Disappointing

Please help me with this.

- It was very disappointing for you to give it up so soon.

Which does this mean?
1. 'You' were disappointed.
2. 'I/We' was/were disappointed.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, JTT!
I still need your help. Please keep on helping me with this.

If so, can these all mean basically the same thing in the proper context?

1. It was very disappointing (to me) for you to give it up so soon.
2. It was very disappointing (to me) when you gave it up so soon.
3. I was very disappointed when you gave it up so soon.
4. I was very disappointed about you giving it up so soon.

Thank you very much.

Hello Jandi

Leaving out 'to me' gives sentence #1 a different meaning:

1. It was very disappointing for you to give it up so soon.

Here the 'disappointment' is felt by 'you', not 'me'.

There is another (perhaps slightly more common) way of using 'disappointing/disappointed':

2. It must have been very disappointing for you to fail your exams.
3. You must have been very disappointed when you failed your exams.

'It was very disappointing' has slightly too factual an air: we usually can only guess at others' feelings of disappointment. Using the 'must have' form avoids this factual air: it means 'I assume that you were very disappointed', etc.

MrP

1. It was very disappointing for you to give it up so soon. 2. It was very disappointing when you gave it up so soon.

Mr P wrote: Leaving out 'to me' gives sentence #1 a different meaning: The disappointment' is felt by 'you', not 'me'.

I respectfully disagree. Allowing that the tendency probably shifts to the disappointment being felt by 'you', not 'me', the other meaning could be there, set up by earlier conversation, context or intonation.

In 1 & 2, the disappointment being discussed could easily be felt by either party. "for you to give" could be paraphrased as "that you gave".

Sentences in isolation are easily misunderstood. Such is the problem in much of ESL; grammar books and teachers supplying isolated examples that don't have context.

English teaching in the Japanese school system is notorious for this. Even where there is context, say, in the textbooks, the writers often put in unnatural collocations.

Thank you very much, teachers!

I think I've got it either about the meanings and about the nuance.
This was a big issue among my friends and Korean teachers.
Now it's completely solved.
- Context; it can't be too much emphasized, can it, JTT? -

Thank you again.

Have a nice day off, MrP.
Have a wonderful Sunday evening, JTT.

Enjoy the stillness of winter!