Here is Watanabe Miyuki’s confession, with English subtitles, from the video game AKB 1/149 Renai sousenkyo. I don’t have much to comment on here, as the dialogue itself is actually pretty straight forward.
Now, for the third time in a row, we have yet another speaker of Kansai dialect. As usual, I’ve included standard Japanese in places where Kansai dialect is used. There’s no special vocabulary here, but I’ll point out one grammar point.
Miyuki makes use of 〜しかない, when she says 彼氏(かれし)になる人しか見せへん. This is a bit of grammar meaning something roughly like “only”. It is similar enough to “だけ”, that she could have very well say, “彼氏になる人だけに見せるよ”, and still meant the same thing.
With regards to differences from だけ, in my experience しかない usually has a negative feeling about it. Like if I wanted to say, “Only one person came to my party”, I’d use しかない instead of だけ to convey the feeling that I was bummed out or sad about this fact (“パーティーに一人しか来なかった!”).
〜しかない has a few variations, which I’ll simply show by way of example.
私は一ドルしかない → “I only have one dollar”
As you know, “ない” is the negative form of “ある”. As luck would have it, you can use other verbs in their negative form to make other phrases as well:
私はピザしか食べなかった → “I only ate pizza”
It also works with adjectives as well.
私はAKBしか好きじゃない → “I only like AKB”
Notice that a noun always comes in front of しか, in these two cases, 一ドル and AKB. However, you can have the plain form of a verb in front, and it’ll take on a whole new meaning!
私は宿題をやるしかない → ”I had no choice but to do my homework”
The full transcript of this video is as follows:
あ、来た来た!
やっぱり夏休みのプールには人、こーへんな(来ないね)。
そうや(そうだ)と思って、実はビキニ着てきてん(着てきたんだ)。
仕事以外ではあんまり着へんねんけどな(着ないんだけどね)。
見たい?な?見たい?
彼氏になる人しか見せへんで(見せないよ)?どうする?acceptance!
やっぱりやーめた!
大好き!rejection!
え、こんなに好きやのにな(好きなのにな)…。
じゃあもう今日は帰るね。
Author: jerry
Sometimes editor. Sometimes translator. Mostly a proofreader. I like Japan and things.