Sunday, December 31, 2017

grammar - Meaning of pattern 「XがXなら、YもYだ」


While reading, I came across this sentence:



「上官が上官なら部下も部下だな」




What does this 「XがXなら、YもYだ」 pattern mean? "Like X, like Y"? "X will be X, and Y will be Y"?



Answer



“XがXならYもYだ” means that X is bad in some sense and it explains that Y is bad in the same way. Therefore 上官が上官なら部下も部下だ can be translated as “like officer, like his subordinate,” but it is only used to mean the similarity in something bad.


No comments:

Post a Comment

digital communications - Understanding the Matched Filter

I have a question about matched filtering. Does the matched filter maximise the SNR at the moment of decision only? As far as I understand, ...