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「おれは...」と田中が言えば、「おれは...」と吉田が言った。

Literally, "if Tanaka could say ... then Yoshida said ...".

What is the meaning of this structure? I've seen Aと言えば to mean "speaking of A", but that doesn't seem to work here.　Also Aと言えばB "When you think of A, then B" doesn't make much sense either.

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  • 考え過ぎでは？「言う」という動詞を二度使用してるのが大きなヒントかな。もし、「言えば」が "to speak of ~~" や "to think of ~~" という意味で使われているのなら、同一文中で「言う」を反復することは基本的にないはずなので。
    – user4032
    Dec 22, 2015 at 16:12
  • @職場恋愛小説執筆中 So it's nothing more than "Speaking of (the fact that) Tanaka said ... (that reminds me) that Yoshida said..."?
    – user3856370
    Dec 22, 2015 at 16:26
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    This sentence contains no idiomatic phrase that can be explained by itself. If the literal translation doesn't make sense to you, you need to provide the context.
    – naruto
    Dec 22, 2015 at 22:42
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because there's is nothing to answer. The grammar is straightforward.
    – user3856370
    Dec 23, 2015 at 10:11
  • Actually I think many of us just can't find a crucial clue for either yes or no from your short excerpt. Except we can confirm it's grammatically unwrecked, it's surprisingly information-less that I couldn't understand what made you suspicious enough to bring it to ask here.
    – broccoli forest
    Dec 24, 2015 at 7:17

1 Answer 1

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I think you are confused with the two usages of と言えば in different contexts.

  1. Presentation of the topic
    東京と言えば東京タワーは見逃せない (Speaking of Tokyo / When it comes to Tokyo, we can't miss Tokyo Tower)

  2. if
    僕が「好きだよ」と言えば、彼女は「私も」と返事をするだろう (If I say "I like you", she would reply "me too".

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    I have also seen it to mean something like "reminds us of" or "makes us think of" or "dont forget about" Ex. 北海道と言えば メロンです (Speaking of Hokaido, you can't forget melons.)
    – Escoce
    Sep 14, 2021 at 18:21
  • Yes, probably similar to the usage 1?
    – user51966
    Sep 14, 2021 at 23:18

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