what does「デカいヤマをあてること」mean?


As someone with little to no knowledge on japanese, I've cracked my brain as
to unfurl this passage's meaning.

Here's the full sentence:

> 夢は「デカいヤマをあてること」

夢は roughly being "What's your dream?" or something along the lines of "Your
dream:".

I come to realize that こと usually eliminates ambiguity, but that's as far as
my knowledge reaches.




Here's the breakdown:

  * **夢** : "dream"
  * **は** : topic marker
  * **「** : Japanese opening quotation mark
  * **デカい** : "big", "huge"
  * **ヤマをあてる** : set phrase meaning "to make a killing", "to grab a chance", etc
  * **こと** : "-ing", nominalizer (turns a verb into a noun)
  * **」** : Japanese closing quotation mark

So the sentence means "My/His/Her dream is grabbing a big chance (and become
rich)." Since the sentence lacks a personal pronoun that corresponds to
_my/your/etc_ , you have to determine whose dream the sentence is talking
about from the context. If there is no further context at all (e.g., it's
printed on a T-shirt), it should mean " _My_ dream is..."




Here's the breakdown:

  * **夢** : "dream"
  * **は** : topic marker
  * **「** : Japanese opening quotation mark
  * **デカい** : "big", "huge"
  * **ヤマをあてる** : set phrase meaning "to make a killing", "to grab a chance", etc
  * **こと** : "-ing", nominalizer (turns a verb into a noun)
  * **」** : Japanese closing quotation mark

So the sentence means "My/His/Her dream is grabbing a big chance (and become
rich)." Since the sentence lacks a personal pronoun that corresponds to
_my/your/etc_ , you have to determine whose dream the sentence is talking
about from the context. If there is no further context at all (e.g., it's
printed on a T-shirt), it should mean " _My_ dream is..."

