みなさん、こんにちは！Today, I will talk about this phrase by Itachi from Naruto! To be honest, I don’t know much about Naruto, but I have received a few request to do a breakdown on this phrase, so I will do my best! Today’s phrase is this one:
その写輪眼…。お前はどこまで見えている。 sono sharingan omaewa doko made mieteiru That Sharingan, how much can you actually see.
In the following sections, I will explore the Japanese vocabulary in this phrase.
その / sono
In oder to understand this word, you have to understand the concept of ‘demonstratives’. These are basically the words you use when you point at something (e.g. ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘which’). There are 4 demonstratives in Japanese you should remember, and they are:
これ (kore / this)
それ (sore / that – far from the speaker but close to the listener)
あれ (are / that – far from both the speaker and listener)
どれ (dore / which)
Now, you may be wondering ‘Where is その?’, but don’t worry! These 4 words change a bit. You will have to swap the れ in these words for の when these words are followed by nouns:
この + noun
その + noun
あの + noun
どの + noun
Therefore, when Itachi says ‘that Sharingan’ pointing at Sasuke’s, he would go ‘その写輪眼（しゃりんがん）/ sono sharingan’.
お前 / omae
If you have watched anime or read manga, then you would have probably noticed that there are so many pronouns in Japanese: お前 omae, あなた anata, てめえ temee, 君 kimi, 貴様 kisama, お主 onushi and the list goes on. They can all be translated as ‘you’. However, in Japanese, the use of the second person pronoun can tell a lot about the status between the speaker and the listener. Basically, which second person pronoun you use shows how formal or casual you are being to the person you are talking to. While あなた and 君 are quite formal, 貴様 and お前 can be quite casual and rude, therefore are often used in anime and manga. お前, as used by Itachi in this phrase, can sound quite manly, and girls tend not to use this pronoun. In reality, the most common way to address other people is to use their names instead of using a second person pronoun.
どこまで / dokomade
どこまで is made of two words: どこ and まで. 「どこ」refers to ‘where’ and「まで」refers to ‘until’ and combining these together, どこまで means ‘how far’.
見えている / mieteiru
見えている is a combination between the potential form of the verb 見る (to see), and the progressive form of it. Firstly, 「見える」is the potential form of 「見る」. What we mean by the potential form is that it is the form to express the ability. Therefore, 「見える」means ‘can see’ while 「見る」simply means ‘to see’. Moreover, 「〜ている」is the verb ending o indicate ‘the progressive tense’ . That is, 「見ている」means ‘is seeing’. Hence, 「見えている」is the combination between 「見える」and 「見ている」.
どこまで見える？ How far can you see? (Simply asking to what extent the sharingan’s ability allows Sasuke to see)
どこまで見えている？ ’How far can you see?’ + ‘Are you seeing it now?’ (Showing that Itachi is aware that he’s been seen by Sasuke)
まとめ / Summary
In summary, this article explored the Itachi’s phrase その写輪眼…。お前はどこまで見えている。(That Sharingan, how much can you actually see.) and explained vocabulary in the phrase. I would be glad if this was helpful in your Japanese language learning journey! If you have a phrase you want me to breakdown, please let me know! 読んでくれてありがとう / Thank you for reading！じゃ、さようなら〜！
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