How to use ておらん in lines like 食べておらん?


I heard one of these in Anime. It was translated as "I didn't eat your soul".

> お前の魂は食べておらん  
>  お前の魂は食べてはおらん

I've read online that ておらん is an overproud version of 食べていない.  
I'd like to know how should Oru/Oran be attached to U-ending verbs and what's
the past form of ておらん. I read the past form of ておる is ておった.




>   * お前の魂は食べておらん お前の魂は食べてはおらん
>   * ておらん is an overproud version of 食べていない
>   * what's the past form of ておらん?
>

As you know, 食べておらん is the negating form of 食べておる. Apart from the overproud
nuance, 食べておる could be interpreted in two ways as:

>   1. I'm eating it. - present continuous tense; present progressive form
>   2. I've experienced eating it. - present perfect tense
>

In this sense, 食べておる depicts the fact at present and also depicts the fact
happened in the past.

So, ておらん is the past form of ておらん.

Luckily, you have an expression to avoid the confusion of the tense by adding
**かった** as 食べておらん **かった** in only the negating form.  
With this かった, both interpretations of 食べておらん could become denoting the past
fact.




> ... in Anime. ... I've read online that ておらん is an overproud version of
> 食べていない.

As you say you heard it in anime, I suppose the おらん was used as 老人語 (old
people's speech), which is a kind of 役割語 (role language).

The ん originally is an old negative auxiliary ぬ. It's attached to おら, which is
the 未然形 (imperfective form) of the subsidiary verb おる.

> It was translated as "I didn't eat your soul".

Yes... ～ておらん, or ～ていない in standard Japanese, can mean "didn't do~~" or
"haven't done~~ (yet)", as well as "is not doing~~ (now)". See [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/42343/9831) for detail.

> I'd like to know how should Oru/Oran be attached to U-ending verbs

You can just attach おる/おらん to the te-form of verbs, eg:

する -- しておる・しておらん  
くる -- きておる・きておらん  
いく -- いっておる・いっておらん  
おちる -- おちておる・おちておらん  
おしえる -- おしえておる・おしえておらん

> and what's the past form of ておらん. I read the past form of ておる is ておった.

The past tense form of ～ておらん would be ～ておらんかった. (But here in your example it's
already past tense, so it wouldn't have to be お前の魂は食べて(は)おらんかった.)

* * *

As a side note: The は in 食べて **は** おらん is the contrastive particle は.  
食べておらん and 食べて **は** おらん are both correct, and mean almost the same thing. The
latter might sound a bit more emphatic, or might imply that they didn't eat it
but did something similar.

