私はかつて大病にかかったことがあった。

I; me; private affairs; personal matter; secrecy; selfishness

topic marker particle; indicates contrast with another option (stated or unstated); adds emphasis

once; before; formerly; ever; former; ex-; never yet; never before; first time; still not happened

serious illness; dangerous disease

at (place, time); in; on; during; to (direction, state); toward; into; for (purpose); because of (reason); for; with; by; from; as (i.e. in the role of); per; in; for; a (e.g. "once a month"); and; in addition to; if; although

to take (a resource, e.g. time or money); to hang; to come into view; to arrive; to come under (a contract, a tax); to start (engines, motors); to attend; to deal with; to handle; to have started to; to be on the verge of; to overlap (e.g. information in a manual); to cover; to (come) at; to be fastened; to be covered (e.g. with dust, a table-cloth, etc.); to be caught in; to get a call; to depend on

thing; matter; incident; occurrence; event; something serious; trouble; crisis; circumstances; situation; state of affairs; work; business; affair; after an inflectable word, creates a noun phrase indicating something the speaker does not feel close to; nominalizing suffix; pretending to ...; playing make-believe ...; alias; aka; nickname; alternative name; also known as

indicates sentence subject (occasionally object); indicates possessive (esp. in literary expressions); but; however; still; and

to be (usu. of inanimate objects); to exist; to live; to have; to be located; to be equipped with; to happen; to come about