As in このオレさま and この僕も. I know the literal translation, but I never understood what the intent of it is.
asked May 30, 2014 at 19:06
-
この俺、そのお前、あのやつ, etc. この僕 sounds like この(えらい)僕 to me.– Yang MuyeCommented May 30, 2014 at 20:32
-
1I have heard この<speaker's name> in humbling contexts (from maids, servants, butlers, etc), but この<personal pronoun> seems like the opposite, as Yang Muye says... unsure if it's a definite rule though.– HyperwormCommented May 30, 2014 at 21:29
-
I want to say I've heard both down and up versions of this usage. But the type of sentence I imagine it with most commonly is something like "Who is going to help us move?" この私が手伝います。– virmaiorCommented May 31, 2014 at 5:06
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
I think この usually implies some quality of “me”. You can translate it as “someone like me”. You can insert some adjectives between この and <first person pronoun>.
Usually it sounds proud or arrogant, especially in このオレさま.
フン、この(偉大なる)ヤング様に勝負を挑むなど、百年早いわ！
天才美少女であるこのアタシが教えてあげるんだから、ありがたく思いなさい！
But as Hyperworm pointed out, it can be used in exactly the opposite sense. e.g.
この(拙い)私でいいの？
この平凡なあたしにも王子様が現れないかな。
I think この私 tends to refer to some positive quality, and こんな私 some negative quality. But I'm not sure.
「よく聞け！私はお前達とは違うのじゃ！だからして…この私に気安く話しかけるでないぞ！分かったか？一般人ども！」 ｂｙ 久地院美華
I think this is a pose of この私. (Does anyone know the name of this pose?)
"The guy standing here in front of you"
"This guy here"
"The guy you're looking at"
"This guy"
"Me here"
Update
Some clarification as noted by the commenters. Yes, オレ and 僕 or course refer to the speaker. So the question is, what is the nuance introduced by the demonstrative adjective この? It is "this me", as opposed to some other "me", such as a "me" at some other point in time, or a hypothetical "me" in some other situation. Since "this me" is ungrammatical in English, we need some other word to stand in for "me", for which I chose "guy", although I suppose there are equally good alternatives. Another way of introducing this nuance would be with a formulation such as "right now I..." or "standing here I...".
-
2The OP seems to be asking about "This Me" (オレ、僕）which a lot less intuitive than "This guy".– TimCommented May 31, 2014 at 0:20
-
Voting down because it's impossible to tell if the answerer overlooked that the OP is talking about pronouns rather than nouns like "guy". If the distinction between nouns and pronouns in cases like this in Japanese is so different to English then that needs to be part of the answer since a learner would never guess it and we are here to learn. Commented May 31, 2014 at 4:21
-
5I think the other commenters are going too far in making literal translations. This answer has it right that that "this guy" is the best way of expressing in English the concept of
この僕. For example, in this sentence, "this guy" means "me": "Who loves you? This guy, right here, standing in front of you." "This me" simply does not exist in English, so an equivelent is needed in place of a direct translation. Commented May 31, 2014 at 4:44 -
@DaveMG: Thanks. If you are not planning to write an answer then toraburo should incorporate your example into his.– TimCommented Jun 1, 2014 at 2:09
ko-so-a-do-paradigm
The words kono, sono, and ano, (interrogative dono) are deictic demonstratives. Their deictic meanings operate along a proximal-distal dimension.
kono = proximal to the speaker
sono = proximal to the addressee
ano = distal to both speaker and addressee.
This kind of deictic meaning is not restricted to kono, sono, and ano. There are at least these additional forms:
adnominals: kono, konna [emphatic]
nominals: kore; koko
adverbs: koo, konnani [emphatic]; kotira, kotti [emphatic]
This type of deixis is expressed by the entire paradigm, and not only by kono, sono, and ano.
Speakers are always proximal to themselves. Hence, one must use kono with a pronominal expression referring to the 1st person.
However, kono itself does not express meaning in the modesty-respect dimension. This dimension is referenced by the pronominal expression: 俺 is far less modest than 私, and that leads to the differing nuances of この俺 and この私.
answered May 31, 2014 at 12:21
