I've just come across "〜していたりして" at the end of a sentence in a post on Facebook, so it's probably very casual. Does anyone know the correct meaning and typical usage?
たりして is used to posit some event as a possibility but something you are not sure about. For example, about the future:
10年後に大金持ちになっていたりして。
From the nature of this expression meaning "not being sure", it is also used as a hedge when you want to be modest and a bit comical:
ひょっとして、さっきのことでまだ怒ってたりして。
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2would ひょっとして、さっきのことでまだ怒ってたりして。 translate as "Perhaps (I) might be still mad about what happened a little while ago."? – yadokari May 31 '12 at 14:35
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@yadokari Something like that. – user458 May 31 '12 at 14:49
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@sawa Thanks, those two points of uncertainty and (possible) humour agree precisely with the opinion of my Japanese wife, but I wasn't about to trust her. ;-) – Nick Westgate May 31 '12 at 21:29
I'm not sure what part you're stuck on, and we can give more relevant answers most of the time if we know the context, but here we go:
している is the present-continuous short form of the verb する (to do).
The 〜たり suffix indicates an incomplete list of one or more actions (more on that here), for example
新聞を読んだり、コーヒーを飲んだりする
Read a newspaper, drink coffee, and so on. (or)
Do such things as read a newspaper and drink coffee.
So the best translation I can give without the context here is:
〜していたりして
Doing such things as ~
As for why the final する is in て-form, that would be easier to answer if we could see the full sentence.
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4Your syntactic analysis is right, but you are missing the most crucial aspect: the particular nuance of this expression. – user458 May 31 '12 at 11:34
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Thanks John, I've seen tari-suru but it was confirmation of the difference from that and the meanings that I was after. – Nick Westgate May 31 '12 at 22:25
