I’m done with this week’s reading. Overall, I liked it better; I don’t know precisely why… I’m guessing just because Haruhi started talking a bit more so it’s not only the narrator’s rambling endlessly about what he thinks of her…
Anyway, onto the main topic… interesting grammar! Maybe I should create a club for unusual grammar seekers. Overall, though, no big linguistic enquiries for me to ponder this week, which means reading was faster and more pleasant.
(Should I spoiler the following points? It’s not like I’m talking about the events of the story or anything… but if you want me to, let me know.)
いつからハルヒが傍目から見るとトチ狂っているとしか思えないことをやっていたのか知らんけど、待てど暮らせど何も現れず、業を煮やしては奇怪な儀式を行ってもナシのツブテ、そりゃいつも全世界を呪っているような顔にもなる……わけないか。
Even though it’s considered an idiom now, it’s actually not corrupted and totally parsable as two (classical) -edo forms “even though”, lit. “even though they wait, even though they spend time”.
ハルヒはお百度参りを決意した呪い女のようなワニ目で中空を眺め、北風のようなため息をついた。
How do you interpret 呪い女? Looks like a made-up compound, so I’d say “evil witch” or something, as in some woman who puts bad curses on people; if it were “cursed woman”, instead, it would be 呪われた女, I guess?
言うなれば、それを出来ない人間が、発明やら発見やらをして文明を発達させてきたんだ
Another idiom, another classical grammar point. 言うなれば is a directly nominalised verb 言う (would be 言うの in standard modern Japanese—classical did not require nominalisers) + なれば, the old provisional form of the old copula なり, which also gave us なら(ば). As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the -eba form had a core meaning of “as” or “since”, so “since it is that I (shall) speak / since I am to speak” > “so to speak”. Also the following 凡人たる我々は; talk about grandiose speech!
凡人たる我々は、人生を凡庸に過ごすのが一番であってだな。身分不相応な冒険心なんか出さないほうが、
This であってだな seems to be another occurrence of an inserted pragmatic clause “isn’t it?” or “right?” after a gerund (であって). This splits the long utterance, and then the actual sentence continues after the period.
俺は目の前に刻の涙を見た。
This 刻の涙を見る seems to be a Gundam meme, with a vague meaning of “to experience the suffering/hardship that comes with great change”, probably in reference to the emergence of Newtypes in the Universal Century canon. Unfortunately, my knowledge of UC is pretty lacking, so if somebody knows more…
もし笑顔に温度が付帯しているなら、熱帯雨林のど真ん中くらいの気温になっているだろう。
This ど真ん中 appears to be a doubly emphasised 中, with both ど- and 真(ん).
痛む後頭部がよからぬ予感を告げていた。
Yet another idiom that transparently borrows from the classical. よく+ある+ぬ, essentially just a fancy way to say “not good”. EDIT: Wait, is that even considered classical?