1

I've come across a character in a show wondering:

...っとは言った物の...どこから手を付けたものか

This was translated as:

But after all I said, where do we start?

I generally view the 〜た form as past tense, but here the latter does not seem to be translated this way. Why is that, and what are the rules behind that?

Is it possibly related to Usage of doubled non-past tense "た"?

F.X.
  • 319
  • 2
  • 8
  • Which た are you referring to? There are two of them in your example. – istrasci Nov 05 '20 at 21:11
  • Ah, you're right. The latter one, edited the question! – F.X. Nov 05 '20 at 21:50
  • related/duplicate: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/65750/21657 – Shurim Nov 05 '20 at 23:36
  • I still think this question is valid as the related questions never really gave a reason as to why the past tense is used, nor did they provide any sort of authoritative source - like a page from a monolingual dictionary - for said usage. – user26484 Nov 06 '20 at 09:22
  • @Shurim That sounds exactly like what I was looking for, thank you! – F.X. Nov 06 '20 at 09:24
  • @user26484 is right, I'm still wondering if there's a reason why the past tense is used (possibly there's none anymore and it's just a grammatical construction whose etymology is lost or unclear). – F.X. Nov 06 '20 at 09:25

0 Answers0