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From the 80s Final Fantasy III game. The situation is a daughter's love interest has left leaving her crying, and you are talking with her mother who says:

あのおとこ　どうしても　さがさなければならない
ものが　あるといって　たびにでちまった。
おかげで　むすめは　ないてばかりさ。

I've left the white space as it is in the game text.

Updates from comments and further looking:

I originally assumed that あのおとこ was acting as the object for さがさ... which I was thinking of as a verb. Looking at this again (with some sleep), I'm thinking that あのおとこ is the subject of the sentence, and that さがさなければならない is an adjective in that form describing もの.

So, with that perspective I'm getting something more like this for the first sentence:

"That guy said, 'There is something, that must be searched for by any means', and left to travel."

Am I closer with this? Thanks for everyone's patience with my naive question.

Original text left for reference:

On it's own i think I understand the first line "... must do anything to search for that guy". But, I'm unclear on the second line. The でちまった I assume is the contraction of 出て and しまった. But I'm not really sure about the rest of the second line. Is it trying to convey something along the lines of:

"Speaking of this thing that exists (with と quoting ものがある as a place holder for the situation as a whole), when you (the character) have left, you must do whatever you can to search for this guy..."

Or have I completely missed a grammar pattern and I'm no where close?

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  • Just to be clear, you're not trying to read the first and second line as two separate sentences, right?
    – Leebo
    Sep 29, 2022 at 3:15
  • Right, I'm trying to understand what they are trying to convey as a whole.
    – Rabayn
    Sep 29, 2022 at 3:18
  • There is no word for “when”.
    – aguijonazo
    Sep 29, 2022 at 8:22
  • As @Leebo points out, the first and second lines are part of a single sentence. As such, your statement that 'I think I understand the first line "... must do anything to search for that guy"' is incorrect -- that's not what the first line means, and the meaning of the first line cannot be understood separately from the second line.
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Sep 29, 2022 at 16:29
  • 2
    The adverb たびに would be 度に in kanji, but in this sentence it's just 旅に, the noun 旅. If you're a beginner and don't have any kanji to help narrow it down, it helps to try various possible things that would fit.
    – Leebo
    Sep 29, 2022 at 23:35

1 Answer 1

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for understanding, I tried to rewrite it into more formal Japanese.

step 1 (Hiragana → Kanji)

I could't determine "もの" by only reference sentence. Maybe you can rewrite "もの" to "物".

あの男　どうしても　探さなければならない
ものが　あると言って　旅に出ちまった。
おかげで　娘は　泣いてばかりさ。

step 2 (space → punctuation)

あの男，どうしても探さなければならないものがあると言って，旅に出ちまった。
おかげで，娘は泣いてばかりさ。

step 3 (more formal)

あの男は，「どうしても探さなければならないものがある」と言って，旅に出てしまいました．
そのせいで，娘は泣いてばかりです．

In this sentence, "娘(Daughter)" is not necessarily the daughter of "あの男(The man)". It can be determined by context of story.

Could you deepen understand?

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