Jarvik7 Wrote:Results 1 - 10 of about 10,800 for "何って言った". (0.15 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,850,000 for "何って言っていた". (0.19 seconds)

The remarkably few results of the first search suggests that it lies in the realm of grammatical mistake (by natives or JSL).

Looks a lot like the sentences that i started the thread with.

informal past vs informal perfect past
"What was just said?" vs "What were you in the state of just saying?"

From reading these discussions, glad to know that I'm not the only one confused by the really fine lines in proper usage.

magamo Wrote:By the way, って often becomes て after ん, so なんって usually becomes なんて in standard Japanese.

Results 1 - 10 of about 39,400 for "何て言っていた". (0.17 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,850,000 for "何って言っていた". (0.19 seconds)

It seems that euphonic changes aren't normally represented in orthography. In fact it's often not even possible to represent it in orthography (ex. 三百 さんびゃく sambyaku, 知っている しっている shteru/shteiru).

magamo Wrote:By the way, って often becomes て after ん, so なんって usually becomes なんて in standard Japanese.

Thanks for this. Now that I think about it, you don't say the ちさい　つ, do you? I guess I was just putting it there without thinking but now I will be aware of it.

Edit: now that I read what Jarvik posted it does seem that I see 何ってmore than何て, at least in literature. Maybe blogs and emails and other casual kind of stuff uses it？Oh well, I'm starting to analyze this too much and that's not good, so I should stop.

Thora Wrote:hmm Do colloquial spoken words show up much in [Google] written pages?

edit: I remember 言ってた too.

Quite a bit. Remember that most blogs on the internet are Japanese (according to various people who care about blogs). There are also many 2ch-like anon board (2ch itself doesn't seem to be indexed though).

A google-fight I did earlier actually had the colloquial form 〜てる outnumber the standard form 〜ている for the few sample verbs I checked.

thistime Wrote:Edit: now that I read what Jarvik posted it does seem that I see 何ってmore than何て, at least in literature. Maybe blogs and emails and other casual kind of stuff uses it？Oh well, I'm starting to analyze this too much and that's not good, so I should stop.

What I meant is that it is pretty much always written 何って, but the pronunciation will often be 何て (like magamo says). Japanese orthography (fancy word for writing system) isn't phonetic and has a lot of euphonic changes (fancy word meaning that pronunciation changes to be easier to say).

Although interestingly, when 何って is before the 終止形 of a verb (何て読む、何て言う、何て呼ばれる、等) or a noun (何て曲), it seems to be written as 何て. I wish I had access to a real academic quality Japanese corpus and some research funding

Jarvik7 Wrote:

thistime Wrote:Edit: now that I read what Jarvik posted it does seem that I see 何ってmore than何て, at least in literature. Maybe blogs and emails and other casual kind of stuff uses it？Oh well, I'm starting to analyze this too much and that's not good, so I should stop.

What I meant is that it is pretty much always written 何って, but the pronunciation will often be 何て

Yep that's what I meant too. I was agreeing with magamo first and then I read what you said and said to myself, "Hey wait, that's right. I do usually see nantte.

Sorry about not making that clear

Jarvik7 Wrote:俺の彼女はそれを読んだら泣くよ

Thoraは女の人だと思うんですが、、

あぁ、そうだった！　インターネット上だと注意していないと全員が男に見える…
ついでだけど、「俺の彼女が」って言う方が多いかなぁ。どっちでもいいんだけどね。

似たような表現に、犯人に自白を迫っている警察官の常套句で「田舎のおっかさんが聞いたら泣くぞ？」ってのがある。
映画やドラマでしか聞かないけどね。というか、警察のお世話になったことないので、実際に使われているのかどうかよく知らない（笑）

thistime Wrote:Thanks for this. Now that I think about it, you don't say the ちさい　つ, do you? I guess I was just putting it there without thinking but now I will be aware of it.

Edit: now that I read what Jarvik posted it does seem that I see 何ってmore than何て, at least in literature. Maybe blogs and emails and other casual kind of stuff uses it？Oh well, I'm starting to analyze this too much and that's not good, so I should stop. wink

小さい is pronounced ちーさい。It can be ちっさい where っ is kind of a glottal stop similar to the sound of the hyphen in "Uh-oh."

何て言った。 is most likely pronounced なんていった. なにっていった is also ok but seems less frequent, and in that case, you'll write it as　何って言った。. "何って" can be either なにって or なんって depending on context. There may also be regional difference.

magamo Wrote:小さい is pronounced ちーさい

Thanks. My mistake. I always write it as kanji so I didn't think too much about the hiragana. I don't think about the writing either when I'm speaking I just try to mimic others. But thanks. Your critiques have definetely made me more aware of my mistakes and I appreciate it. It helps a lot to have people point things out.

It can also be ちっせえ, ちっちぇえ, and countless other colloquial variations. I don't think you'd ever write it like that unless you were deliberately trying to emulate speech though (such as in a manga).

I say おめえちちぇっ (お前小さい) a lot to tease the ちび gf (to which she often replies おめえでけっ).

Jarvik: I wouldn't have thought of Googling speech - I didn't think about the style of blogs, message boards etc. The lingistics definitions help - (need slang defined too). I had to look up euphonics and ノンケ.

Is ~言った　considered more casual, more spoken? If so, that might explain the higher incidence with 何て instead of 何って.

923 for ”何って言った　(my result's lower for some reason)
55,900 for ”何て言った

44,700 for ”何て言っていた
7,050,000 for ”何って言っていた

Chamcham: so we came full circle! About the past tense, I used to get tripped up on this, so I thought I'd add an example fyi. (apologies if that's being too presumptuous)

けさ ご飯　食べた? Did you eat this morning?
いいえ、　食べなかった　　　　　　　　　 No, I didn't eat.

もう ご飯　食べた? 　　　　 Have you eaten already?
いいえ、　まだ　食べていない　　　　　 No, I haven't eaten yet.

magamo Wrote:

thistime Wrote:Thanks for this. Now that I think about it, you don't say the ちさい　つ, do you? I guess I was just putting it there without thinking but now I will be aware of it.

Edit: now that I read what Jarvik posted it does seem that I see 何ってmore than何て, at least in literature. Maybe blogs and emails and other casual kind of stuff uses it？Oh well, I'm starting to analyze this too much and that's not good, so I should stop. wink

何て言った。 is most likely pronounced なんていった. なにっていった is also ok but seems less frequent, and in that case, you'll write it as　何って言った。. "何って" can be either なにって or なんって depending on context. There may also be regional difference.

What I was trying to say (obviously I'm not expressing myself very well, sigh) is that when said it seems to be nante but when written it seems to be nantte.

I think that's also what Jarvik was trying to say. That the written form and the spoken form are not the same. Typically you see nantte but usually you hear nante. What are your thoughts on this?

ノンケ? You mean 終止形?

I could have just said "dictionary form" but it's a dumb translation, especially since dictionaries used to index words by a different conjugation and dictionary compilation techniques have nothing to do with the language itself anyways.

Conjugation is probably the #1 mangled concept in English-language Japanese textbooks/references. Some advanced texts (such as the one I used for classical Japanese) just use the Japanese grammar terms, so that's what I tend to use nowadays too.

Negative form has nothing to do with negative
masu form has nothing to do with masu
dictionary form has nothing to do with dictionaries
"te form" isn't a conjugation form at all
etc

I think the only one with a good English translation is 命令形 (command/imperative form).
</offtopic rant>

uh..actually I was referring to the slang in: "おいおい、ちょっとまて。あいつノンケだって言ってたぞ" (Which is kind of clever if you consider a guy describing himself.)

btw: If the opposite of everything in Magamo's ex. dialogue is true, then I guess that leaves ... "私ちょぉーーー可愛い!" =]

As for grammar, I never learned any terminology - English or Japanese, so it can be difficult to describe or read about it. I think it's more of a linguistics requirement. We studied grammar through patterns/sentences, but without labels.

Oh, I just didn't see ノンケ anywhere in the thread. Then again I never read the whole thing. :/

thistime Wrote:What I was trying to say (obviously I'm not expressing myself very well, sigh) is that when said it seems to be nante but when written it seems to be nantte.

I think that's also what Jarvik was trying to say. That the written form and the spoken form are not the same. Typically you see nantte but usually you hear nante. What are your thoughts on this?

Sorry, I knew what you and Jarvik meant, but I was leaving my room and couldn't fully explain it.

Anyway, I don't write "なんて言った？" meaning "What did you say?", "Sorry?", "What's up?" etc. as "何って言った？." Google seems to agree:

932 for "何って言った"
40,400 for "何て言った"

830 for "今何って言った"
11,600 for "今何て言った"　(今 is added to exclude 何て言った in other senses.)

I think you could say "なんっていった？," but still you often write "何て言った？."

Without context, I can't be sure if なんて is written by 何て or 何って. But I couldn't come up with a sentence in which なんて is written as 何って. I'll give an example dialogue using a lot of 何s:

Me: Not for nothing, but your shirt.
何ってわけじゃないんだけど、そのTシャツはちょっと。（なにって）
Jarvik: What did you say?
何だって？（なんだって）
Me: Nothing. Maybe it's my imagination.
何ってことはないんだけど、 ちょっと気になっただけ。（なにって）
Jarvik: What are you getting at?
どういう意味だよ。
Me: It's nothing.
何でもないってば。（なんでも）

I wonder how I ended up as a character in all of magamo's examples...

Maybe his last name is 田中 so he took my examples personally

Jarvik7 Wrote:I wonder how I ended up as a character in all of magamo's examples...

Maybe his last name is 田中 so he took my examples personally

It's easy to pick up people from Osaka as characters because they love jokes and don't take things personally

Thora Wrote:923 for ”何って言った　(my result's lower for some reason)
55,900 for ”何て言った

44,700 for ”何て言っていた
7,050,000 for ”何って言っていた

I guess you didn't put the phrases in quotation marks. Here's my google results:

393 for "何って言っていた" (Actually only 59. Google says, "...we have omitted some entries very similar to the 59 already displayed.")
19,400 for "何て言っていた"

Your google seems to be filtering results..

Quote:830 for "今何って言った"

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,160 for "今何って言った". (0.25 seconds)

Still a small number, but then again so is the competing search. I only trust google-fights when there are huge differences (.5mil vs 17mil etc) because of the way the matches are tallied.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Your google seems to be filtering results..

Quote:830 for "今何って言った"

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,160 for "今何って言った". (0.25 seconds)

I always set the explicit content filter on when I google things. And google has tons of servers, which are updated in different timing, so results can be slightly different.

Anyway, I think your google results also say "今何て言った" is a lot more frequent.

If you only need to see if a usage is acceptable/proper, google news might be more reliable. I often use google book search too, though I don't know if you can do the same thing to check Japanese grammar.

Here are my numbers

“何て言った”　４０，３００
何て言った　１０．７Million
“何って言った”　２，７５０
何って言った　１０．８Million
“何て言っていた”　１９，４００
何て言っていた　１２Million
“何って言っていた”　３９３
何って言っていた　１１．８Million

It seems without the quotes the numbers are pretty similar

何ってGave １１．４Million　
And
何てGave 13.5 million

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 39,400 for "何て言っていた". (0.17 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,850,000 for "何って言っていた". (0.19 seconds)

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 40,200 for "何て言った". (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,800 for "何って言った". (0.11 seconds)

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 11,600 for "今何て言った". (0.49 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,160 for "今何って言った". (0.09 seconds)

My google fight suggests the opposite. When using 言った instead of 言っていた it may be the opposite as the google-fight for it shows, but I'm not confident declaring something a winner by only a few thousand matches.

I leave the content filter off since I'm paranoid about something legit getting wrongly filtered. Random boobies never offend me anyways

thistime Wrote:...It seems without the quotes the numbers are pretty similar

何ってGave １１．４Million　
And
何てGave 13.5 million

Since the Japanese language doesn't leave a space between words, google is quite unreliable without quotes. You'll know what I mean if you look into the pages.

As for 何って vs. 何て results, I think google picked up tons of なにって written as 何って.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 39,400 for "何て言っていた". (0.17 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,850,000 for "何って言っていた". (0.19 seconds)

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 40,200 for "何て言った". (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,800 for "何って言った". (0.11 seconds)

Quote:Results 1 - 10 of about 11,600 for "今何て言った". (0.49 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,160 for "今何って言った". (0.09 seconds)

My google fight suggests the opposite. When using 言った instead of 言っていた it may be the opposite as the google-fight for it shows, but I'm not confident declaring something a winner by only a few thousand matches.

I leave the content filter off since I'm paranoid about something legit getting wrongly filtered. Random boobies never offend me anyways

何って言っていた can be interpreted as "He said 'What?'." Also google would pick up sentences like 幾何って言っていた while 幾何て言っていた is grammatically wrong. So I think the results are totally skewed. That's one of the reasons why I put 今 before 何.

magamo Wrote:So I think the results are totally skewed. That's one of the reasons why I put 今 before 何.

But 今　is less common before ~言っている than ~言った so you end up with nothing. Yeah, I'm not convinced Google is so useful. And I think we've exhausted this 何て言った. (If thistime's husband had any idea...) =]