The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 40 ～ことか

I know I sound a bit weird here.. But please bear with me. ^_^’ I was attempting to voice the “!” mark

[grammar pattern]

～ことか

[meaning] What a… ! How… !

[sample sentence]

子供が生まれてなんとうれしかったことか。

[English] When a child is born, what a happy event it is!

[romaji] kodomo ga umarete nanto ureshikatta koto ka.

^_^’ A bit of info from a native speaker says that this pattern is not so commonly used nowadays.

He says that for 女性 (female) the following is much more appropiate during these times:

「なんと～ことでしょう」

Going along with our example from above, it would be something like  なんとうれしいことでしょう。

So the ～ことか is for those really exclamatory statements. It’s not applied in every English sentence we put a “!” to. ^_^ For guys, this is okay , I guess. I’ve heard this expression from Bleach. I don’t really recall but I think it was Toushiro taichou. ^_^