だからどうだって言うんだい / どーすんのよ

[eeky]

Like I said, trying to find a word for word translation is more trouble that its worth.

Unfortunately, the only way for me to properly understand the construction of this phrase is to understand the individual purpose of each word. Either that or treat the whole thing as an idiomatic black box, but I am not very happy to do that in this case since I believe that the overall meaning can be understood from the combination of the parts.

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).

OK. this is not a million miles from my earlier suggestion "So what do you say?" / "So what is it that you say?".

 

[eeky]

The person asking the question....just like in English.

I meant which of Harry or Hermione.

 

[Mike Cash]

I meant which of Harry or Hermione.

Harry is asking the other guy, isn't he?

Would it be more clear if he had said だから何？ instead?

 

[eeky]

Harry is asking the other guy, isn't he?

Harry is asking the main question (to a girl actually, not that it matters), but どうだ is another question embedded within the main question, isn't it? The question of who, if anyone, is asking どうだ has been a point of difficulty.

 

[Mike Cash]

Harry is asking the main question (to a girl actually, not that it matters), but どうだ is another question embedded within the main question, isn't it? The question of who, if anyone, is asking どうだ has been a point of difficulty.

I covered that in my post mentioning 状態 etc

 

[eeky]

I covered that in my post mentioning 状態 etc

I'm afraid I didn't understand that post very well.

 

[Toritoribe]

Harry is asking the main question ---, but どうだ is another question embedded within the main question, isn't it?

This seems the key of the confusion. What do you think Harry's main question is?

 

[Mike Cash]

I'm afraid I didn't understand that post very well.

Do you understand what どう is referring to?

 

[eeky]

This seems the key of the confusion. What do you think Harry's main question is?

（だから）どうだって言うんだい

 

[Toritoribe]

Harry is not asking if Hermione says something or not. He is asking her intention; what she wants to say, what she wants to have him to do, or like that (although he is actually just complaining), therefore the subject of 言う is Hermione, as I wrote. It's the same if that were だからどうなんだい？. This sentence is also asking her intention.

 

[eeky]

Harry is not asking if Hermione says something or not.

I understand that (now, though I didn't at the outset). Nevertheless, surely（だから）どうだって言うんだい is a question (the main question) asked by Harry, is it not? And is どうだ not an embedded question?

 

[bentenmusume]

De-lurking in the hopes of contributing something here.

I think you're confusing yourself by identifying the latter part of the phrase as the "main" question, when if anything the って言うんだい is really just adding emphasis and could be dropped without changing the meaning of the sentence. （だからどうなんだ？ / だから何！？ / etc.)

Probably easier to parse it as:

だからどうだ（って言うんだい）！？
So what (are you saying)!?

Also note that in the EN (much like the JP) the "say" does not necessarily refer to a specific utterance by the person being addressed, but can be used in the idiomatic sense of "what are you trying to tell me" / "what's your point", etc.

 

[Toritoribe]

Here's another examples that may be helpful for understanding.

どこにお宝があるって思うんだい？ Where do you think the treasure is?
いつ雨が降るって思うんだい？ When do you think it will start to rain?
誰が犯人だって思うんだい？ Who do you think the perpetrator is?

どこ, いつ or 誰 are the main questions, not the embedded questions (and どこにお宝がある？, いつ雨が降る？ or 誰が犯人？ have the same meanings as the original questions, as jt_san pointed out).

 

[eeky]

Here's another examples that may be helpful for understanding.

どこにお宝があるって思うんだい？ Where do you think the treasure is?
いつ雨が降るって思うんだい？ When do you think it will start to rain?
誰が犯人だって思うんだい？ Who do you think the perpetrator is?

どこ, いつ or 誰 are the main questions, not the embedded questions (and どこにお宝がある？, いつ雨が降る？ or 誰が犯人？ have the same meanings as the original questions, as jt_san pointed out).

Thanks for the examples. If I may ask a further question here, does だい have to pair up with どう (in the original) and どこ etc. in your examples? I am familiar with だい, and I know that it is used to mark wh-questions, but somehow the intervening って is throwing me off. For example, in どこにお宝があるって思うんだい, it seems to me that だい has really nothing to do with the って思う part, and logically should go in the "main" question, as you describe it, so something like どこにお宝があるだいって思うか. I don't expect this to be correct Japanese at all (it looks bad even to me), but hopefully you can see what I'm driving at?

 

[Mike Cash]

って言うんだい = と言うのですか

 

[eeky]

って言うんだい = と言うのですか

So does this imply that だい is not paired with どう? Actually that makes more sense to me if true, but I thought だい had to go with a wh-question word.

 

[killerinsidee]

So does this imply that だい is not paired with どう? Actually that makes more sense to me if true, but I thought だい had to go with a wh-question word.

だい is an informal/casual replacement for か for wh-words. It has the same function here. There's also かい, but that's for yes-no questions.

 

[bentenmusume]

To follow from the above examples (and rephrase what's already been said) どこにあるって思うんだい？ and どこにあると思いますか？ are essentially the same construction.

The interrogative particle comes at the end because the speaker is the one asking a question / seeking information.

The sentence-final position of か／だい doesn't change the fact that the main question being asked is where something is, not "do you think (something)".

 

[Toritoribe]

Your understanding of "wh- + だ（い）" it is used to mark wh-questions is correct. んだい is a gentle/tender version of んだ, and んだ is a masculine version of の. The reason why だい is used here is exactly this is a wh- question. If that's a yes-no question, か（い） is used instead, as killerinsidee-san explained.
e.g.
ここにお宝があるって思うのかい？
Do you think the treasure is here?
勘違いじゃなくて本当に傷跡が痛んだんだって、シリウスに知らせるべきだったって言うのかい？
Do you think/want to say I should have written...?

 

[killerinsidee]

Since all of the grammar points have been explained by now, I'll add my take on the context you provided. Note that this analysis is pretty much overkill under any circumstances. There is no need to over analyze things like this so much, but it could help you out.

As Toritoribeさん wrote "だから means 勘違いじゃないって知っているから". This could help you "connect the dots", I think.
Notice that she didn't say 知っているから, but 知っているくせに. You may wonder about that change.
く せに (just like のに sometimes) implies that something after it was omitted. 知っているくせに. 知っているくせに just means lit. "despite the fact that you know...", but it implies criticism/contempt or disagreement about an action (listener's, in this case). You're free to imagine what ever makes sense after くせに, but the "omitted" part's implied meaning will be understood by everyone. No need ask about that. Here's where から comes in. から can be interpreted as "so" in this case, since that fits, but more often as "because". With that said, 知っているから can be interpreted as "you know (that) so,..." or "because you know (that),...". In both cases, the main clause (sentence) is missing. That missing part can be pretty much anything; "You know (that), so doing something is wrong " or Because you know (that), you shouldn't do something", etc.
Now, remember that implied "criticism" from earlier? Well, here's the tricky part: Since Harry knows she criticized his action, he attaches から, then replaces the whole phrase (知っているから) with だから and asks だからどうだって言うんだい. He's basically asking for the "missing sentence", i.e., 「知っているから、"missing sentence".」 He's doing that by using どうだ, which represents "contents of her intention" as Toritoribeさん suggested. That's basically all that's going on here. Again, as someone previously mentioned, all this can be kind of rhetorical and just signify Harry's frustration.

For the "English equivalent" of the phrase in question, I would pick the one Mikeさん suggested - "So what's your point?". It feels to be the closest thing to what Japanese phrase conveys, while the suggestions from Majesticさん would work better from an English point of view (also in this context), in my opinion. I'm not going to preach to you about the best ways to go about studying these kinds of phrases since everyone has their own study methods, but I can tell you that trying to find every equivalent for every word, especially in set phrases, is not the best idea. The J→E will give you a lot of headaches, I speak from experience.

Note: I'm not an expert or anything, I'm still learning myself. Anyone is free to correct me if I'm wrong about this.

 

[eeky]

Since all of the grammar points have been explained by now, I'll add my take on the context you provided.

Thanks for your analysis.

I can tell you that trying to find every equivalent for every word, especially in set phrases, is not the best idea.

There are two ways to approach set phrases. One is to treat them as unit and not care about their composition. The other is to try to understand how the meaning arises from the individual words or components. Except in intractable cases, I prefer the second option. I don't mean that I like to go through a mental word-by-word literal translation every time I encounter the phrase in normal reading. In fact, quite the opposite.