1

もしも僕に心があるならどうやってそれをみつければいいの

I understand the sentence translates along the lines of "If I had a heart, how would I find it?" And I know "いい" means "good/fine/etc" but I'm not sure how to fit that into the translation. Unless it's serving as another word I don't know.

Thanks for the help!

1
  • 4
    The most common phrase with that form would be "どうすればいい?” = "What should I do?"... "どう食べればいい?” = "How should I eat it?". Effectively "What is the right way to do this", "What is the correct way to eat this".
    – gman
    Jun 10, 2019 at 3:34

2 Answers 2

1

conditional form (eba-form) + いい/よい is a very common pattern which literally means "will be good if ~", but essentially means just "can" or "should". See: Learn JLPT N3 Grammar: ばいい (ba ii)

  • どうやって: how
  • それ: it
  • : (object marker)
  • 見つければいい: should find / can find
    • 見つければ: conditional form of 見つける
    • いい: good
  • : explanatory-の used to seek for clarification

Thus "How should/can I find it?"

Note that this pattern is so common that いい/よい may even be omitted.

  • 何をすれば?
    What should I do?
  • 行けば?
    Why don't you go?
0

Yeah. I see why it's confusing as いい/良い is usually straight up "good".

どうすれば良いですか? - how can I do this? Direct translation of Japanese is "To get a good result, how?" This is how we'd ask for instructions.

Similarly the direct translation of

もしも僕に心があるならどうやってそれをみつければいいの

If I have a heart, how would I get a good result of finding it.

Hope this helps.

In this particular one, it sounds like a line from lyrics, it's more like "I can't find my soul. I don't think I have it."

You must log in to answer this question.

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