# What is tebayo?



## Inarigo (Aug 15, 2006)

I watched some fansubbed Naruto and he mostly says tebayo (or something that sounds like that) at the end of his sentences. The subtitles doesn't say anything about it.


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## Sesqoo (Aug 15, 2006)

The dub translate it as "believe it".


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## Mat?icha (Aug 15, 2006)

hmm, i didnt know the meaning. thanky


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## Inarigo (Aug 15, 2006)

Really?! Wow...


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## This is god (Aug 15, 2006)

There is no meaning. dattebayo/'ttebayo has no English equivalent/translation, this is because the word is intended not to say anything, but to modify the speaker's speaking patterns. There are other examples of meaningless speech modifiers in Nihongo, but I can't really name any off the top of my head...
As a poster on another forum put it, the closest comparison that an English speaker could make to 'ttebayo would be the pirate's "arrr!" 'Arr' doesn't really have a meaning, but it denotes the speaker as a pirate and makes them immediately recognisable even if that's the only thing they've said.


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## geG (Aug 15, 2006)

It's basically Naruto's catchphrase, although it doesn't mean anything. It's meant to make him sound unique and attention-grabbing... or something.


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## Oneironaut (Aug 15, 2006)

It's a childish expression. Unfortunately, the connotation is untranslatable just as speaking in the third person is untranslatable to Japanese.

"I will become Hokage, dattebayo!" 
--> loosely translated -->
"I will become Hokage. I said it and that's how it is."

Brash, impudent, angry, and very Naruto-ish. If I'm correct the "da" is "it is", the informal version of "desu." So he's essentially saying: "I told you something, and that's the way it is." The reason why he omits the "da" sometimes? "It is" becomes supplanted with another verb.


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## The Black Knight (Aug 15, 2006)

**Mods, please recycle this.



I'm tired of answering this, so I'll copy and paste an article someone else wrote.



			
				Forgot the source of this article said:
			
		

> だってばよ itself doesn’t mean much. It is just another way to end a sentence. Many people thinks this means “I said”. It is true to some extent, but not exactly true.
> 
> Japanese sentences can be ended with variety of ways. Even you use same set of words, depends on the ending you use it can be formal, masculine or feminine. You cannot translate those endings into English. No matter which endings you use, the english translation would be exactly the same. However, in Japanese, the endings gives the characters to the sentence, gives the impression of who the person is, what the person really wants to emphasize etc. You can make same old sentence to your own character.
> 
> ...


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