JSLL #44 - Yuki Onna, part 9

Just one sentence today.

女の顔は美しかったですが、肌は異常に白く目は稲妻のように鋭かったです。

おんなのかおはうつくしかったですが、はだはいじょうにしろくめはいなずまのようにするどかったです。

Grammar

We've seen in the past that i-adjectives can have a -te-form. For example, 赤い (赤い, "red") has a te-form 赤くて (あかくて, "is/was red and..."). In this sentence, we see that i-adjectives have a past form as well. The i-adjective 美しい (うつくしい) is written in its past tense 美しかった(うつくしかった), and similarly 鋭い (するどい)  gets a past tense 鋭かった (するどかった). To speakers of Indo-European languages, the idea that an adjective can have past tense is unheard of, but in Japanese it's perfectly normal.

Another new thing is the use of 白く, where in the previous story, we would expect 白くて to be used. 白く is a more formal version of 白くて.

Vocabulary

Plenty of new words in this sentence:

• 肌 means "skin"
• 異常 means "abnormal, unusual, uncommon"
• 稲妻 means "lightning, flash of lightning, bolt of lightning"
• 鋭い means "sharp, pointed"

Kanji

Every new word contains one or more new kanji:

Kanji	N-level	Occurs in how many common words?
肌	N2	3 (“skin”, “underwear” 肌着 and “flesh color”　肌色)
異	N1	27
常	N3	34
稲	N1	5
妻	N3	8
鋭	N2	5

Translation

The woman's face was beautiful, but her skin was unusually white and her eyes were sharp like lightning bolts.