Monday, January 6, 2020

grammar - Using two or more quotes


How would one combine two or more quotes together?
In English we just do something like "He said 'Quote A', 'Quote B' and 'Quote C'".



In chat, snailboat gave these possibilities:



  1. 「Quote A」「Quote B」って言う

  2. 「Quote A」って、「Quote B」って言う

  3. 「Quote A」って(言う)、「Quote B」って言う

  4. 「Quote A」「Quote B」と言う

  5. 「Quote A」と「Quote B」と言う


Are these all valid?



Answer




First I think in usage って is simply a colloquial version of と. Thus (2) and (5) are equivalent, and so are (1) and (4).


(3) has a 言う (in parentheses). Without 言う, it would just be the colloquial version of (5). With 言う (followed by a comma) it makes little grammatical sense: it should rather be 言って.


I think a universal format would be



「Quote A」(と)(言って)、「Quote B」と言う



where you can replace と with って in colloquial writing/speech and 言って would often be omitted. E.g.



みんなに「すごい」、「素晴らしい」と言われた。
みんなに「すごい」とか/ー、「素晴らしい」とか/って言われた。(casual)

Everyone was telling me "great" and "wonderful".


「今日は時間がない」から「また今度遊ぼうね」って律子ちゃんが言ってたけど、今度っていつなの?
Ritsuko told me "I don't have time, let's play together again next time", but when is next time?



In the second example the と does not mean "and". Rather, the quoting particle could be thrown in there to make sure that the first part is also a quote, which to the listener would not be obvious.


As an aside, as far as I understand the quoting particle と is enough to give a quotation. The brackets are inserted only for easier reading. (In particular, there is no clear distinction between "direct" and "indirect" quotations.)


Also, the quoting particle between the quotes can be omitted, but this works best when the quotes are short (usually one-word, see snailboat's examples in the comments) and it only works unambiguously in writing (or else, there is no difference between quoting 「しまった。イタい。やばい。」 and 「しまった」「イタい」「やばい」).


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, ...