Hello everybody,
I was studying the lyrics of the music 「私の声」and I notice the use of the verb 行ってしまった that seems to be translated as something like ‘has gone’. At first glance, I thought it was the past tense of 行ってします, but doesn’t it should be 行ってしました? I couldn`t identify this conjugation, could someone help me?
Thanks for any help!
The base form is not 行ってする but 行ってしまう. teshimau can mean to do completely or to regrett doing. Then if you conjugate it with the normal rules for godan verbs it is conjugated to 行ってしまった.
It’s the past tense of 行ってしまう, which in turn is just 行って + しまう, where しまう is an auxiliary verb which has a few connotations, like doing something by accident (usually not with good results) or is “done completely” (in the absolute vaguest sense possible, I have no idea how to actually explain it in English).
Also, if you ever see a conjugation ending in ちゃう (or a conjugation thereof), that’s a contraction of てしまう - so 寝ちゃった = 寝てしまった = “I fell asleep”
食べちゃった
American version: I done ate it all up doggone it.
British Version: I bloody ate it all, didn’t I.
The synchronicity on this site amazes me.
I was just discussing with @alo in another thread how 〜しまう is an example of something perfectly easy to understand in Japanese that’s difficult to translate exactly into English.
As @downtimes and @yamitenshi stated, there’s often a sense of “already done to completion, doggone it!” when you use that form.
“I went to the store” vs. “[I wanted to return an item, but] I’d already gone to the store [when I realized I’d left the item at home]”. 行きました vs. 行ってしまった.
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