Wednesday, 17 February 2016

particle か - Indirect questions nested inside phrases


Trying to use interrogative words in nested (indirect ?) questions has been troublesome for me.


First came things like:



先生が何を言ったか知らない



Which I guess means "I don´t know what the teacher said". So far, so good.


However, I have been looking into using と for quotations, or for reporting to a whole phrase.


For example:




彼はこれは何だと言ったか



Which I think means "What did he say this is ?"


But what if I just wanted to know if he said this is something or not, like: "Did he say this is something, or didn´t he say it ?"


Would it be something like this ? (below)



彼は「これは何か」と言ったかどうか?



Lastly, if I wanted to say "Do you remember what he said this is ?", would it be:




彼はこれは何だと言ったか覚えていますか?



If there is anything wrong with my guessed meanings, please let me know...



Answer



彼はこれは何だと言ったか is not a complete sentence but a clause that's embedded in a sentence like 彼は(自分が)これは何だと言ったか覚えていなかった:"He didn't remember what he said it was".


"Did he say this is something, or didn´t he say it ?" is expressed as あの人、これ が(/を) 何(か)だとか言ってた? それとも言ってなかった?(or …言ってませんでしたか?) or so. Using 言っていた instead of 言った is another point. (This is difficult to explain, though)


彼は「これは何か」と言ったかどうか is not a complete sentence either, but a clause as in "He didn't remember if he said "what's this" or not".


彼はこれは何だと言ったか覚えていますか? more likely means "Does he remember what I/you/he said this is?" than "Do you remember what he said this is?". If you want to make it clear, the latter should be 彼 これ は(/が) 何だと言ったか覚えていますか.


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