More Japanese I Need Help With &nbsp;How would you translate the following into English? &nbsp;I'm interested primarily in the grammar, especially the &quot;no koto&quot; and &quot;dattarou&quot;. おれ

Prof

More Japanese I Need Help With How would you translate the following into English? I'm interested primarily in the grammar, especially the "no koto" and "dattarou".

おれはいつのことだったろう？

Ore wa means "as for me" or simply "I". Itsu means "when". I don't understand why "no koto" is needed or what its function is here in this context. And I wasn't able to puzzle out the meaning of dattarou, which could also be read as　だつだろう. I wasn't able to tell whether the つ was large or small.

The translation given in the English version of the manga story is "When did he tell me?" How on earth the translator got that understanding from the Japanese is beyond me. LOL Can anyone help?

Apr 20, 2010 6:04 PM

Comments · 2

Thanks, Wenny. I think dattarou is a contraction of datta darou. Perhaps "When might it have happened?" or "When might that have been?" would be possible translations of "Itsu no koto datta darou?"

I'm learning that colloquial Japanese speech has lots of contractions. The _Japanese in MangaLand_ series by Marc Bernabe has been helping a great deal, especially the chapter on casual speech (Chapter 53 in _Japanese in MangaLand 3_).

April 25, 2010