Hi, I was doing some reading last night and came across this sentence.
私は、私でいたくない。
For context, this is in a letter that the main character finds in her room one day. She realizes she wrote it herself as a child and finds it unsettling.
My understand is something like:
私は (as for me)、私で (by myself) いたくない (don’t want to be)。
= I don’t want to be by myself → I don’t want to be alone.
I interpretted it as いる → いたい → いたくない, but I’m not feeling very confident about the translation as a whole. Am I misunderstanding the 私で? Is it suppose to be the same as 一人で or is that a misunderstanding on my part?
If the intended meaning were “alone”, it would probably use 一人で yeah. My interpretation would be more along the lines of “I don’t want to be myself.” Which is probably why it was disturbing to the character.
Ahh, thank you! I think you’ve helped me crack it.
So the でいる is a living-thing copula, kind of like how である is used as a formal non-living copula? That’s my understanding based on my grammar dictionary, although it only lists である.
いる is not a copula in Japanese. It’s being used here with its literal meaning of “to exist”, which kinda emphasizes the sadness of not wanting to exist/be alive as oneself.
Edit: I would parse it as
私は I (topic & subject)
私で as I am
居たくない don’t want to be/exist
To help a bit hopefully, ている/でいる is an auxiliary verb, so the いる attaches to the て form of a verb. Such as 飲んでいる, I am drinking (present continuous). As you know that 私 is not a verb, you can deduce that the で is a particle in the instance.
Hmm, I keep running it around in my head, but I think I agree with what you’re saying. I may have misinterpreted in what sense they were asking above as well.
Here’s some more information. This page is more about differentiating the different types of で than about て, but it does mention that this usage is a 接続助詞.
Thank you for responding! I’m familiar with ている, but now I’m confused again since what you’re saying contradicts the previous poster, who implied the で meant ‘as,’ i.e. ‘as myself,’
To clarify, you’re saying it’s:
私 + でいる ( me, existing )
= I am existing.
Then, adding in the ‘don’t want to~’
= I don’t want to exist/be existing. (after adding in the ‘don’t want to~’)
as opposed to:
私で + いる ( as myself, existing )
= I am existing, as myself.
Again, adding in the ‘don’t want to~’
= I don’t want to exist/be existing as myself.
So you’re saying it’s the first one?
Part of my confusion is that if the で doesn’t mean ‘as,’ then isn’t it ungrammatical to have 私 be the subject of ている? Is it possible to say あなたでいる?
I think he was saying that you could tell it was a particle because… it wasn’t something else? I was a little confused by that post too but, to answer some of your questions…
私でいる could be a relative clause, but it is ungrammatical as a sentence of its own. The proper way to say “I exist” would be 私がいる.
The example with あなた is not grammatical either. That would also be あなたがいる.
ている isn’t a verb, the verb is just いる. I’m not sure how て ended up in this discussion, but while it technically is a particle it falls under what we, as English speakers, typically refer to as conjugations. For example, 走っている means “to be running”, which is an example of the verb 走る in the って form with the auxiliary verb いる appended to form the ている continuous form.
This has nothing to do with your original example, because わたし is not a verb and so the で after it is pretty unambiguously just the particle で and the verb いる is being used in its literal sense.
In short, でいる is not a word, so it can’t be that. Particles are postpositions and thus 私で is the only possible interpretation. Also, the で in である is in fact the て-form of だ
“As” is perhaps an overly specific translation of で. For example “本当に私でいいの?” is “Are you really okay with me?”
If we look at the dictionary definition of で we see その動作・作用・状態が基づく具体的なものを示す。Which says that で just marks the concrete thing to which an action, state, or operation is based on. So, while not the greatest translation you can see “As I” which is what いたくない is based on.
For example, お箸で食べる means “to eat with chopsticks.”
This meaning of で is pretty hard to concisely put into English with a single word. It can mean like “via”, “by means of”, “using”, “of/with/by”, or in this particular sentence I felt like “as” was the most appropriate translation.
Thank you for looking that up! Feels like it’s coming together again now. So it seems like the meaning and purpose of the で being used here is just a bit more vague/abstract that I’m used to. Not as straightfoward as 机の上で or 電車で but still serving a purpose of connecting things together.
