Sunday, March 16, 2025

JSLL #31 - Urashima Tarou - Thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth sentences

Once again, small sentences, so we'll do two again.

 そして、浦島太郎はそれをそっと開けてみました。すると、中から白い煙が出てきました。

そして、うらしまたろうはそれをそっとあけてみました。すると、なかならしろいけむりがでてきました。

The only new word in the first sentence is そっと, which means "softly, gently, quietly, lightly." The grammar should be familiar enough for you to see that it translates to:

Then, Urashima Tarou went ahead and gently opened that [meaning the tamatebako].

The second sentence starts with すると, which mean "and then, thereupon." 中から, means either "from the middle" or "from the inside." The second reading sounds logical here. Next is the subject, which contains 2 new kanji:

  • 白 is the kanji in the i-adjective 白い meaning "white." An N5 kanji, it occurs in 45 common words. Those words don't always have a meaning associated with whiteness. For example, 面白い means "interesting, funny."
  • 煙 is the noun, meaning "smoke." It's an N3 kanji that occurs in just 12 words, all of which are related to smoke, smoking and smokiness.
The verb 出てきました contains a kanji we've seen before: 出. Here, it's used in the polite past form of 出てくる, "to come out, to appear."

So the sentence translates as: 

Thereupon, white smoke came out from inside of it.

or, less literally,

When he did that, white smoke came out of it.



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