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Japanese "anna koto saenakereba"

  Tags: Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
XellKhaar
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United States
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11 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: English*, Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 3
14 April 2009 at 5:46am | IP Logged 
What does the sentence: "anna koto saenakereba" mean in English?

I can barely even find references to any of these words online.. does anyone know what each of these words mean and what the sentence means?
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nissimb
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India
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79 posts - 102 votes 
Speaks: Marathi*, Hindi, English, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Esperanto, Indonesian

 
 Message 2 of 3
14 April 2009 at 6:02am | IP Logged 
Anna koto sae nakereba "If only something like that would not have happened.."
Hope this helps.
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ericspinelli
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Japan
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Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Italian

 
 Message 3 of 3
14 April 2009 at 9:14am | IP Logged 
XellKhaar wrote:
What does the sentence: "anna koto saenakereba" mean in English?

I can barely even find references to any of these words online.. does anyone know what each of these words mean and what the sentence means?


あんな is part of the こんな / そんな / あんな / どんな set, meaning "this/that/what kind of."
こと is 事, or thing/concept.
さえ, which expresses a minimum, is explained here (Tae Kim's).
なければ is the conditional form of ない.

Although Tae doesn't explain it explicitly, he does give an example of さえ + a conditional.

As was nissimb said, all together it means something like, "If only that sort of thing didn't happen/exit." You could even reasonably, if loosely, translate it as "barring something like that."


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