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'Whatever!' Note the intonation - that's the way you hear it most often used, especially by teenagers.
'Whatever!'(無論什麼!)注意一下語調--這是你聽到的最常用的方式,尤其是在青少年中。
An exclamatory sentence with a sort of summarising or dismissive force, avoiding further explicitness. 'Whatever!' Note the tone!
這是用一種帶有總結性質的、或輕視的力量發出的、沒有進一步明確的感嘆句。'Whatever!'注意語調!
Where does it come from? Well, actually, as a usage, it's been in the language a long time.
這個詞來源於哪裡呢?實際上,作為一個慣用詞彙,它已經在語言中出現很長一段時間了。
You'll hear 'whatever' as a pronoun, you know, 'whatever happened?', 'whatever next?' - meaning 'whatever will happen next?'
你會聽到'whatever'作為一個代詞來使用,比如'whatever happened?'、'whatever next?',其含義是'接下來會發生什麼?'
You hear it as a determiner - 'wear whatever dress you like',
你還聽到過它作為一個限定詞來使用--'穿任何你喜歡的衣服'
a sort of interrogative determiner, in grammatical terminology - 'wear whatever dress'.
在語法術語中,它是一個疑問限定詞--'wear whatever dress'。
Or an emphatic word - 'they had no reason whatever to leave'. So the usage is very common in English.
此外,它還是一個強調詞--'他們沒有任何理由離開。' 這種用法在英語中非常常見。
And what happened here is that, when it was used as a pronoun and introduced a clause,
當其作為一個代詞使用、並且引入一個從句時,
we got sentences like this one - 'we'll go by bus or train or whatever else might be available'.
我們會遇到這樣的句子--'我們可以坐公共汽車或者火車,或者其它任何可以搭乘的交通工具。'
And then that clause got shortened so that only the pronoun was left - 'we'll go by bus or train or whatever!'
而從句可以簡化,只剩下了這個代詞--'we'll go by bus or train or whatever!'。
And then it got shortened even more - 'we'll go by bus or train. Whatever!'
甚至可以更加簡化--'we'll go by bus or train. Whatever!'
And then it was applied to animates as well as inanimates. So anything can be 'whatever!' now.
另外,這個詞既可以用於指有生命的,也可以用於指無生命的事物。因此,現如今,任何事物都可以用'whatever!'來指代。
It isn't only teenagers who use the word by the way. Older people, men, women, me, too! Whatever!
並不是只有青少年這樣用這個詞。年齡較大的人、男人、女人、我,都可以用!無論是誰都可以!