くらい confusion

Japanese
#1

I really struggle to understand the meaning for くらい in this sentence:

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The context is that these characters have just managed to infiltrate this futuristic fortified city. The protagonist says:

．．．これだけ発達した都市なら、俺たちが侵入したことくらいバレてるはずだ

Which I would translate very roughly and non-literally as:

… with a city that advanced, they have to know we are here/that we have broken in

But I genuinely can’t make sense of what nuance くらい conveys here. Is it just to soften 侵入する? Like “we have sort-of invaded”? Or is it more like “they should have figured out that we broke in or something”, as in he doesn’t know exactly what they would have detected, but they have to have found out that something was going on?

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#2

Your interpretation is not far off the actual meaning of くらい in this case. The function of くらい here is to indicate a “degree” for lack of a better term. As in “they should know as much as us having broken in”. Think of the meaning of くらい which is “about/approximately” and then add that to the phrase.

Hope that makes sense.

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#3

BTW, this is the grammar point in BunPro:

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#4

To add on, here’s the Japanese definition:
ある事柄を示し，その程度が軽いもの，弱いものとして表す。

I’ve always thought of this as ‘at least’ in English, which indicates a matter as being ‘light’ or ‘low’ in degree (as the JP definition states here).

So, in English I’d translate it as something like: With the city being that advanced, they have to at least know that we’ve broken in.

This indicates that the matter, which is ‘the finding out that they broke in’, is a simple task for them - it has a low/light degree in this regard (based on them being an advanced city).

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#5

Thank you a lot @Jose7822 and @josh, that helped a lot!

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#6

“At least”, that’s a good translation. I’m gonna use that from now on :blush::+1:.

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#7

Defs as the others have said, 侵入 as the baseline ‘at least’, but they (the city) probably don’t know what our motive/intention is yet.

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