TextFugu » Topic: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

jkl — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:08:20 +0000

彼に集中するよう注意を促しといたよ。

The translation I have says “I urged him to concentrate.”

I am having trouble in two places.

1. What is よう doing in there?

2. What is 促しといた?

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

thisiskyle — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:37:26 +0000

よう is added after plain form verbs to mean in “in that sort of way”. As usual, that made no sense. Example time.

聞こえるように言ってください。　（聞こえる=to be audible)
Please say it in such a way that I can hear you.
死ななかったようにしました。
I did it in such a way that I didn’t die.

The second question has three parts 促しと　いた. (I think the last part should actually be いった)
促し is like a prompt or a suggestion
and といった means “said”

I could be wrong but I hope that helps.

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

jkl — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:21:29 +0000

There is a recording of the sentence. I can’t believe smart.fm hasn’t shut down their media servers yet.

http://assets3.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS00907A.mp3

It doesn’t sound like いった to my beginner’s ears.

I also found another use of the i-form + といた construction.

前もって予約しといた方がいいですよ。

The translation says “You had better make a reservation in advance.” I don’t have a recording of that one. I found some information about the idiom “…方がいい”, but nothing about 予約しといた.

Mecab says とい is from a verb called とく, and it says its form is “連用タ接続” but I can’t figure out what that means.

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

thisiskyle — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:30:20 +0000

Ah that makes sense then. といた is the plain past form of とく “to explain” and it probably one of those verbs that gets hooked on to others in the i-form like owaru.

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

jkl — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:50:20 +0000

I found another example of i-form + とく.

券の手配しとくよ。 = “I’ll see about getting the tickets.”

I guess that makes

前もって予約しといた方がいいですよ

something like “You had better see to getting reservations in advance,” or maybe “You had better make sure you get reservations in advance.”

I also found another use of the idiom 注意を促す, and it looks like it means “call attention to” or “bring attention to.”

警察たちはすりへの注意を促した。 = The policeman called our attention to the danger of pickpockets.

Putting it all together, I think we have

彼に集中するよう注意を促しといたよ

is like “I saw to it to call his attention to acting in a concentrating sort of way.”

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

Elenkis — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:35:02 +0000

~とく is the casual/abbreviated form of ~ておく, meaning “to do in advance”.

See “Using the 「～ておく」 form as preparation for the future” here:

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/teform

Reply To: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた

jkl — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:48:02 +0000

So it is a contraction after all. The WWWJDIC gives the example below in its entry for とく, which it explains is a contraction.

窓が閉まっているか確かめとけ = See that the window is closed

Contractions are very difficult to deal with if you don’t already know about them. I looked around and found this list:

http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/colloquial-contractions.html

One notable omission from the list is the contraction のだ　-> んだ.