JSLL #21 - Urashima Tarou - Twenty-first sentence

 Sentence 21 is short.

そして、早くうちに帰りたいと思いました。

そして、はやくうちにかえりたいとおもいました。

Soshite, hayaku uchi ni kaeritai to omoimashita.

As you can see, the sentence has no topic marker は or subject marker が. That means that the subject is implied, and therefore the same as who the topic was previously. In the previous sentence, the topic was Urashima Tarou, so that's the subject of this sentence, too.

The sentence starts with そして, which we already know means "And then, ..."

The verb at the end of the sentence is 思いました. This is the polite past tense of 思う (おもう, omou), which we already learned means "to think," and the と before it means basically "that."

So what is it that Tarou thinks? 早く is the く-form (adverb form) of 早い, an i-adjective that means "fast" or "early, soon." However, when it means "fast," it's usually written with a different kanji: 速い. So let's take the adverb "soon."

うちに is the noun うち, which means "one's home, one's house," and に means "in" or "to."

帰りたい comes from 帰る. We know the verb ("to return home") but not the ～たい ending. This ending translates to "want to."

So, put together, the sentence reads:

"And then, he thought that he wanted to go home soon."

There's just one problem: the ~たい form only works if the subject is the speaker. For example, 鈴木さんは帰りたい is not the right way to say "Mr Suzuki wants to go home."

So in this case, it seems wrong, because the "speaker" is the narrator, not Tarou. The reason it works nonetheless is that 早くうちに帰りたい comes after 思う+と, turning the sentence in something like a quotation. So a more faithful translation would be:

"And then he thought: I want to go home soon."