JSLL #33 - Urashima Tarou - Thirty-seventh sentence

Time to wrap this baby up with the final sentence. After this, we'll recap what we've learned in the next posts.

浦島太郎が竜宮城で楽しい毎日を過ごしている間に、地上では何百年も経っていたのでした。

うらしまたろうがりゅうぐうこうでたのしいまいにちをすごしているあいだに、ちじょうではなんびゃくねんもたっていたのでした。

Urashima Tarou ga ryuuguujou de tanoshii mainichi wo sugoshiteiru aida ni, chijou de ha nanbyakunen mo tatteita no deshita.

The first half of the sentence ends in 間に, which literally means "in the interval," and is preceded by a qualifier clause, making it "in the internal in which..." or, more shortly, "while."

The qualifier clause consists of these parts (all of which have appeared in earlier sentences):

• The subject (particle が): 浦島太郎, Urashima Tarou.
• The location of an activity (particle で): 竜宮城, the Palace of the Dragon King.
• A direct object (particle を): 楽しい毎日: 楽しい is an i-adjective meaning "fun, enjoyable," 毎日 means "every day," but used as a noun. In English you might say "the day-to-day."
• 過ごしている is the verb, in the ～ている form. 過ごす means "to spend (time), to pass."

So a good translation for this first part would be "While Urashima Tarou had been spending every day having fun in the Palace of the Dragon King,..."

The second part is the main clause:

地上では何百年も経っていたのでした。

地上では is the topic of the sentence (は particle) and the location of the action (で particle). The noun 地上 contains two kanji we've not seen before. The whole thing means "above ground, on the earth's surface," again used as a noun. The word "topside" might work here. The kanji used are:

• 地 is an N4 kanji that occurs in 127 common words. In many of those, the kanji means or connotes "earth" or "ground."
• 上 is an N5 kanji that occurs in 157 common words. In many of those, it means "above," "top" etc.

Next is 何百年も. This is a sequence of three new kanji, followed by the particle も. The kanji are:

• 何 meaning "what" (on its own). It's an N4 kanji occurring in 93 common words.
• 百 meaning "hundred" (on its own). It's an N5 kanji occurring in 20 common words. You'll notice that this kanji is often used to denote not specifically a (multiple of) hundred, but more generally, lots and lots. Note that the kanji is often pronounced ひゃく (hyaku), but that putting it after 何 changes it into びゃく (byaku)
• The combination 何百 means "hundreds."
• 年 meaning "year." 

Combined with も after it, the whole construction reads like "hundreds and hundreds of years" or "an enormous amount of time."

All that's left is the verb at the end: 経っていたのでした。The verb is 経つ, an intransitive verb meaning "to pass" (referring to time) or "to elapse." The specific conjugation is the te-form followed by いた, the past tense of いる. This can mean either "were elapsing" or "had elapsed" --the latter seems better here.

Following this form is のでした. It's not unusual to tag の + a form of です after a verb, or ん + a form of です. Adding those two things can have multiple meanings, depending on context. In this context, I think it serves to underline that this is an explanation. You might translate it with ", you see" at the end of the sentence.

Putting the entire sentence together, we now see that the meaning is this:

While Urashima Tarou had been spending every day having fun in the Palace of the Dragon King, above ground, many hundreds of years had passed, you see.