nanikuokanaa ("I wonder what to eat")

K

kefkaboo2003

後輩

24 Jan 2009

4

0

• 24 Jan 2009

• #1

Hello everyone,

I'm lately translating a manga (for personal practice, though it's really hard for me) and I found the following sentence:

"何食おかなあ。" "nani kuokanaa"

I actually know vaguely the meaning of this sentence. It says something like "I wonder what to eat". So I don't need a translation. But I'd like you to give me a grammatical explanation about this sentence, specially about the syntactic/morphological role of the "o". Is the "o" a part of the verb or not? I know that "kanaa" is a particle that means "I wonder". The verb is "kuu" (to eat). But I want to know what is the "o" doing there.

Please answer me. (I'm not quite sure if my English is good or not, so if you find any mistake, please let me know)

 

maushan3

Back home

1 Feb 2007

600

23

• 24 Jan 2009

• #2

I thought the same thing when I first read it, the O is mistakenly there. But, seeing that there's an extra A at the end, I would assume that it's just an exaggeration of the oral pronounciation. Yeah, that's probably it. You're right.

Mauricio

 

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Moderator

Fifteen-year veteran

22 Feb 2008

18,266

4,926

• 24 Jan 2009

• #3

That's the contraction of the volutional form 食おう.

何食おうかなあ

And it sometimes pronounced also as 何食おっかなあ in colloquial expressions.

Today is a "volutional" day?

 

K

kefkaboo2003

後輩

24 Jan 2009

4

0

• 24 Jan 2009

• Thread starter
• #4

Thank you guys for the answers! I feel much better now... for five days I looked for these explanations everywhere (the web and some grammar books I found here and there), but I found nothing.

Thank you so much again.

 

Buntaro

運動不足

Twenty-year veteran

27 Dec 2003

2,858

2,109

• 24 Jan 2009

• #5

kefkaboo2003

The explanation given by Toritoribe is correct, but I thought I would give a little more detail.

the おう roughly translates as, "Let's...."

taberu = to eat
kuu = to eat

tabeyou = Let's eat.
kuou = Let's eat.

The interesting thing about tabeyou or kuou is that it can be used to refer to the actions of one person, two people etc., while the English "Let's...." only refers to two people or more. In Japanese, I can say, "Let's eat," when I am referring to only myself.

 

Last edited: 24 Jan 2009

K

kefkaboo2003

後輩

24 Jan 2009

4

0

• 24 Jan 2009

• Thread starter
• #6

Hi, Buntaro,

That's a good one. That was a very interesting detail. Thank you too.

 

A

Amigo

先輩

31 Aug 2008

349

7

• 25 Jan 2009

• #7

kefkaboo2003 said:

for five days I looked for these explanations everywhere (the web and some grammar books I found here and there), but I found nothing.

Click to expand...

Have a look to this document. You can download it legally for free.
You will find everything about Japanese language in perfect Spanish.
You will see in the page 47 about volutional form (forma volitiva) おう。
That document is a free treasure for Spanish speakers.
http://lsi.ugr.es/~gunkan/html/gunkan_apendice/gunkan_nihongo_apendice_006.html