Thursday, February 20, 2025

JSLL #7 - Urashima Tarou - Sixth sentence

 Sentence six is long and has many little grammar points and surprises:

太郎が亀の子を手にのせて海の水の中に戻してやると、亀の子は喜んで甲羅から首や手足を出して、すいすいと泳ぎ始めました。

In kana:

たろうがかめのこをてにのせてうみのみずのなかにもどしてやると、かめのこはよろこんでこうらからくびやてあしをだして、すいすいとおよぎはじめました。

In romaji:

Tarou ga kame no ko wo te ni nosete umi no mizu no naka ni modoshite yaru to, kame no ko ha yorokonde koura kara kubi ya teashi wo dashite, suisui to oyogi hajimemashita.

The と in the middle of the sentence, following a verb, is a nice way to divide the sentence. Everything to its left is a "when"-clause, and everything to its right is the main clause.

The と-clause itself has one clause ending in a te-form (のせて), and another clause ending in -てやる.

のせて is from the verb 乗せる (のせる, noseru) and is normally written with a kanji. It means many things, but the first meaning is "to place on," which works here, as we'll see. The three noun phrases-with-particles for this verb are:

太郎が Tarou + subject particle

亀の子を baby turtle + object particle

手に (てに, te ni) "hand" + location particle, here "on"

The only new kanji here is 手, an N4 kanji occurring in 147 words, with a wide variety of meanings.

So this part translates to "When Tarou put the baby turtle on his hand and..., ..."

The second half of the "when"-clause ends in 戻してやる. This is, as we've seen before, a ~てやる ending, indicating the granting of a favor to someone socially lower on the ladder. The verb is 戻す (もどす, modosu), the transitive verb "to return, to put back." This is not to be confused with 戻る (もどる, modoru), the intransitive verb "to return, "to go back." Japanese has many of these intransitive/transitive pairs, where the kanji is the same but the ending is different.

Even though it's transitive, it's not preceded by an を-phrase, but the first half of the と-clause does, so we can assume the object is the same, "the baby turtle." The verb does have a location phrase 海の水の中に. の中に means literally "to the inside of," but "into" or just "in" is usually a better translation. The kanji 中 was already covered before. 海の水 means "water of the sea." We already discussed 海 ("sea") but 水(みず, mizu) is new. It means "water," specifically cold water. This N5 kanji occurs in 98 common words, almost all related to water or liquid.

So this と-clause in its entirety reads "When Tarou put the baby turtle on his hand and put it back into the water of the sea, ..."

On to the main clause, which reads: 亀の子は喜んで甲羅から首や手足を出して、すいすいと泳ぎ始めました。These are two te-clauses followed by a main verb, this one in the polite past tense. 

The first te-clause has the verb 喜んで (よろこんで, yorokonde), from the verb 喜ぶ, which means "to be delighted, to be pleased, to rejoice." This N3 kanji has 9 common, "joyful" words. Who is doing the rejoiing something out? That's the topic at the start, the baby turtle, marked with the topic particle は.

The second te-clause has 出して(だして, dashite), from 出す, "to take out, to put out," a transitive verb (again, this has an intransitive counterpart, 出る (でる, deru, "to leave, to exit, to go out")). An N5 kanji with no less than 173 common words.

The subject must be the same as the previous te-clause, so it's again the baby turtle. So what is it taking out or putting out? That is the complex noun phrase 首や手足 before を. These are two nouns connected with や. You can enumerate two nouns X and Y with と or with や. XとY means "X and Y." XやY means "X and Y and so on" or "things like X and Y." In other words, や implies that the enumeration is incomplete, while と implies that it's complete. In this case, X is 首 (くび, kubi), which means "neck," and 手足(てあし, teashi) meaning "hands and feet, limbs." The kanji 首, N3, occurs in common 24 words. 手足 simply consists of the kanji for hand/arm followed by the kanji for foot/leg. We've already seen the kanji 手 above, in the と-clause, but 足 is new: it's an N4 kanji occurring in 42 common words.

To the left of this complex noun phrase is 甲羅から. The particle から here means "from," which can refer both to time and to place. The noun 甲羅 (こうら, koura) is "shell" (of an animal like a turtle or a crab). The kanji are 甲 (N1, 12 common words) and 羅 (N1, 11 common words). So both kanji are fairly rare and advanced, which is what you would expect for such a specialized word.

So the first and second te-clauses read: "The baby turtle was delighted and put its neck, limbs and so on out of its shell, and..."

The last part of the sentence is すいすいと泳ぎ始めました。Again, the verb is in the polite past. It takes the form of 泳ぎ (およぎ, oyogi), which is the stem of the verb 泳ぎます (plain form 泳ぐ, "to swim"), followed by 始めました (はじめました, hajimemashita, the polite past tense of the transitive verb "to begin"). This combination of a -ます stem + 始める means "to begin to X," so in this case "began to swim." 

You may have noticed that the kanji for "swim" 泳 looks like the kanji for "water" 水 with what look like waterdrops coming off of it. 泳 is an N3 kanji that occurs in just 6 common words.

Before this verb is すいすいと. This is an onomatopoeia, すいすい, followed by the  (optional) particle と. You can recognize an onomatopeia by the fact that they are repeated (ぺらぺら,ぽかぽか and so on). In English, onomatopoeia imitate a sound (like "honk" or "toot"), but in Japanese, they can refer to soundless things, too. That's the case here: すいすい means "lightly and smoothly (of movement), swiftly, glidingly."

We've now figured out the right half of the sentence: "The baby turtle was delighted and put its neck, limbs and so on out of its shell, and began to swim smoothly."

And the whole sentence then becomes: 

"When Tarou put the baby turtle on his hand and put it back into the water of the sea, it was delighted and put its neck, limbs and so on out of its shell, and began to swim smoothly."


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JSLL #10 - Urashima Tarou - Ninth sentence

If you've followed along so far, this sentence should be fairly easy. It only introduces one new kanji and  two new words.  浦島太郎はまた船にのって...