understanding a sentence from manga

[yellowjello]

hitokake dake chiri ni (sen to) aizen taichou no shinzou naka ni nokoshitekita ndesu.
the above sentence is from the manga bleach and i am trying to understand it. the only part i can't get is (sen to). i put parenthesis around it since i don't know if its just one word "sento" or "sen to". that part was written with hiragana so i'm having a hard time figuring out what that part means.
i know hitokake dake means "just one piece" and chiri means "dust". one of my guesses is that sen is used as "thousand" but then i don't know why they use "to" since it's not the "to - conditional" nor the "to particle connecting nouns."
any help clearing up this small part will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mike Cash]

If せんwere しまい would you get it?

 

[Toritoribe]

hitokake dake chiri ni (sen to) aizen taichou no shinzou naka ni nokoshitekita ndesu.
the above sentence is from the manga bleach and i am trying to understand it. the only part i can't get is (sen to). i put parenthesis around it since i don't know if its just one word "sento" or "sen to". that part was written with hiragana so i'm having a hard time figuring out what that part means.
i know hitokake dake means "just one piece" and chiri means "dust". one of my guesses is that sen is used as "thousand" but then i don't know why they use "to" since it's not the "to - conditional" nor the "to particle connecting nouns."
any help clearing up this small part will be greatly appreciated.

せ: the imperfective form(未然形) of a classical verb す (= the pre -nai form し of する in Modern Japanese)

ん: the n-euphonic change of the conclusive form(終止形) of a classical auxiliary verb む which expresses intention(= the conjugation suffix う/よう in Modern Japanese)

と: a quotation particle

Thus, せんと is equivalent to しようと in Modern Japanese.


(Incidentally, 心臓ん中 is correct. This ん is the n-euphonic change of the possessive particle の.)

 

[yellowjello]

thank you for the reply. i am not familiar with classical Japanese so i wasn't able to recognize it.

as another quick question. what is the difference between saying "shiyou to" and "suru to" in this situation? i know that shiyou is the volitional form and means "let's do ..." but that doesn't seem like the correct translation in this case. i also know that shiyou to suru means "to try doing ..." but i'm not sure what "shiyou to" by itself means compared with just "suru to".

 

[Toritoribe]

The volitional form is also used to express the subject's intention "to be going to do".