4

Tell me please, what から means in his sentence? If I'm guessing corrctly it would translate something like "She fall on her face really hard", but still... would ”顔面に全力で” be incorrect here?

Sentence: コケていた。恐らくは・・・・・・顔面から全力で。

enter image description here

Thanks you very much for your help.

4
  • 2
    「顔面から先に地面に突っ込んだ」「顔面を一番に地面に打ちつけた」という感じだと思います。(すみません英語ではどういうか分かりません)
    – user1016
    Mar 4, 2013 at 18:37
  • 1
    English has the word "face-first", I think it fits well here :)
    – Hyperworm
    Mar 4, 2013 at 18:46
  • 1
    I wrote an answer based partially on @Chocolate's comment. I hope someone who's better than me at Japanese will take a look and tell me if they think I'm wrong! :-)
    – user1478
    Mar 4, 2013 at 19:20
  • possible duplicate of Need clarification on a particular use of から
    – Flaw
    Mar 5, 2013 at 0:55

1 Answer 1

6

I think から here is "a particle which indicates a starting point or a source" (A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, p.176). 顔面から is describing a verb of motion (コケる, to fall).

picture

(My apologies for the bad drawing and handwriting! It's supposed to say [顔面]{がんめん}から・[先]{さき}に・[地面]{じめん}に like in @Chocolate's comment.)

So the motion described by コケる is from the face, toward the ground. 先{さき}に and 地面{じめん}に aren't part of your original sentence, but I think you can use them to describe the motion.

I don't think you can use here. I think you're trying to understand by substituting English words for Japanese ones. If you do that, your sentence sounds like "I fell from my face", and you're wondering if you can substitute because you think the English phrase "I fell on my face" sounds more natural. Unfortunately, this doesn't work, because although コケる expresses falling, it doesn't do it in quite the same way as the English word "fall".

2
  • How does the 全力 come into play then? Like "Fell as hard as possible" or something?
    – istrasci
    Mar 4, 2013 at 20:15
  • 1
    I think tells us that 全力 expresses the way in which コケた happened, and I think your translation is fine. I didn't focus on it because I didn't think it changed the meaning of から in this case.
    – user1478
    Mar 4, 2013 at 20:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .