Question about　って - Printable Version

Question about　って - Printable Version

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Question about　って - Babyrat - 2009-01-12

Sorry if there is a thread/post somewhere already about って but i couldn't find anything.

I just recently started sentence mining and i came across this sentence and i'm wondering how the　って is used in it

強さって何だろう

How i think it works is it quotes the word it comes after, but i'm not even sure about this as I could not find much info about it.
So i would see it as somthing like this:

"strength" what is it?

Now, of course i might have translated the whole sentence wrong, so please correct me as i'm happy to recieve constructive criticism.

P.S There should be a thread devoted to little quick questions like this so people like me don't have to make a new thread. I'm sure i have seen one on here before but it must have been a diffrent forum.

Question about　って - joxn_costello - 2009-01-12

You got it right.

How to Tell the Difference Between Japanese Particles says that って is used for reported speech (things a person has heard from other people), and is mostly used in casual contexts. Following a plain verb it often appears as んだって. In more formal contexts you would say そうです.

In your example sentence, って isn't reporting speech so much as indicating "when we say ..." or "what we call ...", so I think that a more formal rendition would go something like: 「強さ」と言うことは、何でしょうか？

"When we say 'strength', what might that be?"

Question about　って - Babyrat - 2009-01-12

Thanks for the quick and quite excellent reply, that has cleared quite a bit up for me.

Question about　って - Tobberoth - 2009-01-12

って is indeed short for という.

Question about　って - PrettyKitty - 2009-01-12

You also see とは used instead って.

Sometimes it's just the word + とは or って. (No 何だろう etc.)

Question about　って - Tobberoth - 2009-01-12

It's important to remember that there's usually still some things implied by the use. For example, one can also shorten という as っと, but it isn't used in the exact same situations.

Learning the differences is pretty much impossible without tons of exposure I'd say, it's very subtle.

Question about　って - mentat_kgs - 2009-01-12

Yeah, it is something that gets really natural with enough input. Don't worry about it.

Question about　って - nest0r - 2009-01-12

You can also use it in this way: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/define.html#part5

Or as described in a book I have (Japanese the Manga Way), it goes from lit. "as for what is called ~" to "as for ~", and is considered informal as well.

Question about　って - igordesu - 2009-01-12

is this also kind of used to replace wa and/or ga (sorry, don't feel like using IME) particles? Because I've noticed that it gets used sometimes where I thought wa or ga should be used, but they're not. It's almost like they use this to, like, emphasize something...or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm way off?

Question about　って - nest0r - 2009-01-12

igordesu Wrote:is this also kind of used to replace wa and/or ga (sorry, don't feel like using IME) particles? Because I've noticed that it gets used sometimes where I thought wa or ga should be used, but they're not. It's almost like they use this to, like, emphasize something...or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm way off?

See above. って can be a colloquial topic marker, serving a function like は can.

Question about　って - Raichu - 2009-01-12

It probably derives as a contraction of と言って. But yeah the use can be quite varied, standing as a colloquial equivalent of と, とは, というのは, と言って, と言った, even は and そうです as some have pointed out. AFAIK you wouldn't use it in formal writing.