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From the first episode of Death Note:

名前のあとに人間界単位で40秒以内に死因を書くと そのとおりになる

Questions:

  1. What purpose is "人間界単位で" ("within human-world units") serving in this sentence?

  2. Grammatically, "人間界" is a noun and "位" is a counter. But the thing that's being counted here isn't literally human-worlds, is it?

George
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    I think you might be mis-parsing this -- you've left out the 単. Try looking up 単位【たんい】 and see if that helps things make more sense for you. – Eiríkr Útlendi Aug 20 '22 at 21:59

1 Answers1

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I assume it refers to Death Note.

  1. 人間界単位で modifies 40秒以内に. It says by human world units (as opposed to the units in Luke's world). So 人間界単位で40秒以内に means within 40 seconds (measured) by human world units. It is a bit odd since it is written in a human language anyway.

  2. Grammatically 人間界 modifies 単位 and it could be written 人間界の単位, the (system of) units of human world. 単位 here refers to the system of measurement.

sundowner
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  • Is 人間界の単位 the the grammatically correct way of writing it, and the の is omitted due to it being informal speech? Or are they both grammatically correct? – George Aug 21 '22 at 01:54
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    @George - This might interest you: [Compound words and の-particle](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/55735/43676). 人間界の単位 sounds more natural to me. – aguijonazo Aug 21 '22 at 02:21
  • @George Both should be fine, like (I think) English *human world units* and *units of human world*. – sundowner Aug 21 '22 at 02:56