JSLL #16 - Urashima Tarou - Fifteenth sentence

 Here's sentence 15 from the Urashima Tarou story.

あたり一面は珊瑚礁になり、きれいな魚がたくさん泳いでいました。

Let's do the easy part first: the main clause at the end of the sentence (after the comma).

We already know both kanji in that clause: 魚 is "fish," (followed by the subject particle が) and 泳ぐ is "to swim," in the progressive polite past tense. So the core of this clause is "fish were swimming." Then there are some modifiers: きれいな before 魚 is a na-adjective that means "pretty, beautiful" and also "clean." The first meaning is the more logical one here, even though it's more commonly the second meaning that's written with kana rather than kanji.  

Following が is たくさん, which means "many." It sits at the same position as where you'd normally find a number + counter, which makes sense, because it's also a quantity.

In short, the main clause is "Many pretty fish were swimming."

On to the first half of the sentence, before the comma.

あたり, when written using kana, can be either "around, about, thereabouts" or "for instance, say, such as." The first meaning seems likelier here.

一面 (いちめん, ichimen) means one of the following: "one face, one surface"; "the whole surface"; "one aspect, one side"; "(on) the other hand"; "one broad, flat object"; "front page." Forced to choose between this, I'd say "the whole surface," even though the action is under water. My bet is that this refers to the seabed as a surface. This is the topic of the sentence (marked by は).

Next are three unusual kanji: 珊瑚礁. The dictionary tells us that this word, which means "coral reef" and is pronounced さんごしょう (sangoshou), is typically written with katakana + kanji: サンゴ礁. This makes sense, because a coral (sango) is technically an animal, and animals names are often written with katakana. That said, let's look at the three kanji:

• 珊 is the first kanji in the text that is so unusual that it's not even an N1-N5 kanji. Rather, it's what's called a jinmeiyou kanji, which means a character that's allowed to be used in names legally, but not part of the jouyou kanji (the roughly 2000 kanji that everyone learns in primary and secondary school). It occurs in only 2 common words: "coral" and "coral reef."
• 瑚 is an N1 kanji, but in all other ways it's like the previous one: jinmeiyou kanji, not jouyou kanji, and occurs only in 2 common words, "coral" and "coral reef."
• 礁 is also an N1 kanji.but this one is actually jouyou kanji. It, too, occurs in only 2 common words: "reef" or "unforeseen difficulty," and "coral reef" again.

After the noun is the particle に with なり (a form of なる, to become). なり is called the ます-stem (masu-stem) of the verb, because you create it by taking the polite form of the verb なる, which is なります. Remove the ます and you keep なり. The ます-stem, like the te-form, can be translated as "and" or "and then."

So when do you use the te-form, and when do you use the masu-stem? 

• As a general use, the te-form is much more common, especially in spoken or informal Japanese.
• The masu-stem strongly implies that the subject of the two clauses is the same (so it's all the more surprising that it's used in this sentence, where the subjects are different)
• The masu-stem can only indicate simultaneous events ("and") or sequential events ("and then").  By contrast, clauses connected by a te-form can additionally imply causality, or even refer to a method (like 歩いて/あるいて/aruite, the te-form of 歩く "to walk," which can mean "on foot"). Often, a te-form can be translated with an English -ing form, which often has similar causal/usage connotations. For example, the English sentence "Jumping from rock to rock, I crossed the river" strongly implies that the jumping was both the reason why the river was crossed, as well as the means by which it was crossed. Te-forms are similarly rich in meaning, while masu-stems are not.

In conclusion, my guess is that this first clause translate to something like "The seabed all around became a coral reef, and..."

Putting it all together results in:

The seabed all around became a coral reef, and many pretty fish were swimming.