Friday, March 7, 2025

JSLL #22 - Urashima Tarou - Twenty-second sentence

 Sentence 22 is another short one.

そのことを乙姫様に言うと、乙姫様はきれいな箱を持って来てこう言いました。

そのことをおとひめさまにいうと、おとひめさまはきれいなはこをもってきてこういいました。

Sono koto wo oto-hime-sama ni iu to, oto-hime-sama ha kireina hako wo mottekite kou iimashita.

The relative と-clause at the start has no subject, so we can assume the subject is still our hero, Urashima Tarou, like in the previous sentence. The verb is 言う, to say, and the person to whom something is said (に) is 乙姫様, Her Majesty Princess Oto. What is being said, the object of the verb (を), is そのこと. We've already encountered the noun こと, which means "thing, matter," but can be used in all kinds of other ways. In this case, thought, it means pretty much "thing, matter," with the modifier その in front of it. その means "that" when used before a noun ("that" on its own would be それ).

So the clause reads, "When he said those things to Her Majesty Princess Oto, ..." Note that I translated そのこと as "those things," not "that thing." The noun phrase can be translated either way, but plural sounds more natural in English.

The next clause is a te-form that has a topic (は): it's Her Majesty Princess Oto. The repetition of her name in the sentence looks odd to an English speaker, but it's necessary to establish that the focus of the sentence switches from Tarou to Oto. The te-form is 持って来て which is normally written 持ってきて, without the second kanji. The whole thing might look like two te-forms in a row, but 持ってくる (which can also be spelled 持って来る) has its own dictionary entry, and means "to bring, to fetch, to get." But you can see that the verb has an internal structure: 持って is indeed the te-form of 持つ, "to hold, to carry; to have, to own" and a bunch of other meetings, while 来る is "to come."

Anyway, the kanji 持 is N4 and occurs in 49 common words. (The right hand side of the kanji, 寺, occurs in a number of other common kanji, such as 待 and 時. Be sure not to mix them up.)

The object (the thing she brings) is きれいな箱. We already know きれい ("pretty," a na-adjective), but 箱 (はこ, hako) is a new kanji. It means "box," it's N3 and it occurs in 7 common words, all related to boxes. 

So the first main clause is "Her Majesty Princess Oto fetched a pretty box and..."

The last part is こう言いました. We recognize the polite past tense of  言う, "to say." As for こう, that means "in this way, so, thus." (There's also a counterpart そう, "in that way, so, thus.") The combination "say" + "in this way" is a bit off for us, but basically it means "she spoke thus" or "she said the following." Note that there's a period 。at the end, rather than the comma or colon we would write.

The whole sentence thus reads as:

When he said those things to Her Majesty Princess Oto, she fetched a pretty box and said the following:"

We'll go through what she said in the next few posts.

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