Lesson 24: "Quoting" with って and と and という/っていう/つう taking note of だって
There are two basic types of relative clause. The first is the kind that modifies a noun, which we already learned about. The second is the embedded clause, which uses a clause without attaching it to a noun, like the second half of "He said that the war would end soon".
って and と, which act like "quotation" markers, mark embedded clauses.
いいと思う I think it's fine.
元気と言った He said he felt fine.
見えると聞いた I heard that it's visible.
There are restrictions on the forms that verbs are allowed to take at the end of an embedded clause, except for actual literal quotations. Japanese lets grammar leak between outer and inner clauses in different ways than english does.
って is essentially a colloquial version of と.
駄目って言った She said it was no good.
何だって？ What did you say?
って can also be an emphasizing particle, or just isolate information.
猫って嫌い！ I hate> cats!
日本語難しいって "Japanese is hard".
Now we're going to tackle という/ていう/つう, a construction that uses と/って.
The expression と言う という is used to construct a relative clause in ways that would be awkward otherwise. Not all instances of という are this expression, but normally, if it's written in just hiragana, it's the expression.
研究者という人間 The people that are researchers
休みたいという訳で Because I want to take a break
It can also just be used for emphasis.
今日という日 The day that is today
っていう is basically という but with って. つう is a contraction of it.
だって is a conjunction or particle (depending on who you ask) made from compounding だ and って, and has the nuance of a rebuttal. This doesn't work the same way as adding って to a clause that already ends in だ, which is also possible.
俺だって負けられない！
Even if it's me, I can't lose!
だって、今日は祭り
I mean, today's the festival.
This is only one of the uses of だって. We'll cover the other uses later.