君の元へ飛んでゆけ - imperative or optative? This is the context. > Yura yura to yuganda sora e > **Kimi no moto e tonde yuke** > Konna ni mo chikaku ni kanjiteru > Futatsu no omoi > > > **** > > This is my try: > Through the warped and wobbling sky > **may I fly to you/if only I could fly to you** > I feel so close > the feelings of us (our feelings) I don't know how to translate this imperative (). There is a second person pronoun, "", so it can't be a simple imperative, where the speaker orders a second person to do something (fly to you/fly to yourself!). The speaker doesn't order himself to do something (in this case he/she would say "fly to him/her!"). Has it an optative meaning? "May I fly to you! If only I could fly to you! Let me fly to you!" Is, in general, used also as optative, in Japanese?

It is **_optative_** in meaning even though it grammatically takes the imperative form. This usage is quite common in song lyrics and other fictional writings in Japanese.

At least in the Japanese-speaking mind, a person's []{} ("feeling(s)", "thought(s)", etc.) has no will and it cannot fly away ([]{}) to someone; therefore, you do not order your to perform actions that only humans and animals can.

(How this works in other languages, I have no idea and I do not claim to know.)

How you "translate" the optative, however, is another matter altogether. It could be translated just like the imperative if that made sense and/or sounded natural in the target language just as long as you understand that it is considered optative in the original Japanese.

Other examples of optative phrases:

[]{}[]{},[]{}[]{},[]{}[]{}, etc.