WHAT THE HECK DOES "…" MEAN THREAD

[SwoosherzMember]

I thought it’d be nice to have this thread in addition to the “HOW DO I SAY “…” THREAD” thread. :D

Question #1
何億年という長い時が過ぎても

What the fudge cakes is 「という」doing in there? I get the gist of the sentence in a very loosely translated sense, but this scheiße is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I’ve even done my fair share of googling the various uses of 「という」and none of them seem to make sense for this instance.

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/the-i-found-some-japanese-i-dont-understand-thread/

But as for your question, sorry, I can’t help you >.<

[SwoosherzMember]

Heh. Heh. Heh. I sort of viewed that as a thread just for kyle because he was the only person posting there. If any mods wanna delete this and ban me forever, though. They totes mcgotes can.

[AdrianaMember]

サンフランシスコであえるといいですね.

I can’t figure this one out. I know it says something about San Francisco, but that is all I can figure out!

[ElenkisMember]

I hope we can meet in San Francisco.

あえる is the potential form of あう and といいです is meaning “I hope”.

[AdrianaMember]

Elenkis – thank you very much!

[jklMember]

> 何億年という長い時が過ぎても

From reading the translations in Read Real Japanese Essays, one of the senses I get of “A という B” is “A sort of B” or “A kind of B.”

For example on page 56, the author is describing a particularly fussy order in a flower shop, and says

…という感じのこと。

This is translated, “It was that sort of order.” Perhaps more literally, “It was that kind of feeling.”

Also consider this sentence from smart.fm:

その作家は三十五歳という若さで病死した。

The translation I have says “The writer died of an illness at the young age of 35.”

Maybe you could also understand that as “The writer died in the 35-year-old sort of youth.” That doesn’t sound good in English, but I think that is basically what is going on.

I’m not completely sure I understand what to do with 何 and ても, but perhaps your sentence could be understood to mean “Even if a so-many-hundred-million-year sort of long-time passes,” or perhaps more colloquially “Even if like a gazillion years go by.”

[SwoosherzMember]

Yeah, what I sort of gathered is that the も at the end, which reoccurs throughout the song is sort of like “No matter if” and why 過ぎて is in the て-form, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s consistent so that’s good. :D

And yeah, after your explanation it makes more sense. “No matter if hundreds of millions of years sort of long time passes,” which makes absolutely no sense in English because of the whole plural disagreeing with the rest of the sentence thing, but in Japanese it seems pretty sound.

The 何 seems to make it sort of like a group of years sort of thing. For example(s):
何千年 = Thousands of years
何万年 = Tens of thousands of years

Whereas without the 何 it’d just be “a hundred million years,” or “a thousand years,” etc.

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