3

I've stumbled upon a sentence in a Japanese novel, and I am looking for help from someone who can explain to me the function of "モンねぇ" in this particular sentence.

局長が相談に乗ってくれるなら、怖いモンねぇな!

So I believe the sentence would translate to something akin to:

It's scary if we get advice from the director!

I think モン = もん which could also = もの and I believe it has various different meanings or grammatical functions depending on the context. I also know ねぇ = ない.

However, putting this all together I'm still having a hard time understanding what モンねぇ is doing in the sentence. How does モンねぇ affect the sentence?

1 Answer 1

7

Your translation, for some reason, does not reflect your grammatical understanding of the expression. You stated:

" I also know ねぇ = ない.",

which is correct, but your TL is:

"It's scary if we get advice from the director!"

Why "It's scary" when ねぇ means ない? Where did the negative ねぇ go?

「モンねぇ」=「ものない」=「ものはない」

「怖{こわ}いモンねぇ」 means "there is nothing to fear".

You translated the sentence the opposite way. My own would be:

"If we could get advice from the director, we would have nothing to fear/to be afraid of, would we?"

You must log in to answer this question.

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