だってI heard/was said, Because, But, Even or also, Even if or even though

Most Recent Replies (24 in total)

• 

  mrnoone

  English translate:
  I heard
  was said・like I said
  as for・because
  even though

  Structure:
  Noun + ( ん ) だって
  Noun + だって
  だって + Phrase

  Explanation:
  [Used to state reason when positioned at the beginning of a sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence it expresses hearsay (だ + quotation particle って). Can be used as “also/even” when follows a noun (contraction of でも) or even if.]

  View on Bunpro

• 

  s1212z

  Hi!

  I see the “feminine conjunction” hint here but the speaker is also using 僕.

  Can you elaborate a bit about the rules of context here?
• 

  mrnoone

  Hey and sorry for the extremely late answer!

  It’s more like naive/childish phrasing, especially when used at the beginning of the sentence, meaning “but”/“because”. That’s why it is often used by women and children.

  But both (actually 3 uses, though だって “but”/“because” is rarely used by men) are used by all, men, women and children in informal conversations with people they know.

  Though ですって is sometimes used when speaking politely with people (by mostly women) of the same rank or lower. In other cases だそうです is safer.

  By the way, the speaker might have tried to act cute, for example, some men use “おれ” on daily basis, but change pronoun to “ぼく” when talking with elder siblings, parents, etc.

  Cheers!

  PS
  I will add note about this.

• 

  mrnoone

  PS2
  It is rarely used when speaking about oneself, so I will change the sentence.

  (Someone can understand it as “He said “I am innocent””)

• 

  eefara

  I’ve got a question re: one of the example sentences:

  アイスクリームだって薬になる。食べ過ぎなければ。
  Even ice cream, it can do you good. That is, if you don’t eat too much.

  Specifically, 食べ過ぎなければ。Where is the negation coming from, “if you don’t eat too much”? I was under the impression that shortening なければいけない/なければならない didn’t change the meaning, it was just shortened. If so, why doesn’t that sentence read something like “You must eat too much.”?

  (This isn’t really related to だって, sorry, even though the sentence is from that page…)

• 

  mrnoone

  Hey

  Xなければ is negative ば form (negative conditional), meaning “if (someone does) not (do) X then”.
  It is used in Xなければいけない（ならない、etc), the “must” construction, but if we were to translate it a bit more literally, it means "if not X then it will be not good (いけない - “not good” in this case).

  So なければ can be either contraction of the must construction, or simple negative ば form itself. It all depends on the context.

  In this case, we don’t have any context so we have to use common sense:

  Even ice cream can do you good. That is if you eat too much.

  doesn’t make much of sense, so alternative:

  Even ice cream can do you good. That is if you don’t eat too much.

  is the correct translation.

  I hope it helps,
  Cheers

• 

  eefara

  Thanks for the explanation! I forget to break Xなければいけない down; it’s too easy to fall into the trap of just seeing it as one glob. o.o;

• 

  darkness_rising

  I think this grammar point could be segmented a bit more; I’m having a bit of trouble with distinguishing the “i heard” and the “even though” definitions.

• 

  mrnoone

  @darkness_rising
  Hey

  think this grammar point could be segmented a bit more

  I agree! We will split it as soon as possible.
  For now, I think you can use the following tips:

  if だって follows a noun (but not a noun at the end of a sentence) then it means even.

  if だって is used at the end of a sentence, then it expresses hearsay, “I
  heard…”

  If だって is at the beginning of a sentence, then it means “because”.

  I hope it helps (for now!)
  and thank you for the great feedback,

  Cheers!

• 

  mrthuvi

  I think I encounter another usecase of だって in the wild:

  先生だってうそは言わないだろう。

  I think it means “Teachers (without exception) would not lie.”

  From goo.ne dictionary:
  疑問・不定を表す語、または、数量・程度を表す語に付いて、例外なくそうである意を表す

• 

  ljoekelsoey

  Would this not be more along the lines of “Teachers, like, don’t lie!” ?

  You know, like, the way english speakers like, put “like” in, like, everything?

• 

  mrthuvi

  This is the context:

  進学指導で、「きみの成績なら、あの大学に入れる 確率は10%だね」と言われたら、どうか。あなたは、自分を入れない90%の側に置いてあきら めるのではないか。それとも10%の側に置いてチャレンジするだろうか。
  確かに数値はうそをつかない。先生だってうそは言わないだろう。だが、先生は、過去の数値を示しているだけで、あなたがどちらの側に当てはまるかは判断していない。

  I think that could work as literal translation (which is good when we want to analyze the source language). It’s surrounded by plain forms so the informal register doesn’t seem off.

• 

  EbonyMidget

  Is it not being used in the the sense of also, too or as well? For example one of the sentences Jisho offers is “女性だってエッチしたい” translated as “Women want to have sex too.”. So when they say "確かに数値はうそをつかない。先生だってうそは言わないだろう"are they not saying that the numbers don’t lie and the teacher also doesn’t?

• 

  mrthuvi

  That だって in the jisho sentence means even which is covered by bunpro.
  (Even) women wants sex, too.

• 

  ljoekelsoey

  女性だってエッチしたい translates pretty well to “women want to have sex too”, but there is no distinction in this English translation for 女性だって and 女性も. That’s why I suggested ‘like’.

  Yeh of course I don’t just eat crap. I, like, eat fruit and stuff!
  当たり前におやつしか食わないわけないよ。俺だって果物などは食うよ

• 

  mrthuvi

  I check the goo.ne dictionary again and “likeness” and “without exception” are listed under the same numbered point so you do have a solid point there. I think that the word “even” in English do share that [similarity] semantic feature with the other meanings after all.

• 

  Kenjugs

  「月に＿だって＿行けるかもしれない。」
  You can probably even go to the moon.

  Should there be a に here or am I missing something? 月に isn’t a noun, is it?
  Can だって be put after anything to mean “even”, not just nouns?

• 

  gyroninja

  Yes, using にだって is definitely valid.

  月 is a noun. When だって is used as “even” it is a binding particle. I don’t know if this is an actual rule, but it seems to be true that you can use any binding particle after the に particle. eg. には, にも, にでも, にこそ, ...

• 

  Kenjugs

  Ahh, okay. I knew there were particle combinations involving に but didn’t know that にでも/にだって were valid combinations; something in my brain was telling me にも was good enough for some reason.

• 

  Ambo100

  Two helpful resources I came across on YouTube: