おじさまと猫 (Ojisama to Neko) Volume 3 Discussion

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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I haven’t read this part yet, so I don’t have context, but はよ is short for 早(はや)く, meaning “soon” or “early”. Preceding the verb 寝ろ (imperative form of 寝る), it sounds like it would be “go to bed soon”. Depending on the context, it might be like saying “get to bed, already” to someone who’s up late.

I recently wrote a bit on のだ which is now my recommended reading for のだ =D

Let’s set the のだ aside and look at the sentence that leads into it.

First, Japanese sentences follow the topic-comment structure, and those parts are clearly visible. Topics are marked by は or も, so we see the topic is ふくまる. The remainder of the sentence is a comment about this topic. It’s being said regarding ふくまる.

The comment doesn’t list a subject (nothing marked by が). The page may provide context as to who the subject is, but I haven’t read it yet, so I’m going in a bit blind. I’ll tentatively figure the subject (the one performing the action of the verb) is also ふくまる.

The comment is essentially:

「(modifier)ときに(verb)」

Now for the fun part. Is 甘えられる the 受(う)け身(み) form (which often gets poorly taught as “passive”), meaning ふくまる “receives (someone) acting like a spoiled child (to him)”? Or is it the potential form, meaning ふくまる “is able to act like a spoiled child”?

Context should help answer this, but let’s figure for a moment that we’re not sure. Let’s look at more of the sentence. This gets us back to:

「(modifier)ときに(something spoiled happens)」

This に tells when the action of the verb takes place. We know it refers to a time because it’s attached to とき (time). But what time is it that this action occurs? It’s 「甘えたい time」. This is the combination of 甘える (to act like a spoiled child) and the auxiliary adjective たい (want to).

Thus, the time when the verb takes place is “(When Fukumaru) wants to act like a spoiled child.”

From here, we can review the two possible sentences (うけみ or potential), and determine which makes sense and which does not make sense:

  • “When Fukumaru wants to act like a spoiled child, he receives (someone) acting like a spoiled child (to him).”

  • “When Fukumaru wants to act like a spoiled child, he is able to act like a spoiled child.”

The のだ portion suggests we have an “incomplete observation”. Something is happening, but we don’t know the reason why it’s happening. This のだ is like making a statement starting with “It is that [statement]” or more commonly in English “It is because [statement].”

So, we observe something happen, and we get the reason (the cause) for it: “It’s because when Fukumaru wants to act like a spoiled child, he can act like a spoiled child.”

At least, that’s what I get without context. Maybe I’ll get to reading this part Saturday (my day for reading comics with short chapters) and find I’m way off base?

Edit: Even though this looks potential to me, if you want to read more on the passive voice versus the うけみ form, I did a write-up on that previously as well.

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