Take the 2-minute tour ×

In this sentence I've a some doubts"自分　の　事し　考えぬ　には、この　氷　は　溶かせない" I think a translation would be" Think to yourself of this matter of you, this ice never will melt" But it's just a guess. I can decipher correctly this sentence. kかんがえぬ　is negative? How translate 自分のことし？

share|improve this question
yes, 考えぬ is negative. –  Earthliŋ Sep 10 '12 at 14:41
Thank you! so a more correct translation would be"don't think to it to yourself"? –  Shizuka Sep 10 '12 at 14:50
I think that some letters are missing from the sentence. –  Tsuyoshi Ito Sep 10 '12 at 15:22
I don't quite understand your translation, but I'm also not sure the Japanese is correct. Are you sure it is not 事しか? –  Earthliŋ Sep 10 '12 at 15:22
My wild guess is that it is from a video game and that some of the letters are missing because they wore off. If this is the case, then in my opinion, the question is more about the game than about Japanese. –  Tsuyoshi Ito Sep 10 '12 at 15:27
show 4 more comments

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The latter half of your translation is right. Working from your newly corrected sentence:


自分の事 is literally "one's own things". 事 is often used with verbs like 考える to mean "(everything) about", so in this case 自分の事を考える is "to think about oneself". The noun suffix しか means (when coupled with a negative verb ending) "nothing but", so 自分の事しか考えぬ is "to think about nothing but oneself". This whole phrase is being used to describe おまえ. So the first half of the sentence comes out something like "to [someone like] you, who never thinks about anyone but themselves, ..." (with bits in [square brackets] added just to make it sound better English).

I'm not familiar with the idiom enough to tell you what the sentence actually means without context. Perhaps it's "you're so busy thinking about yourself that you don't even notice the simplest things about the rest of the world (e.g. that ice melts)", but that's a guess.

share|improve this answer
Thank you.Your step to step explanation made me understand, thanks to the context, the probable meaning of the sentence that would be" To you, who thinks about anyone but themselves, this ice will never melt". In fact the character being some sort of demon （魔物）is not expected to care for no one but himself, so he'd remain trapped under the spell. Really the context matter to fully understand. Thank you –  Shizuka Sep 10 '12 at 19:47
Aha, yes, it didn't sound like an idiom I'd ever heard before. No problem. –  Billy Sep 10 '12 at 20:15
add comment

Your Answer


