The Japanese version of the FF8 song "Eyes On Me," from the Final Fantasy Song
Book "Mahoroba" album, has several relative clauses without any particles
connecting the verbs and nouns. One of them, which I'm especially having
trouble with translating, is クラスの友達いないときに二人目と目あって気づいた恋. The main sticking
point is **二人目と目あって**.

Parsed out, I get the following:

  * クラスの友達いないときに - When our classmates aren't here/there/around, When we're without our classmates
  * 二人目と目あって - The two of us were/met eye to eye?
  * 気づいた恋 - The love I/we noticed/realized

合う and ある have different meanings but share the same te-form: あって. Also, 目と目
being "eye and eye" is grammatically incorrect on top of sounding weird, so
"eye to eye" is my best bet.
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2022-12-04T23:21:59.003
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2022-12-05T02:43:05.000
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question
word-choice particles relative-clauses
How to interpret 目と目あって without connecting particles?
> クラスの友達いないときに二人目と目あって気づいた恋

That means `The love "two people" realize eye to eye when there are no class
friends`.

二人目と目あって -> 二人が目と目が合って The eyes of both people meeting. Literally: `eye and
eye meeting`. This テ形 is working adverbially to show how they realized their
love. 二人が is the subject of 気づいた.

It's idiomatic almost. That's why it sounds weird in English "eye and eye".
目と目 is not grammatically incorrect. It's just `noun+noun` which is perfectly
fine.
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2022-12-04T23:28:55.017
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2022-12-05T02:43:05.000
2022-12-05T02:43:05.000
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answer