Okay, thanks. I really need to brush up all the verb stuff I first studied like 10 years ago.
Hey can someone help me with this sentence?
“我が友である、この国の「検事局」のチカラによって！?”
(From Ace Attorney Investigations 2)
“By the force of my friend, this country’s prosecutor’s office”
我が = my
友 = friend
である = be/is (you use である to state that something is so w/ an authoritative/official tone)
この国の = this country’s
検事局の = prosecutor’s office’s
チカラ = force/power (力)
によって = according to/by means of/due to
EDIT: Wait a second, it was still kind of a weird sentence so I looked it up and I just saw that there’s another sentence before that is actually tied to the one you quoted, so let me revise
Full line: 「犯人はとらえられなければならない。 找が友である、この国の <<検事局>> のチカラによって!」
Apparently this uses a Japanese rhetorical device called 倒置法, which basically inverts the word order of sentences
So, it can be re-written as one complete sentence as: 找が友であるこの国 の 「検事局」 のチカラによって、犯人はとらえられなければならない
So altogether it’d be something like: “The criminal should be captured by the power of this country’s prosecutor’s office, which is our country’s friend/ally.”
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As I always say, translation is basically research.
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I would read this as “I am your ally, by the power of this country’s prosecution office!”
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Yeah I was conflicted before reading online, there were some translations from natives about this exact line which is what I mentioned along with the link to the source, along with another that I read from hinative, so I’m wondering what fits in the overall context at this point 
Okay I just confirmed with a couple Japanese people, they both said it means “The criminal has to be caught. By the power of the Public Prosecutor’s office, which is my friend in this country!”
The previous sentence wasn’t mentioned by OP but played a part in the meaning, which is why it was a bit confusing at first
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Can someone just help me confirm this inflection -
とらえる - To catch
とらえない - To not catch
とらえられない - To not be able to catch
…then the なければならない attached to the end = “Have to be able to catch / Have to catch”
Is this about right?
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パ－フェクト！
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Ah thank you. I always thought で was a particle so that confused me^^ And sorry about the missing sentence.
So である is some form of です?
Edit: You translated 我が as my, why isn’t it “I” instead? Or shouldn’t the sentence say: 我の友達である。。。？
I’m posting this sentence mostly because the meaning struck me as rather odd.
日本人は自分の家族のことを誰かに話す時、あまりいいことを言わない傾向がある。
When talking to someone about their family, Japanese people have a tendency to not say very nice things.
Is my reading there correct? I haven’t heard of such a stereotype before so I was initially confused when reading it.
EDIT: Snip because of incorrect answer.
である functions like a copula, similar to です. Whether it’s another form of です/だ is not very clear and somewhat contested. Anyway, である is seen in formal speech and writing. Please refer to this for details.
I’ve never heard of this before. My understanding is that である is the dictionary form of itself, not a ている form of another verb. As that I’m still learning new things, would you mind sharing your source about this?
Maybe he’s talking about ～てある, but with nouns? Not sure, haven’t study that yet.
I doubt that. Additionally, it doesn’t make sense to the OP’s question.
～てある doesn’t have anything to do with being more assertive or forceful (which was mentioned in the response to the OP): it’s just describes a state something is in irrespective of who did the action.
Because of this @LucasDesu. If he’s right or not, that’s another story. I haven’t even checked the sentence in question.
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@LucasDesu and @jprspereira
Nope, I am completely in the wrong, and was mixing it up with the てある form.Sorry for the confusion, I’ll snip away my post and double check my posts in the future. 
In 大辞林 it states that the で here is the 連用形 of だ. I’m pretty sure だ and である are pretty well attested, but it is the origin of です that is not clear.
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我が is a set phrase meaning “my/our/one’s own”, apparently in classical Japanese, が was possessive and still remains to be in some set expressions, and then 友 is friend, so together it would be “my friend”
As for である, it seems it’s used in formal expressions as a state of being (similarly to 「だ」、「です」、and 「でございます」) and is used to express facts in a neutral, official sounding way
Also explained to be a: “Predicative phrase used in written or formal language instead of da/desu to explicitly affirm the preceding statement” (source)
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My bad. I can see where you’re coming from. Thanks for pointing that out.
@DamirH been there, done that. Don’t worry about it! I fact was just corrected in the post below yours.
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