Sunday, December 23, 2018

grammar - ても "even if/though" doesn't seem right


I've been thinking of the ても pattern as "even though" or "even if". But this sentence from steins;gate uses it in a way that surprised me...



ちょっと待ってくれ。そんなに急かされて【せかされて】も、転んでしまうよ



Is this being used in the common way (if so, I may have been thinking of it wrong)? Or is this a different way of using it, with a different meaning?



EDIT: If I took my normal approach here, I'd end up with something like, "even if you rush me, I will fall", which, I think people will agree, doesn't really make sense in english (it implies that the person speaking will fall whether or not they're rushed, and that the person rushing him is doing so with the intention of preventing him from falling). Maybe the interpretation should be something like, "even if you rush me, (I won't get there any faster, and) I (may even) fall."



Answer



This ても means "though/although" if I have to translate it by itself. It is used when you want to say that a negative result will follow if you obeyed/agreed to/took seriously what the other person is saying.


ちょっと待ってくれ。そんなに急かされても、転んでしまうよ means:


"Wait a sec! Though you want me to go faster, I'll only fall down (if I did)."


Obviously, I did not employ direct TL. The original is in the passive voice 急かされても = "if I am forced to go faster".


With this in mind, you may watch this and actually laugh at the very first exchange between the two men in this comedy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUp-1gAhWGw


Guy A:「おじゃましますか。」


Guy B:「いや聞かれても。」


This is the ても we are discussing. The negative result is unmentioned here but it would be something like こまってしまう. I will not try to make it sound more natural since the comedy is in Osaka dialect.



Point is the usual greeting is おじゃまします without a か as you probably know, but Guy A says it with か as if it were a question. This puts Guy B in a situation where he would not know what to say, so he goes 「いや聞かれても I wouldn't know how to respond/react.」


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