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The other day I came across this line in a game:

しかしそれ以外は誰とも出会わず、そして **歩けど歩けど** 代わり映えしない通路と部屋ばかり。

I guessed that 歩けど meant 歩いても from the context, but I had never seen a verb
conjugated like that before. Is it something from a dialect, or perhaps
classical Japanese?
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2014-02-04T20:56:08.120
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2014-02-04T22:30:07.730
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question
grammar
Where does "歩けど" come from?
It comes from Classical Japanese but it is used in Modern Japanese much more
often than you appear to think.

「ど」 is a contrastive, conjunctive particle. 「[歩]{ある}けど」 means the same thing
as 「歩くけれども」 and 「歩くが、しかし」.

You speak of the conjugation but the ど is not part of the conjugation. 歩け is
the [已然形]{いぜんけい} of the verb 歩く.
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2014-02-04T22:18:14.397
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2014-02-04T22:18:14.397
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answer
The conjunctive particles [**ど**](http://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%A9)
and [**ども**](http://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82) are Classical
Japanese contradictory conjunctions, like the English _but_ and _although_.
Although they aren't used as much anymore, you surely know them from the
modern **けれど(も)** , and you probably know them from **いえども** and **されど** as
well.

They attached to the 已然形 (realis stem), which in modern Japanese has been
reanalyzed as the 仮定形 (hypothetical stem). In this case, that stem is **歩け** ,
so you get **歩けど**.

Here, the **〜ど〜ど** pattern has the verb redoubled for emphasis:

> 歩け **ど** 歩け **ど**

Since it's literary, we could try to give it a literary sounding translation:

> **歩けど歩けど** 、岩しか見えなかった。  
>  **Walk and walk as I might** , I could see only rocks.

Hopefully you can see the meaning from this simplified example.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-04T22:30:07.730
14406
2014-02-04T22:30:07.730
14404
answer