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The sentence is, 'マスコミにバラしてもいいんですよ？' What does this mean, literally?

Also, is this figure of speech frequently used? If it is, could you please give me some instances when it is used in daily life?

Thank you.

NyNy
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  • Are you sure there is a question mark at the end of this sentence? – Earthliŋ Oct 16 '13 at 16:16
  • @ Earthling Yes, there definitely is, i re-checked.. i guess it means, "Its alright even to(*something*) in the Mass media", and the question mark is because the -よ is being used to ask the listeners to agree with the statement? like, sometimes, when you say something you know is right, and then you just throw in a 'yo' at the end, so that people confirm what you said? – NyNy Oct 16 '13 at 16:30
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    To ask for confirmation you usually use ね, not よ. – Earthliŋ Oct 16 '13 at 16:42
  • Can you provide the context that you saw/heard this? Was it from a manga? Was it on a television show? What was the surrounding context of the conversation when this was said? In general, Japanese is a very context dependent language, so it never hurts to give as much background as you can. – rurouniwallace Oct 16 '13 at 16:58
  • @Earthling yes, usually, but its not wrong to use 'yo' like that, either, is it? like, ですね, but drop the ね for convenience? – NyNy Oct 16 '13 at 17:17
  • @Ataraxia - Yes, it was a TV Show, with just Japanese subs, which is why i got stuck at this point.. well, This teacher is falsely accused of sexually abusing his students, so there's a PTA meeting, and one of the ladies of the board says, 何で こんな教師 辞めさせないんですか?! So the vice principal says, 彼も 否定しているわけですし まだ 事実関係を 確認している段階ですから- and this other lady cuts him off with 火のない所に 煙は立たないんですよ？At which point the first lady jumps back in with マスコミにバラしてもいいんですよ？ its just this one line i'm having a problem getting my head around, i suppose she's saying, what if it gets into the mass media..but i dont see how – NyNy Oct 16 '13 at 17:18
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    I linked this as an answer-comment too, but see this for `よ？` : http://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/6534/315 – Hyperworm Oct 16 '13 at 20:26
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    NyNy, I think you should add the context to the question text, since it's needed to understand the nuances of the sentence. – dainichi Oct 17 '13 at 03:19

2 Answers2

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Just to make sure you don't miss this point:

The lady is trying to blackmail the principal into firing the teacher by threatening to spill the beans to the media, thereby damaging the reputation of the school.

マスコミにバラしてもいいんですよ

"I'll go to the media if I have to" or something like that. As others have explained, the question mark doesn't really turn this into a question, it just indicates that the speaker is looking for a response, i.e. a hidden "Does this change your mind?" or something like that.

dainichi
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  • Because the comment section above is jammed, another point to make is that this is nowhere near being a "figure of speech" and hardly used in daily life: The most natural context for this sentence would indeed be a blackmail situation as in this TV show. – Earthliŋ Oct 17 '13 at 12:50
  • @Earthling: This _very_ sentence is probably rare in daily life (unless one is blackmailing someone every day), but I am not sure if that is what NyNy meant by "is this figure of speech frequently used?" – Tsuyoshi Ito Oct 17 '13 at 14:27
  • @TsuyoshiIto Maybe the OP should clarify, then, what part of the sentence could be a "figure of speech". バラす, ～ても, んです, いいんです, ですよ, よ？, or something else... – Earthliŋ Oct 17 '13 at 15:08
  • @Earthling: I agree. To be honest, the question seems to ask some things more than just what the sentence means, but what it is asking is unclear to me. – Tsuyoshi Ito Oct 17 '13 at 16:50
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With all due respect, I must state that thinking that a sentence automatically becomes a question if it has a question mark at its end is a very Japanese-as-a-foreign-language-esque way of thinking. The question mark itself is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the Japanese language; therefore, we tend to use it more freely than the speakers of other languages that have been using the question mark longer.

Not sure if the members like this analogy but to me it is like sushi. Where sushi is relatively new, such as in North America, people make sushi more freely than the Japanese do --- like by using cream cheese and avocado or deep-frying sushi as with the volcano rolls.

The sentence 「マスコミにバラしてもいいんですよ？」 is 100% natural-sounding and "correct" by native speakers' standards, period. Grammatically, it is a statement but is read with a rising intonation at its end, which is the purpose of the use of the question mark by the author. In informal writing, this (the combo of statement and question mark) is often used to let the reader know that the speaker expects the other person's opinion or reaction to the statement. You may think of this as an unstated "Is that OK?" or "What do ya think?"

We do exactly the same thing in oral conversations when we say a statement with a rising intonation. Naturally, this is without using a question mark.

Finally, a couple of "real-life" examples:

  1. A group of 4 dudes are in a house and it is about noon. Taro volunteers to cook ramen for the entire group but one of the other three says he is not hungry. Taro might say as he starts toward the kitchen:

    「マジで？マサちゃんお腹空いてないんだぁ。じゃあ3人分しか作んないよ？」 For those unfamiliar with Tokyo dialect, 作んない means 作らない.

  2. You and your friend are walking towards school when your friend says 「ヤベっ！数学の教科書家に置いてきちゃった！ごめん、取ってくる。」 Because your first class starts soon, you could not wait for him to come back. You might say:

    「そうなんだ、しかたないねぇ。んじゃ悪いけどオレ先に行っちゃうよ？」 　

Community
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  • 例文、なんで両方とも1番？-- –  Oct 17 '13 at 05:56
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    @ちょこれーと Fixed it. List syntax can be a bit awkward. If you don't indent the new paragraphs (beginning with `「`) to make them "part of" the list item, then it interprets that new paragraph as being after the list and ending it, and therefore, because you ended the list, item 2 below it is the beginning of a new list, which it starts at 1 for some reason despite what number you actually used :x – Hyperworm Oct 17 '13 at 12:23