that my first example sentence is cleared out. 漫画 is 'belittled' by なんて, which makes perfect sense (ごめんね、　漫画の読者）.

    However the second sentence remains unclear to me. How is 刑事 (detective) altered by なんて? I find it hard to think of it as a belittle-ing.

     – chlenix Sep 10 '14 at 17:13
  • You express some kind of disdain here. It shows that somehow you don't respect it, don't like it, or think little of it... You can also not use なんて but then it would become more of an objective, plain statement. – desseim Sep 10 '14 at 19:19
  • @desseim You cannot not use なんて in the second phrase when followed by a noun. –  Sep 10 '14 at 22:57
  • @chlenix Looks like the thread is going to be closed, so I am going to say this here. You have two different なんて's. First one is making ligt of manga. Second one is appositional. 刑事＝職業. Speaker is NOT making light of the occupation. Second one can be replaced by などという. –  Sep 10 '14 at 23:04
  • @非回答者 is right (thanks), I should have read the question properly before rushing to making a comment. Then since the "possible duplicate" question doesn't seem to deal with this meaning (nor the "surprise" one), it may be worth keeping this question and making a proper answer. – desseim Sep 10 '14 at 23:20
  • 非回答者 - I really appreciated that answer. However, I have no idea what などという means, but thanks for mentioning it. I'll definitely look it up! – chlenix Sep 11 '14 at 22:29

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