Our fourth sentence is not very long, but requires a lot of explanation.
のぞいてみると、小さい亀の子を一匹つかまえて、 皆で棒でつっついていじめていました。
In kana: のぞいてみると、ちいさいかめのこをいっぴきつかまえて、 みなでぼうでつっついていじめていました。
In romaji: nozoitemiruto, chiisai kame no ko wo ippiki tsukamaete, mina de bou de tsuttsuite ijimeteimashita.
For whatever reason, the sentence contains relatively few kanji, even where some could be used. Also, no subject or topic is explicitly defined.
のぞいてみると、
This is a verb phrase followed by と (to) which in this case is a clause-level particle. It means "when" or "whenever." The verb phrase, のぞいてみる has the end ～てみる, which is the -te form of a verb followed by みる (which is always written in kana, never as 見る). It means "try to X" where X is the verb before it. In this case, the verb before it is のぞく, which can mean one of two things: "to remove; to exclude; to kill" (written 除く) or "to peek; to look down into; to peek into; to sneak a look at; etc." (written 覗く). Given our context so far, and given the fact that the verb has no object, the second reading is obviously the right one, and the subject of the clause is the same one as in all the earlier sentences, Tarou.
So this part translates to: "When he tried to sneak a look..."
The next part:
小さい亀の子を一匹つかまえて、
It's a verb in the -te form, つかまえる, means "to catch, to capture." The main verb of this sentence follows in the next part and is in the past tense, so this should be too: "caught." The verb is normally written with a kanji, 捕まえる, and I'm not sure why it doesn't occur here. Maybe because the kanji looks very similar to the first kanji of "Urashima" (浦島).
The clause also has an object, marked by the particle を: 小さい亀の子.
小さい (ちいさい, chiisai) is a well-known i-adjective: "small." The kanji 小 is an N5, occurring in 77 common words, not all of which have to with smallness. 亀 (かめ, kame) is an N1 kanji that occurs in just 2 words, one of which is 亀 itself, which means "turtle" and also "heavy drinker" for some reason. And the kanji 子 was discussed in the previous post. On its own, it means "child."
The particle の between two nouns usually indicates that the second noun belongs to the first noun in some way. If you imagine that meaning here, the object would be "the child of a small turtle."
But it makes more sense that の is used in a slightly different way: as an appositive. An appositive is a noun phrase that further describes another noun phrase, such as in "Frank, a neurosurgeon, likes to party on the weekends." The "a neurosurgeon" part is the appositive: it says something more about Frank. In Japanese, an appositive is not enclosed in commas, but preceded by の. So 小さい亀の子 is "a little turtle, a child." Or as we would say in English: "a little baby turtle." This is the object of "caught."
In between the object 小さい亀の子を and the verb つかまえて is 一匹 (いっぴき, ippiki). This is the kanji 一 followed by a counter, 匹. As you may know, a number+counter follow the particle (in this case を) that follows the noun phrase that they count (小さし亀の子). The specific counter to use depends on the type of noun: either the shape of the thing it describes (flat, cylindrical, small and round) or the sort of thing it describes. The counter 匹 (ひき, hiki) is used for small animals (excluding birds): specifically, small enough that an adult person can pick them up. This definitely includes cats, monkeys, hedgehogs, fish, and most dogs, to name a few, but also turtles. The number is 一 (one). Also note that a number needs to be specified to make clear that this is a single turtle, not multiple.
一 is probably the first kanji you learned, so it's obviously N5, and it occurs in 281 common words, the most we've seen so far. And careful: it doesn't always mean "one" in each of those words. By contrast, 匹, which is N2, occurs in only 3 common words.
In summary, this part means: "[someone] caught one little baby turtle." It's unlikely that the [someone] is Tarou: "when Tarou tried to sneak a look, he captured one little baby turtle" doesn't really make sense. It makes more sense that [someone] refers to the children, the only other people in the story so far. And because Japanese has no distinctions between types of past (like simple past, present perfect, past perfect and so on in English), again we must deduce the specific tense. "The children had caught one little baby turtle."
The third part of our sentence is the clause 皆で棒でつっついて, again a clause with a te-form. The verb is つっつく, typically written with kanji: 突っ突く. It means "to poke, to nudge," or "to peck at (food), to pick at." Whatever the exact meaning, the children are being little shits. And to make clear that it's a group effort, it says 皆で ( Our fourth sentence:
のぞいてみると、小さい亀の子を一匹つかまえて、 皆で棒でつっついていじめていました。
In kana: のぞいてみると、ちいさいかめのこをいっぴきつかまえて、 みなでぼうでつっついていじめていました。
In romaji: nozoitemiruto, chiisai kame no ko wo ippiki tsukamaete, mina de bou de tsuttsuite ijimeteimashita.
For whatever reason, the sentence contains relatively few kanji, even where some could be used. Also, no subject or topic is explicitly defined.
のぞいてみると
This is a verb phrase followed by と (to) which in this case is a clause-level particle. It means "when" or "whenever." The verb phrase, のぞいてみる has the end ～てみる, which is the -te form of a verb followed by みる (which is always written in kana, never as 見る). It means "try to X" where X is the verb before it. In this case, the verb before it is のぞく, which can mean one of two things: "to remove; to exclude; to kill" (written 除く) or "to peek; to look down into; to peek into; to sneak a look at; etc." (written 覗く). Given our context so far, and given the fact that the verb has no object, the second reading is obviously the right one, and the subject of the clause is the same one as in all the earlier sentences, Taro.
So this part translates to: "When he tried to sneak a look..."
The next part:
小さい亀の子を一匹つかまえて
It's a verb in the -te form, つかまえる, means "to catch, to capture." The main verb of this sentence follows in the next part and is in the past tense, so this should be too: "caught." The verb is normally written with a kanji, 捕まえる, and I'm not sure why it doesn't occur here. Maybe because the kanji looks very similar to the first kanji of "Urashima" (浦島).
The clause also has an object, marked by the particle を: 小さい亀の子.
小さい (ちいさい, chiisai) is a well-known i-adjective: "small." The kanji 小 is an N5, occurring in 77 common words, not all of which have to with smallness. 亀 (かめ, kame) is an N1 kanji that occurs in just 2 words, one of which is 亀 itself, which means "turtle" and also "heavy drinker" for some reason. And the kanji 子 was discussed in the previous post. On its own, it means "child."
The particle の between two nouns usually indicates that the second noun belongs to the first noun in some way. If you imagine that meaning here, the object would be "the child of a small turtle."
But it makes more sense that の is used in a slightly different way: as an appositive. An appositive is a noun phrase that further describes another noun phrase, such as in "Frank, a neurosurgeon, likes to party on the weekends." The "a neurosurgeon" part is the appositive: it says something more about Frank. In Japanese, an appositive is not enclosed in commas, but preceded by の. So 小さい亀の子 is "a little turtle, a child." Or as we would say in English: "a little baby turtle." This is the object of "caught."
In between the object 小さい亀の子を and the verb つかまえて is 一匹 (いっぴき, ippiki). This is the kanji 一 followed by a counter, 匹. As you may know, a number+counter follow the particle (in this case を) that follows the noun phrase that they count (小さし亀の子). The specific counter to use depends on the type of noun: either the shape of the thing it describes (flat, cylindrical, small and round) or the sort of thing it describes. The counter 匹 (ひき, hiki) is used for small animals (excluding birds): specifically, small enough that an adult person can pick them up. This definitely includes cats, monkeys, hedgehogs, fish, and most dogs, to name a few, but also turtles. The number is 一 (one). Also note that a number needs to be specified to make clear that this is a single turtle, not multiple.
一 is probably the first kanji you learned, so it's obviously N5, and it occurs in 281 common words, the most we've seen so far. And careful: it doesn't always mean "one" in each of those words. By contrast, 匹, which is N2, occurs in only 3 common words.
In summary, this part means: "[someone] caught one little baby turtle." It's unlikely that the [someone] is Tarou: "when Tarou tried to sneak a look, he captured one little baby turtle" doesn't really make sense. It makes more sense that [someone] refers to the children, the only other people in the story so far. And because Japanese has no distinctions between types of past (like simple past, present perfect, past perfect and so on in English), again we must deduce the specific tense. "The children had caught one little baby turtle."
The third part of our sentence is the clause 皆で棒でつっついて, again a clause with a te-form. The verb is つっつく, typically written with kanji: 突っ突く. It means "to poke, to nudge," or "to peck at (food), to pick at." Whatever the exact meaning, the children are being little shits. And to make clear that it's a group effort, it says 皆で (みなで, mina de), "everyone." The furigana in the book transcribe 皆 as みな but it's just as often written みんな (minna). This N3 kanji occurs in just 4 common words. The で simply creates a meaning "all of them" or "as a group."
棒 (ぼう, bou) means "stick, pole, rod." This N2 kanji occurs in only 7 common words. The same particle で is here used in a very different meaning: "using, with."
When you see a sequence of te-forms, the subject needs to match across them. So this clause reads: "[the children] were all poking it with sticks." (I chose "sticks" rather than "a stick" because multiple kids all handling the same, single stick is a bit hard to imagine.)
We're now at the final part of the sentence: いじめていました。This is the polite progrssive past form of いじめる, which means "to bully, to be cruel to, to torment, to tease." So it translates as [the children] were bullying." Although you can write this verb with a kanji, the online dictionary explicitly says, "Usually written using kana alone."
Now we can put all the clauses together to get:
"When Taro tried to sneak a look, [he saw that] the children had caught a little baby turtle, which they all poking with sticks to torment it."
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