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僕は山崎先生が昨日何を言ったか忘れてしまった

I don't understand what is that か doing in this sentence I mean, It should be an を but there's already one but anyways I don't think this is related to the problem

1 Answer 1

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The way to break this sentence down is like this:

僕は [山崎先生が昨日何を言ったか] 忘れてしまった。 I forgot [what Yamazaki-sensei said yesterday].

The か marks the clause as an embedded question that the main verb bears on, and this sentence is great example of the standard pattern. You usually don't need を after an embedded question. Instead, you simply raise a question using an informal sentence structure (no polite です・ます) and then comment on it.

Hope that helps!

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  • But why 山崎先生が昨日何を言った is a embedded question? I still dont get it
    – Soya
    May 28, 2019 at 10:41
  • OKAY OKAY OKAY, I was just checking other questions of people having a similar problem as me with that partcicle and I just saw this comment: "From what I understand, か here indicates an embedded question. Like in English, "I know what you mean." And now I understand it completly, in my mother tongue we dont really have that kind of questions so it was weird for me. Thanks for your help anyways!!
    – Soya
    May 28, 2019 at 10:52
  • Great! Yes, if you get stuck with one of these, just literally translate it as a question followed by an answer. So, here, it would be: "What did Yamazaki-sensei say yesterday? I forgot." May 28, 2019 at 16:21

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