What does と mean in と思います, と言う, and と見る？


愛という光 means "The light which is called Love", but why is と used? Why does 見る
mean "to see" but と見る means something like "it was judged to be"?

What function is と serving?




と is frequently used as a "quoting" particle, for thoughts or for speech.

〜と思います is "I think **that** 〜", with the thought being "quoted" coming in the
〜. Similarly, you can have 〜と考えます (I think **that** 〜), 〜と信じます (I believe
**that** 〜), and similar examples.

Likewise, と言う used with the kanji means "I (will) say **that** 〜".

However, という used without the kanji tends to indicate that the と言う from which
it is derived is acting grammatically, and is thus often better translated as
"that is" in these circumstances. But "that is called" is usually fine at
getting the essence of the meaning across, if a bit unnatural. There are a
tonne of more complex grammatical constructions which use という (e.g. ということ,
というと, というもの, というわけ etc.), so be careful as to what proceeds and follows という in
general.

Extending the above examples in the same way, 〜と見る is more along the lines of
"see **that** 〜" or "regard **as** 〜" -- it's a somewhat more abstract sense
of "seeing", e.g. understanding a thought, hence you mark it with the quoting
particle と.




This と simply marks quoted speech like the speech marks "" in English. The
difference is that in English we only ever use "" for direct quotes e.g.

> He said "I'm going to Japan".

but we don't use "" for indirect quotes e.g.

> He said he was going to Japan.

However, in Japanese と would be required for both of these.

> 彼は「日本に行く」と言った。  
>  彼は日本に行くと言った。

と思う works pretty much the same way. With と見る, と also marks what someone
thought, but it might seem a little more abstract because we don't tend to use
it with direct quotes in English.

> He judged that the coffee was disgusting.  
>  "This coffee is disgusting" he judged. -- _this one seems a bit weird to
> me_.

Finally, the と in 愛という光 is grammatically the same as above. You could break it
down as "The light which people say is love", and と would mark the indirect
quote "this is love". But, this is a really unnatural and awkward thing to do.
Because という appears so often like this I just tend to think of it as a single
unit with the meaning "which is called". XというY = "Y which is X", "Y which is
called X" or even just "YX".

