thank you so much, great exaplanation!
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On a side note, since this was mentioned earlier, I find google translate drawing feature to be pretty decent for looking up kanji.
I can be as messy as humanly possible and it’ll still guess what I wanted to draw!
Here’s a random example, I tried to scribble the kanji 残
Maybe it’s because I’m good at deducing the approximate stroke order for kanji.
If I used some random ordering, maybe it wouldn’t be so good.
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Wow, I’ve never used that feature before (didn’t know it existed) - but I will now!
In this case, そうだ doesn’t mean people say / I am of the impression / I heard that.
そうだ has two meanings.
If we say, おもしろいそうだ, it means “People say it’s interesting” / “I heard that it is interesting”.
But if we say, おもしろそうだ (as is the case here), it means “It looks interesting” / “It seems interesting” / “It feels like it’ll be interesting”
In the second case, when we use the stem of the i-adjective, it expresses the speaker’s opinion based on what he/she feels or sees. (conjecture)
But, in the first case, when we use the i-adjective directly, it expresses the speaker’s opinion based on what he/she has heard. (hearsay)
It’s a slight difference, but I thought I’d point it out.
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Are people able to read this? Seems too messy for me.
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Page 52
I used completely random stroke order (my default setting!) to try out the other sign from page 52 and Google recognised it no problem.
The translation was okay too, “regular holiday”, while Jisho gave some alternatives: regular holiday; fixed day off; regular closing day.
(Of course I’m old enough to remember when shops had closing days! When I was a kid every shop was closed on Sundays and had a closing day, or half closing day, too. Ah, the good old days!)
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Without trying to feed the offtopic, this still happens in several countries (and I’m happy about it!)
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Thank you so much, it makes totally sense and I appreciate you taking the time to point it out!
First, いる is an ichidan verb, so it’ll be います and not いります.
Full form should be やろうと思っている.
Using formal form that is, やろうと思っています doesn’t make sense as we are dropping いる in the first place to make it more informal.
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As you’ve probably already discovered, a lot of particles are left out of conversational Japanese. A lot of abbreviations or short cuts are also used.
So if you put back the particles and take out the abbreviations, it would be:
探偵をはじめるっていうほんと(う)？
Also since this is a children’s book, a lot of spaces between words or phrases are inserted to make it easier to read so when は is used as a topic marker, there’s a space after it even in conversational language here.
In the original sentence you were looking at, there’s no space after は so you have to suspect that it’s not a topic marker.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくられてきた ねこを ゆびさした,
When you look at the sentence above, あのさぎ師の家から おくられてきた is a relative clause of ねこ.
The relative clause gives us additional info about ねこ.
This means the main or basic sentence which you picked out correctly is あたしは ねこを ゆびさした ”I pointed at the cat”.
So if you look at the relative clause, as @Cychloryn mentioned before,
あのさぎ師の家から means “from the imposter (’s household/family)” and おくられてきた means “was sent”.
おくられて+きた is the passive te-form of おくる + past tense of くる. The ～てくる combination in this case here expresses physical movement of coming towards as opposed to ～ていく meaning going away.
So the relative clause is translated as “was sent from that imposter” and put together with the basic sentence ”I pointed at the cat which was sent from that/the imposter.”
Please ask more questions if something is not clear.
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To add to your explanation.
In Japanese words for “house” (いえ/うち/おたく, different politeness levels) are commonly used with a meaning like “household” or “family”.
I think in an English translation you would likely drop “the house” in this particular context.
As a side note, in very polite language it’s also used something like this:
Since うち is humble language it often refers to oneself/one’s household.
Since おたく is polite language it often refers to the other person or their household.
E.g. an example from JSL
A: あの子は どこの子 でしょう ねえ。
B: うちのたかし でございます。
A: おたくのたかしちゃん でいらっしゃいます か。
A: As for that child, I wonder whose it is. (which family it belongs to) [literally where is it of?]
B: It is our Takashi. [literally It is Takashi of the house (humble)]
A: Oh, that’s your Takashi-chan? [literally It is Takashi of the house (polite)?]
(Don’t worry too much if you haven’t seen the polite verbs used here yet)
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Good point. I’ll make the correction.
Your grammar concepts are so crisp and clear. I love your explanations.
Can you translate these sentences? I want to know how the meaning will change.
These sentences are most probably ungrammatical. But I am not able to understand why we need to use passive form.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくってきた ねこを ゆびさした
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくられて ねこを ゆびさした
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から きた ねこを ゆびさした
I’m not 100% sure (I’m pretty much a beginner that read too many linguistics books).
So a native speaker might disagree.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくってきた ねこを ゆびさした
I think this one is ungrammatical.
For one, it implies that “sending” and “coming” take the same subject.
“Coming” can only be the cat.
So the cat is also sending someone?
Here から would be a location marker (if it is acceptable at all).
So the cat is sending something from the house.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくられて ねこを ゆびさした
With the て-form it would be something like
“I was sent it and pointed at the cat.”
Which sounds like the cat just arrived as she points and it’s also a confusing because the cat should be in the earlier clause.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から おくられた ねこを ゆびさした
I added this one in case the last one was a typo by you.
This is acceptable I think.
It’s just a slight change of focus.
It’s more of a neutral “the cat was sent to me”
The きた kind of makes it more explicit and explanatory: “the cat that I got [lit that came] because it was sent to me”.
Note that から here means “send by the imposter’s household”, not necessarily physical “from”.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家から きた ねこを ゆびさした
Here から would be a physical location.
It also sounds like the cat just came by itself.
EDIT: rewrote the whole post. sorry for any confusion.
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OK, so the easier ones for me to explain are the second and third sentences and I agree with @aiju in that if you used おくられて as in the second sentence it would split the sentence into two because ~て would act as a conjunction.
In the third sentence, きた would mean the cat came on its own accord without being sent by someone.
As for explaining the first sentence, I’m having difficulty trying to offer a different angle from what @aiju said but passive form needs to be used when the subject is not doing the action.
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I think I’ve understand the second and third sentence now. Since, @aiju changed the entire post, I’m gonna read it. The previous one was pretty clear too infact, you probably have to use passive here, but I’m thinking about that right now.
It always depends on how much you’re willing to change.
あたしは あのさぎ師の家が おくった ねこを ゆびさした
Changing the から to が and removing きた removes the grammatical objections to the active form sentence.
(Not sure how natural it sounds)
Another note on the usage of the passive form.
In Japanese, often you’d use the passive form, even when it’s possible to make a perfectly grammatical sentence without using it. For instance:
アカネちゃんは 私のケーキを食べた
Akane-chan ate my cake.
アカネちゃんに 私のケーキを食べられた
My cake was eaten by Akane-chan.
Both sentences convey that Akane-chan ate my cake. But often in Japanese, using the passive voice can come with negative connotations. By putting more emphasis on what was done, rather than who did it, it better reflects that I was negatively affected in this case.
(Take a look at the “sufferer passive” for another way Japanese uses the passive voice to convey something negatively happening.)
Another example, when you want to convey that someone got mad at you. In anime and such, I’d hear something like this:
（私は）先生に怒られた。
Far more often than this:
先生は（私に）怒った
Therefore, in the case of Nyan Nyan, if you said
書三さんに その猫を送られた
書三さんは その猫を送った
The usage of the first sentence conveys “I was sent that cat by Kakuzou-san (and I’m not very happy about it)”
Whereas the second is a more neutral “Kakuzou-san sent me that cat”.
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This sounds unnatural. My source for saying this is having 3500+ hrs watching anime. There’s no reasoning for this and I could be absolutely wrong, but using the passive form feels more natural or more heard over the active form. So, maybe this is unnatural.
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