Monday, August 5, 2019

meaning - Some questions about って


Here is a sentence from Dragon Ball :




一気にこれ以上修業したって意味はないって。限界までやったんだ。



悟空 says this to his son who's worried because they just chill out before a battle instead of training until the last minute.


As far as I know, the second って means と言っている and is used to insist on what precedes it, like : "And I'm telling you that..." in english. Am I right here?


As for the first って, I don't know if it means という, or even というのは :



I'm telling you that it wouldn't have made sense to train more than that without pausing.



Or if, as I think, it's part of たって meaning ても :




I'm telling you that even if we trained more than that without pausing, it wouldn't make sense.



Is there a way to tell one from the other when a word like 意味 comes after?



Answer




「[一気]{いっき}にこれ[以上修業]{いじょうしゅぎょう}したって[意味]{いみ}はないって。[限界]{げんかい}までやったんだ。」


"As far as I know, the second って means と言っている and is used to insist on what precedes it, like : "And I'm telling you that..." in english. Am I right here?"



Right. The second って is quotative, implying "Here is what I want to say and I know what I'm talking about.".




"As for the first って, I don't know if it means という, or even というのは"


"Or if, as I think, it's part of たって meaning ても "



It is part of たって, which is the informal way of saying ても or たとしても. These express a non-resultative hypothetical condition, which is why your TL:



"I'm telling you that even if we trained more than that without pausing, it wouldn't make sense."



could not be any better.



"Is there a way to tell one from the other when a word like 意味 comes after?"




You would need to look at the whole phrase, not just the single word, following the って -- in this case, 「意味はない」. If the phrase after the って seems contradictory to the phrase before, you have what I called the "non-resultative hypothetical condition" above. In the sentence in question, the two phrases are "to train hard" and "it is nonsense".


I could, however, easily form a sentence containing a 「って意味」 in which って actually can be replaced by という rather than by ても or たとしても.


「その[単語]{たんご}に『[食]{た}べる』って意味はないよ。」= The word does not have the meaning of "to eat".


So, you would need to pay attention to the whole context as usual.


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, ...