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I came across the sentence

入って{はいって}いいのかな

and I wasn't able to translate it into English.

If I'm not mistaken the first Kanji is read as "Hai" annd this should mean "enter" right ? Then it goes on with "tsute" which is supposed to mean something like "if". "ii" means "good" so and "no" indicates a question. The last two hiragana should mean "I wonder" or "Wonder" but if I put all of this into one sentence I would come to "I wonder if it will be good if I enter". But somehow that makes no sense to me.

It would be nice if someone could explain it to me.

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  • Do you know how to conjugate Japanese verbs?
    – Earthliŋ ♦
    Aug 24, 2016 at 15:55
  • To be honest no.
    – Kyevabu
    Aug 24, 2016 at 16:26

1 Answer 1

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～て(も)いい is a fixed pattern to say "it's okay if ..." or ask (in a question) "is it okay if ...", which derives from the more general ～ても "even if", so that we have something like

～て(も)いい
it's okay if ...
lit. even if ... it's good.

In your example

入って(も)いいかな
I wonder if it's okay if [I] enter

Considering that you don't know how to conjugate verbs, your guess was pretty good. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation you will learn that って is the okurigana for the te-form of 入る "to enter", i.e. 入って is a conjugation of the verb 入る.

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  • No problem. If this answered your question, you can mark this question as answered by accepting this answer (check mark); or you can wait for other answers.
    – Earthliŋ ♦
    Aug 25, 2016 at 15:25

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