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Three siblings have been abandoned by their parents and are to be split up and
placed in different homes. They are understandably distraught and an adult
family friend is trying to console them. He says:

どんな幸い時でも、こんなことに負けてたまるかって思うんだ

(You can defeat this by remembering all the happy times.)

俺だって、幸いことなんて山ほどあった。だが、負けなかった

(Even I had lots of misfortune (?), but I wasn’t defeated.)

I have put my attempt at translation in brackets.

Question: In the second sentence, it seems like 幸いことなんて should be something
like misfortunes or unfortunate things (from the context) but shouldn’t that
be 不幸い? Or is なんて a negating factor here (even though 山ほどあった seems neutral and
幸いこと is positive)?
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question
grammar translation
Can なんて be a negating factor?
You're mixing [幸い](http://jisho.org/word/%E5%B9%B8%E3%81%84) (さいわい; happiness)
and [辛い](http://jisho.org/word/%E8%BE%9B%E3%81%84-1) (つらい; hard, bitter,
painful). They look similar but are totally different characters.

(幸い時 makes no sense, because 幸い is not even an i-adjective although it happens
to end with い. 幸い **な** 時 would mean "happy time". 不幸 is also a na-adjective
and 不幸い時 is wrong. Anyway, there should be no kanji 幸 in the first place.)

なんて is a word that is used to make light of what follows. See: [Usage of なんて
and なんか as emphasis](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/421/5010)

Also note that 辛い has [another
reading](http://jisho.org/word/%E8%BE%9B%E3%81%84) (からい; spicy hot).
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2017-07-01T04:09:07.810
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answer