# 万が一にも



## Gavril

In my textbook, the phrase

万が一にもそんなことはないと思うよ

is translated as 

"There isn't a chance in a million that would ever happen."

I notice that が comes before は in this sentence, which I think is contrary to the normal pattern in Japanese. Does this happen often? What are the implied semantics when が precedes は? Let me know if the second question is not clear.

Thanks


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## Wishfull

Hi.
You may just think that 万が一（まんがいち） is one word.
万が一＝just-in-case, or by-any-chance (please think them as one word).

Like
さ*が*けん*は*、いなかだ。
佐賀県は、田舎だ。


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## Taro Ultra

Hello,

I'm not a linguist, but I think,

The usage of が in 万が一にも is not same as が in 私が太郎です.
The が of the latter usage is sometimes replaceable with は, as you know,
and these が and は must not be shown in one normal sentence.

The usage of が in 万が一にも is like 'of' in Enlish. that is, 万が一 is '1 of 10000'. 
More clearly, 万が一 is interpreted as 万のなかの一, meaning '1 out of 10000'.
Therefore, 万が一にも means like 'even if it is one chance out of 10000 trials'.

And as Wishful-san says, it is a set of phrase used very often, when you express an emphatic denial.
万が一にも、～ない。＝ めったに、～ない。
A similar expression is 太陽が西から昇ったとしても、～ない。

Examples of the usage of が like 'of' in english, you can find in
己が為(おのがため)に生きる。 To live for your own self.
塞翁が馬 The SAIOU's hourse... 
(I feel too long and funny story behind this uma to difficult to explain briefly.) Kono setsumei ha nagai node ryaku.


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## rukiak

あなたが聞きたいのはそんなことではないはずだ

でも私たちはそんなあなたが少しうらやましい


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## mikun

Hi,
There are several using style in ' が '.
I think this case is the using style of 'possesson'.
The literal meaning of '万が一' will be 'one part in ten thousand' , meaning very rare, and may be translated as ppm(part par million).


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## Gavril

Thanks for the responses.



mikun said:


> Hi,
> There are several using style in ' が '.
> I think this case is the using style of 'possesson'.
> The literal meaning of '万が一' will be 'one part in ten thousand' , meaning very rare, and may be translated as ppm(part par million).



Is が used in a technical sense? For example, would you use が to translate

_The odds that this will happen are about one in ten._

?


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## mikun

Hi,
This が usage is a classical using style and not so many phrases are left at present.
I don't use this が style for new sentence in casual conversation except for idioms.
万が一にもない means ' even one part of ten thousandth will not happen'.
The large numbers counting unit is different between Japan and US.
We count large numbers as one, ten, hundred, thousand, 万, １０万、１００万、１０００万、億、１０億、１００億、１０００億、兆、１０兆、・・・・
US people count as one, ten, hundred, thousand, 10 thousand, 100 thousand, million, 10 million, 100million, billion, 10billion, 100 billion, trillion, ....
We use 万、億 or 兆　for big numbers imaging, maybe you can use million, billion or trillion as a representative of large number.


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## rukiak

Like wishful said at first, it is virtually an idiom.


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## Mugi

As others have mentioned, 万が一 is a set phrase - the construction *cannot* be extrapolated to other ratios, such as *十が一. (Having said that, for emphasis you could conceivably joke "万が一よりも、億が一！", but you would need to make direct reference to the set phrase 万が一 in order for the listner to understand the emphasis.) It's not a simple ratio - it's a fixed idiom usually used in a negative sense and often translated as: if worst comes to worst, in the (highly) unlikely event that, no matter what may happen, if by chance [you miss your flight] ...

Here, が is a remnant of classical Japanese, which had two possessive particles: の and が. In modern Japanese, only the former survives outside of set phrases such as 万が一, わがまま, 我が子, 我が家, 我が国 or other "stiff" phrases that are deliberately modeled on these examples, such as 我が息子 or 我が仕事. 

In classical Japanese, I think there was a difference in usage between が and の (i.e they weren't interchangeable), but that's beyond the realm of my limited knowledge.


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## Wishfull

Mugi said:


> Here, が is a remnant of classical Japanese, which had two possessive particles: の and が. In modern Japanese, only the former survives outside of set phrases such as 万が一, わがまま, 我が子, 我が家, 我が国 or other "stiff" phrases that are deliberately modeled on these examples, such as 我が息子 or 我が仕事.


Hi. Your collections are great.
I can't say these examples.
I didn't recognize that わがまま＝我-が-まま. 
You are wonderful!


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