Context sentence: 人生は一どきりなんだから

WaniKani
1

I’m having trouble with this one… the translation says: ’ we only live once’. I can understand the 人生は part only, the rest makes no sense to me :neutral_face:
Sorry for the question

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It’s a translation, not a literal one in this case.

どきり it’s define as an onomatopoeia with the same meaning as どきん.

Then どきん is defined like this:
（多く「と」を伴って）驚き・恐れ・喜びなどのために，急に動悸が激しくなるさま。どきり。「一瞬―とした」

Something like a “sudden and fierce heartbeat out of surprise-fear-joy”.

So your sentence it’s more on the side of:

“'Cause life it’s just one heartbeat!” AKA “we only live once” (more in sync with english ears). :slightly_smiling_face:

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thank you!

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I think this is where Tofugu’s policy of just putting hiragana instead of kanji with furigana for more difficult kanji backfired.

With furigana: 人生(じんせい)は一度(いちど)切(き)りなんだから。

一度(いちど) means “one time”, “once”
切(き)り as a suffix after quantities, means “just, only”.

As a whole, 一度(いちど)切(き)り means “only once”. So “Life is only once”… or more naturally “You/we/they/etc only live once”

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I makes sense… Though I liked my way of “force” making sense out of it more :yum:…

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for a total beginner like me this is really helpful, makes much more sense :slightly_smiling_face:

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