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I'm continuing my quest to translate an episode of Terrace House for study purposes..

Naturally I have questions.. This question in particular is in regards to a phrase I got stuck on the tail-end of.

Japanese Subtitle:

印象に残ってるメンバーとかいた

My Vocabulary Break-Down:

印象 - impression

残る - to remain, to be left

メンバー - house members

とかいた - ???

My literal translation attempt:

your impression that you've been left with of the house members (???) was?

I'm trying to understand what とかいた is doing here...

Here are my best guesses...

  • とか is being used on it's own like a conjunction "or/and", and いた is short form for いました. If this is the case how does this grammatically work? Something like "Your impression you were left with of the members and it was?" Not sure how とか would function in this scenario.
  • と is being used as a particle "with the members", and then かいた is a past tense verb. (hard to determine what verb this would be without kanji).
  • とかいた is some sort of completely different word on it's own that I'm unaware of yet.
  • Or maybe this is a completely different grammar pattern I haven't learned yet.

Please help me understand this sentence.

1 Answer 1

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とか (and so on, etc.) and いた(existed, was) are correct in this scenario.

Original

印象に残ってるメンバーとかいた?

Polite

あなたの印象に残っているメンバーなどは、いましたか?(polite)

English

Did anyone leave an impression on you?

Students or young people use とか in conversations when they are seeking some topic to continue talking about, like:「見たい映画とかある?」

They talk about not only movies. If I reply「あのアニメ見たい」 or 「映画館よりカフェに行こう」, we will change topics.

とか is often used in talking to extend the range of topics.

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    maybe adding your "version" of the translated sentece would be cool, I'm sure it could help OP understand the whole thing better imo. Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 0:48

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