1

I have a character that says this phrase, he (A) fights with an enemy (B), where B doesn't put a lot of effort to go against A (he uses magic from a distance to fight.

A says: 楽しくねえだろう。片手間に遊んでもらってもよお。

A's sentence that I can see has てもらう just sounds very odd to me here and I cannot understand properly...
A is the one receiving the action of getting fun/entertainment, right? I don't quite understand what he is trying to express. Also, his sentence ends with もらってもwhich confuses me a bit, and he also has the ’よお’part which gives me the feeling that he says 'come on/will you'? as if to express his dissatisfaction with this fight, that it's not fun (like he said before).
If anyone can provide with any kind of interpretation I would be grateful.

EDIT: I was thinking if this could be an inversion? I didn't consider it because it wouldn't fit the speech style of the character. Even so, if it would be:

片手間に遊んでもらってもよお楽しくねえだろう。

I still don't quite make sense of it. So in this context fighting is 'fun' for A and if A is the one 'receiving the favor of getting entertained' (sometimes I do understand better with very literal explanations), then, can it mean something like " Even though you are playing with me in your spare time, it's not fun, y'know." I really have doubts about my interpretation...

Improve this question
7
  • Just an idea but would it not be better to start reading Japanese using some other material than manga?
    – user36788
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 12:26
  • I do read other things, it's just that I found quite a lot of challenging things sometimes in manga because I often find slang terms and such, informal way of speaking that I do not get sometimes, because I was not taught in school that way.
    – Alice B. Rabbit
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 12:35
  • Ok, I suppose my comment is about the number of manga reading questions on the site in general rather thsn you in particular.
    – user36788
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 12:41
  • The sentence as quoted does not appear to have ても anywhere in it. It has で (not て, and which is part of 遊んで) followed by も (the start of もらって), and it has て (the end of もらって) followed by も, but neither of these are the word ても..
    – Foogod
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 21:16
  • @Foogod Hmm, no? But is it not 遊んでもらう＞て-form=遊んでもらって, then followed by も+the よ emphatic particle? well here as よお which I guess the intention was to make it sound longer. So, uhm, what can you tell me,like do you have an interpetration?
    – Alice B. Rabbit
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 21:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

楽しくねえだろう。片手間に遊んでもらってもよお。

You're right that it's an inversion. The normal word order should be:

片手間に遊んでもらっても、楽しくねえだろう + よお。

The よお is a lengthened pronunciation of the final particle (終助詞)「よ」.

「てform + もらう」 means "receive an action from someone (for my benefit)" → "have someone do something for me".

So 「(AがBに)遊んでもらう」 would be "A receives the action of playing with A from B" → "A has B play with A"

The 片手間に means "not seriously", "not earnestly", or "casually".

The 遊ぶ indirectly means 戦う.

So the sentence is like...

Lit. "Even if I have you play with me not seriously, I'm not having fun, you see?" /
"It's not fun when you fight so un-seriously, you see?"

... implying "Come on, fight seriously!"

Improve this answer
1
  • Thank you! I think that what was also hard for me to grasp was the use 片手間に here because I mostly saw definitions that mean 'spare/free time' and I just couldn't understand how it should have been understood. And yeah it made sense after reordering the sentences, it stumped me a little because I haven't many phrases ending in ても (colloquial speech is not my forte so if this happens in conversations, I wouldn't know so good) instead of being at the start or middle of sentence.
    – Alice B. Rabbit
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 20:12
0

I may be wrong (I often am), but I think the use of 「もらっても」 here is a common idiomatic construction for asking for a favor:

て-verb + もらっても = "can you let me ..." / "could you do for me ..."

I believe this is a contraction of the full phrase 「もらってもいいですか」 ("Is it ok if I have ...?" (lit, "if you give (it to me), is it good (ok)?"))

So my (admittedly non-expert) reading of

遊んでもらってもよお

is something along the lines of "could you please let me have some fun?!"

I'm not sure I really understand the use of 「片手間に」 in this context, though..

Improve this answer
3
  • It's not asking for a favour in this case, it is talking about an ongoing action.
    – user36788
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 23:30
  • @Foogod That's what I was thinking, but I never encountered such a contraction and I was wondering if the よお, part could be male speech, to say いい, because logically,after seeing the character end his sentence like that, I thought that it should be てもいい。 Also the 片手間に bit I don't get it either, my feeling was that character A (who says those lines), is somehow mocking character B (like 'in your gracious spare time I received humbly the favor of you entertaining me) something like that (;'∀') I think...
    – Alice B. Rabbit
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 0:09
  • @Ben Can you perhaps give me more details? I know that when もらう is used, or in this case verb+てもらう it's usually the meaning of 'had someone do something' (as in you asked them, and you are grateful for the actions) "I got/had someone to do X for me" and I tried to figure out the lines I wrote with these meanings, since A is the speaker, もらう is used so he is the subject of receiving something.
    – Alice B. Rabbit
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 0:17

You must log in to answer this question.

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