いったい Examples
I have two example sentences that demonstrate the usage of the word いったい, but I'm having trouble understanding them fully.

そんなにやせてしまって、いったいどうしたの？

To me, this sounds like "How on earth did you lose so much weight?" but I'm not certain if that's correct, since I've seen どうしたの used for "What's wrong?" type scenarios.

いったいあなたは何を考えてそんなことをしたんですか？

I'm not sure what the 考えて is doing here, but it sounds kind of like "What on earth did you do?" otherwise.

Question

いったい Examples
I have two example sentences that demonstrate the usage of the word いったい, but I'm having trouble understanding them fully.

そんなにやせてしまって、いったいどうしたの？

To me, this sounds like "How on earth did you lose so much weight?" but I'm not certain if that's correct, since I've seen どうしたの used for "What's wrong?" type scenarios.

いったいあなたは何を考えてそんなことをしたんですか？

I'm not sure what the 考えて is doing here, but it sounds kind of like "What on earth did you do?" otherwise.

Answer

In this context, いったい gives an emotional tone to the sentence. An interrogative pronoun with "the hell", "the heck", "on earth" an so on are good translations.

そんなにやせてしまって、いったいどうしたの？
You lose so much, what the hell did you do? (or what the hell happened?)

いったいあなたは何を考えてそんなことをしたんですか？
What the hell did you think that you did such a thing?
何を考えて - what did you think (while doing something or before doing something)

Answers · 2

Still haven’t found your answers?

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn a language from the comfort of your own home. Browse our selection of experienced language tutors and enroll in your first lesson now!