BoA – “be with you.” Detailed Translation, Part 3

As before, I’ve copied the text of the stanza for this week, both kanji and romanization (ローマ字, rōmaji), from the original post.

09 いつか　ねぇ、交わした約束をちゃんと
10 憶えていますか?
11 いつか　きっと　叶えられる
12 そう信じてもいいよね…
13 あなたとだから　今
14 わたしはここにいる

09 itsuka   nee, kawashita yakusoku wo chanto
10 oboete imasu ka?
11 itsuka   kitto   kanaerareru
12 sou shinjite mo ii yo ne…
13 anata to dakara   ima
14 watashi wa koko ni iru

Line 9: itsuka basically means “someday,” nee is the particle that asks for agreement while suggesting that disagreement would be very unexpected; it also can be used as an interjection of “hey” or “come on,” as it is used here. kawashita is the direct, perfect tense conjugation of the verb kawasu, which means “exchange (messages, greetings, etc),” and as always, the direct-style allows it to modify the noun phrase that follows it, which is yakusoku, or “promise,” here (note that the count of nouns in Japanese is not specified). wo is the indirect object marker, and chanto means something along the lines of perfectly/exactly.

Line 10: oboete imasu is the te-form of oboeru, meaning “remember,” and the distal-style, imperfect aspect form of iru (see footnote #3 of the first post in this series). ka is, of course, the question particle. Over these two lines, then, we have “Someday, hey, will [you] remember, clearly, the promise(s) we exchanged?”

Line 11: We saw itsuka at the beginning of this verse, kitto means “surely,” and kanaerareru is the potential/passive (the two happen to look the same) form of kanaeru, which means “grant (a request, wish, etc).” (The “potential” form is “be able to,” and the “passive” form is, well, passive. For example, the potential form of the verb “protect” would mean “be able to protect,” and the passive form of the verb would mean “protected.”)

Line 12: sou refers to a previously mentioned concept or manner¹. shinjite mo ii is a construction that takes the form of te-form + mo (a particle that roughly means “also”) + ii (”good”), and it asks for permission to do the verb, which is shinjiru (”believe”), here. yo is the sentence-final particle that indicates that an assertion or an introduction of new information into the conversation is being made, and ne is the sentence-final particle that asks for agreement; here ne serves to soften the bluntness of the yo. “Is it okay to feel that way, do you think, probably?”

Line 13: anata is a form of singular, second person address, most commonly used as a term of endearment. to is a connective particle, roughly translatable as “and,” dakara is a combination of the direct-style, imperfect form of the copula and kara, which means “because,” here². ima (we have seen this kanji earlier) means “now.”

Line 14: watashi is the first-person, singular pronoun, wa is either the topic particle or a contrastive particle (emphasizing that it is the noun being referred to, and not some other possible noun). koko is a demonstrative that means “here,” ni is a location particle (see footnote #4 of the second post), and iru is “exist,” for animate nouns only. Thus we have “Because [it's] with you, now, I am here.”

All together, then!

Someday…hey, will you remember, clearly, the promise(s) we exchanged? Someday, I’m sure, [a/my/our] wish will be granted; is it okay to feel that way, do you think, probably? Because [it's] with you, now, I am here.

¹ This is actually rather difficult to explain; if my explanation here made it clear for you, please let me know. My only recommendation, otherwise, is to try to find more uses of it and infer the meaning for yourself.

² kara has a number of usages.

“From” [use after a location]

ボストンから来る。

bosuton kara kuru.

[I] come from Boston.

Ordering (”Then”) [use after the te-form of a verb]

食べてから、図書館に行く。

tabete kara, toshokan ni iku.

After eating, I (will) go to the library.

“Because”

食べたから、食べたくない。

tabeta kara, tabetakunai.

Because [I] ate, [I] don’t want to eat.