Friday, February 21, 2025

JSLL #8 - Urashima Tarou - Seventh sentence

 Seventh sentence: short and sweet.

そして、海の底の方へ戻っていきました。

Kana: そして、うみのそこのほうへもどっていきました。

Romaji: soshite, umi no soko no hou he modotte ikimashita.

そして is a word for "and" that connects sentences (unlike と which is "and" between nouns). It can also be translated "and then," "and now," "and finally" or "thus."

The subject of the sentence is not mentioned, so it must be the baby turtle from our previous sentence.

The verb at the end is once again polite past: 戻っていきました。This is the て-form of the verb 戻る followed by いきました。

We mentioned the intransitive verb 戻る, meaning "to return, to go back" as the counterpart of the transitive verb 戻す, "to return, to put back" in an earlier post. What I forgot to do then is discuss the kanji 戻. This kanji is N3 and occurs in 11 common words. All of which are about returning, refunds etc.

The ~ていく verb ending indicates a movement away from the speaker, or just generally movement away. いく, which is always written with kana, represents the verb 行く ("to go," pronounced the same way). The counterpart of ~ていく is ~てくる, which indicates movement toward (the speaker). 来る, again always written with kana, is 来る ("to come," also pronounced "kuru").

In English, you could translate 戻っていきました as "[he] went back" (and 戻ってきました as "[he] came back").

Where did our baby turtle go back to? 海の底の方へ. へ (he) means "toward" as you may remember. 方 (ほう, hou) means direction. This kanji is N4 and is found in 106 common words. Combined with the の before it, の方へ is "in the direction of." Of what? 海の底. We know the first kanji, 海, already: it's the sea. 底 is new: it means "bottom, sole." So "in the direction of the bottom of the sea" or just "toward the seabottom." The kanji is N2 and occurs in 12 common words. It resembles 低 somewhat, which means "low."

So, to summarize, the sentence is: "And then, [the baby turtle] went back toward the seabottom."



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JSLL #10 - Urashima Tarou - Ninth sentence

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