ないっしょ / すげえきれえ / 思う / 来られる / 幻想的で

Hi,


1. Shuji previously said he had been meeting someone earlier.

杏子： 人って、だれ？
柊二： だれだっていいじゃん。
杏子： 女の人？
柊二： そんなわけ、ないっしょ。

My translation:

Kyoko: Who was it?
Shuji: It doesn't matter.
Kyoko: A woman?
Shuji: There's no reason to think that.

a) Does だれだっていいじゃん have a sense like "it doesn't matter", or even "none of your business"?

b) The last line is a pure guess. Is it close? What is ないっしょ? Is it something like ないでしょう?


2. Is すげえきれえ dialect for すげい + きれい, meaning "incredibly beautiful"?

(Google Translate tells me that すげえきれえ means "For example Slice dude"!)


3. 人はどんな時に詩が書きたいと思うのでしょうか。

My translation: "On what kind of occasions do you think people like to write poetry?"

Is the subject of 思う the person being asked the question?


4. あなたに来た郵便物は取りに来られるまで保管しておき ます。

Translation given: "Mail for you will be held until you call for it."

Is 来られる an honorific form (as opposed to passive or potential)?


5. 賢治の作品は幻想的で独特の世界を作り出していると言 われるが、その魅力は何であろうか。

My translation: "It is said that Kenji's work creates a unique magical world, but what is its charm?"

a) I'm not exactly sure how 幻想的で fits into this sentence grammatically, or the purpose of で.

b) Why is the form あろう used here in であろうか? Does it make the question more rhetorical/tentative?

1-3. You're correct on all items
4. Potential
5. Exactly equivalent to だろう or でしょう. It is just written in the である style instead of the です style, which is very very common in literary works. Flip through some of your books and you should quickly notice that. The で is quite simply merely the adjectival な conjugated to join the two adjectives.

Please tell us you were smoking dope when you thought it would be a good idea to use Google Translate.

2)
すごいきれい

3)
The subject is 人. The sentence should be 人はどんな時に詩が書きたいと思うと思いますか。 or 人はどんな時に詩を書きたがると思いますか。 for your translation.

4)
Yes. 取りに来られるようになるまで is usually used for the potential.

5) a)
In addition to Mike-san's, see the difference below.

［幻想的で独特の］世界
幻想的な［独特の世界］

Thank you both.

Toritoribe said:

［幻想的で独特の］世界
幻想的な［独特の世界］

Click to expand...

The second one I think literally means "magical [world of uniqueness]". Is that right?

I don't understand the first one at all really. I'm guessing it might be "world of [magical uniqueness]", but is で some form of the copula? Is 幻想的で独特 a unit of meaning? Why is it not 幻想的な独特? Or could で have a sense of "because" (i.e. it is unique because it is magical)? As you can see, I am clutching at straws...

独特 is also a な adjective.

Mike Cash said:

独特 is also a な adjective.

Click to expand...

Do you mean it is an adjective in ［幻想的で独特の］世界? I thought it was a noun there.

独特 is a bit special adjective. It can take both な and の in the adnominal form, just like わずか, 特別 or さまざま. Unlike 自由, 健康 or 親切, there's no difference in the meaning between the two forms, i.e., you can also say 幻想的で独特な世界 or even 独特で幻想的な世界.

OK, so, in 幻想的で独特の世界, do 幻想的(で) and 独特(の) both adjectivally modify 世界, and we use で in the first instance as a sort of "linking" form because there is another adjective following?

Yes.

Got it, thanks everyone.