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だからどうだって言うんだい / どーすんのよ

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eeky

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Hi,

1. 「だからどうだって言うんだい？」

It appears that this should mean "So what?", i.e. dismissing something previously said, but I am having trouble seeing how.

2. 証拠隠滅どーすんのよ！普通は警察に連絡するもんでしょっ。

a) Is どーすんのよ = どうするのよ? If so, why どー and not どう? Any reason?

b) Why is it written でしょっ rather than でしょ? What sort of nuance does it have here?
 
2. a) ー is sometimes used to lengthen sounds. I've seen it replace small hiragana, like in your example sentence or just lengthen normal hiragana, like だーめ. I would consider どーすんのよ to be slightly stronger than どうすんのよ, or at least show a bit more emphasis.
2. b) っ is often used as a glottal stop. It shortens the sound before it just a bit. You'll see it tons of times at the end of sentences when someone is angry, surprised, etc.
 
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1. Is more like an angry or irritated "So what's your point?"
 
killerinsidee said:
I would consider どーすんのよ to be slightly stronger than どうすんのよ, or at least show a bit more emphasis.
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Thanks, and could you confirm that どうすんのよ is a colloquial variation of どうするのよ?
 
eeky said:
Thanks, and could you confirm that どうすんのよ is a colloquial variation of どうするのよ?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is.
 
Mike Cash said:
1. Is more like an angry or irritated "So what's your point?"
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Thanks, I still feel uncertain about どうだって言う. Is it どうだ + って(quoting) + 言う? Somehow I can't seem to grasp where どうだ fits into this.
 
eeky said:
Thanks, I still feel uncertain about どうだって言う. Is it どうだ + って(quoting) + 言う? Somehow I can't seem to grasp where どうだ fits into this.
Click to expand...

Imagine one of the following (as appropriate) before どうだ :

状況が
状態が
情勢が

And it might help to substitute something like 成る or 変わる instead of だ for the purposes of grasping the structure.

The sentence contains references to two elements which are important but not included:

1. だから (what the other guy said)
2. どう (the situation/circumstances)

So if you think carefully about the function of the English equivalent, you'll see that "so" and "what" map perfectly.
 
Who is the subject of 言う？ Is it a specific person? Or is って言うんだい just an idiomatic phrase that does not refer to someone literally saying something?
 
eeky said:
Who is the subject of 言う？ Is it a specific person?
Click to expand...

Presumably this is being said in reply to whoever spoke just before this and to whose statement the current speaker takes exception. You would know better than I would, as all I see is a single sentence in isolation.
 
Mike Cash said:
Presumably this is being said in reply to whoever spoke just before this and to whose statement the current speaker takes exception.
Click to expand...
That's right. Person A says something, and then person B says 「だからどうだって言うんだい？」. Are you saying that the subject of 言う is person A? I can't get my head round that. I thought どうだ was the comment of person B.
 

I can't help but wonder if the source of the problem might not be not getting that the だ in だから is referring to A's statement.

Are you familiar with the uses of the other members of the こ・そ・あ・ど family in situations like this? Namely:

こう
そう
ああ
(and どう)

I don't know what they're properly called, but they're like adverb placeholders.

だ = the previous statement
どう = asking for amplification/clarification
 
Mike Cash said:
I can't help but wonder if the source of the problem might not be not getting that the だ in だから is referring to A's statement.
Click to expand...
I understand (I think) だから, but it does not lead me to an answer to my question about who is the subject of 言う.

Scratch that ... let me think on it a bit more. But can you confirm explicitly that the subject of 言う is person A?
 
eeky said:
I understand (I think) だから, but it does not lead me to an answer to my question about who is the subject of 言う.
Click to expand...

You're not overlooking the interrogative んだい after it are you? Think about the situation as well. Who else could it possibly be but A?

A: (some statement)
B: So what are you saying?
 
Mike Cash said:
You're not overlooking the interrogative んだい after it are you? Think about the situation as well. Who else could it possibly be but A?

A: (some statement)
B: So what are you saying?
Click to expand...
However, "So what are you saying?" does not mean that person A said "So what". I think this is the cause of the problem. I was interpreting って言うんだい as meaning that someone said 「だからどうだ」 or「 どうだ」.
 
I don't know if this will help (in addition to Mike's answers), but you can take the phrase apart and try to translate it literally - だ (referring to the what someone just said) から (so) どうだ (how/what + is) って (quote) 言うんだい (say + wh-question marker). If you put all of that together, you'll get lit."so what (you) say?".

About the だ before から that Mike mentioned, all it does is replace the whole sentence that was just said. You can pretty much write the whole previous sentence instead of だ and the meaning of the phrase would be the same. 「「previous sentence」からどうだって言うんだい？」It's pretty much the same when you ask someone 「だから？」, you're simply putting だ instead of their line and asking "so?".

Note: だ in どうだ could be confusing you a bit (since you thought that someone said 「だからどうだ」 or「 どうだ」). One would assume that だ, used for assertion, etc., would not be used in questions (with question words), but for some reason it is. 「何やってんだ？」is a good example, not to mention the variation of the phrase in question 「だからどうだって言うんだ」
 
Unfortunately, the meaning of "so what (you) say?" in English is not very clear to me. Can I understand it as "So what do you say?" (i.e. So what is it that you say?) Is that what you mean?
 
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Could you please share with us the preceding statement and maybe a brief sketch of the situation? It may help.
 
Mike Cash said:
Could you please share with us the preceding statement and maybe a brief sketch of the situation? It may help.
Click to expand...
Harry's scar starts hurting (supposed to be a bad omen), so he writes to his godfather Sirius to ask for advice. Sirius, who is on the run from the authorities, replies that he is coming to assist. Harry wants to stop this because he fears Sirius might be captured and sent back to Azkaban prison if he comes out of hiding. So, he writes to Sirius again pretending that his scar hasn't really been hurting, he only imagined it. When Harry tells Hermione about this, Hermione says:

「傷跡が痛んだのは、勘違いじゃないわ。知っているくせに。」

Then Harry says the line 「だからどうだって言うんだい？」, followed by 「僕のせいでシリウスをアズカバンに逆戻りさせてなるもんか」.
 
We would loosely translate this as "What was I supposed to do?". In this case of a colloquial rhetorical question, trying to find a word-for-word match will be more trouble than it is worth.

In any event, Harry doesn't expect an answer to his question. Its just a burst of frustration borne of a helpless situation.
What did you expect me to say?
What was I supposed to say?
What else could I have said?
What did you want me to do?

Edit: If you like, perhaps any of the above sentences with "you" in them would match closely with the original Japanese since the original Japanese rhetorical question invokes the sense of "what do you want me to say?". But you can only split this hair so many ways. Expressing Harry's frustration in the same colloquial manner probably takes precedence over correctly mapping the subject and object in this case.
 
だから means 勘違いじゃないって知っているから, as already pointed out. The two interpretation 「だからどうだ」って言うんだい and だから「どうだ」って言うんだい are possible, though the difference in meaning is subtle.
Grammatically, the subject of 言う is Hermione (だからどうだって言いたいんだい has the same meaning as the original, but だからどうだって言わせたいんだい is not), but this 言う doesn't mean she really says so. どうだ represents the contents of her intention in this case.
 
Toritoribe said:
but this 言う doesn't mean she really says so. どうだ represents the contents of her intention in this case.
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Thanks, this is really the key to understanding it for me.

Majestic said:
What did you expect me to say?
What was I supposed to say?
What else could I have said?
What did you want me to do?
Click to expand...
Toritoribe, is the above interpretation incorrect? (No offence to Majestic, but I am unable to reconcile the two answers.)
 
どう is just a placeholder pronoun which indicates the type of info being sought.

Would you understand it if the って言うんだい part were left off? If it were just だからどうですか？
 
Like I said, trying to find a word for word translation is more trouble that its worth.
In fact, you already have a word-for-word translation, "So, what (you) say?", but it presented a problem for you. To tell the truth it would present a problem for any native English speaker, so this direct translation has to be rendered into a more understandable phrase - "So, what are you saying?", or, "So what are you trying to say?" (but note that already there is a slight deviation from the original Japanese).

I don't like either of those because we wouldn't say them in the kind of situation that the book describes. They do not sound natural to me, though they are faithful translations. Harry gave a little white lie to Sirius, and Hermione called him on it. Harry responds by saying something, and that something makes perfect sense in the Japanese, but when re-translated back into English that Japanese phrase comes across as wooden (to me).

Sorry if this is confusing you more.
I too am keen to hear what Toritoribe-san has to say - no offense taken.
 
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