にゃんにゃん - Kitty Detectives - Vol. 1

Page 128

あたしは ギャングのたいほに 協力したというので 警察から 感謝状をもらった。

あたしは - I (fem) + topic marker
ギャングのたいほ - ギャングの逮捕 - the gang’s arrest
に - particle (at, to, for, because of, by, as, per, etc)
協力した - cooperation + did
というので - a string of hirigana that makes my head swim, but I think という is something to do with quotation and ので is “because of
警察から - from the police
感謝状を - a thank-you-letter! + object particle
もらった - received

“I got a thank you letter from the police because of my help in the gang’s arrest”

Any help with というので much appreciated! Thank you again!

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Page 128

One more before my brain melts completely…

それにしても、カポネが あそこに いなかったら どうなっていたことか。

それにしても - even so
カポネが - Capone + が particle
あそこに - there + に particle
いなかったら - was not there + ら(the same grammar as explained by aiju the other day) = if [he] had not been there.
どう - how + なっていた - to become, to result in, in past continuous form + こと, thing
か - this looks like a question, but there is no question mark. I think we discussed this before somewhere, but I can’t find it now. Is it “the end of a relative clause to make a mini-question inside a larger sentence”?

“Even so, what would have happened if Capone had not been there?”

Any help with どうなっていたことか much appreciated too! Thank you!

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I can’t really help with the rest but 美術館 is actually an arts museum/gallery so that explains the から (that’s where they steal the 絵や彫刻 from)

Edit:
Page 128:
ねこだから ねずみには つよいわね。
I have no idea what a mouse has to do with anything. Unless it’s trying to say that the robber was the ‘mouse’ and so カポネ was stronger than him. No clue.

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To me this use falls into the describing category from Tae Kim. However, when there is not an active person saying something, I generally read the という as “is/was said”. I know that this is not a good translation, and that mostly in these cases the という disappears in a translation. But that helps me to read it

Because it was said that I cooperated with the gang’s arrest.

This seems to be a more polite and less direct way to say it than just putting it without the という.

Without という: あたしは ギャングのたいほに 協力したので

Here Hanae affirms that she cooperated, which may seem rude. While with という, to me it looks like somebody else says it.

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Oh yes! Of course! Thank you! I mis-read 美術品 instead of 美術館! Thank you!

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I think the first “gang” is shortened from “gangster”. So it’s “a gang of gangsters”, i.e. a group of criminals.

の here is the nominaliser, so something like “the fact”. という occurs here to embed the previous clause into the sentence, I think; it basically means “that”.
で is a particle that indicates circumstance. “because” is indeed a natural translation here.
so literally something like “because of the fact that I assisted in the gang’s arrest”

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That’s funny! I’ve not yet read that sentence (I’m so slow these days), but yes, there is a thief in the story called Mimichi Mouse!

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Page 128

What a fabulous explanation! Thank you so much @guillepolito!

Japanese has different rules for question marks than English. It’s perfectly acceptable to end a question with 「か。」 because it is considered obvious it’s a question because of か. Sometimes in romaji transcriptions you will find the dot replaced with a question mark.

どう - how + なっていた - to become, to result in, in past continuous form
another way to think about it is “how would it have turned out”

こと is a sentence particle here (though probably derived from the meaning “thing”/“fact”). Jisho lists “particle indicating a gentle interrogative​” which seems likely. To be honest, when it occurs at the end of a sentence, it’s one of those particles that I mostly ignore at this point since it seems to have very little meaning.

Thank you so much @aiju!

Thank you! That’s what I thought, but にゃんにゃん is so full of question marks that when I didn’t see one here, I thought it wasn’t a question!

Ah yes, that is a great way to translate it!

Thank you again @aiju!

I agree translating it as “it said” can lead you down the right path but I do think という has become almost completely grammaticalised and it cannot be translated as anything related to saying in many cases, just like “I’m going to buy a cat” could not be reasonably translated with a literal verb of going somewhere into other languages (unless they happen to have a similar non-literal expression).

This paper has some interesting comments on という:

The paper is a bit tricky to read but the gist is something like

  1. If the preceding clause is a literal quote or could not be a relative clause, because of topic markers, sentence particles, だ, etc., という is mandatory and carries no special meaning.
  2. If という is not mandatory, it can be a marker of new information, either for the speaker or the addressee, or it can also be used to distance oneself from the information.

There are still some more conditions depending on what follows という that I’m ignoring.
The exact meaning of it still seems to be hotly debated…

But here we have a topic marker in a relative clause, so I think it’s just a mandatory という that is inserted and might not have any special meaning at all.

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Since the discussion group is about to come to the end of the book, I wanted to thank you @marcusp for setting up this thread. I’ve been absent from the book discussion because I was on vacation/holiday and then shifted focus to JLPT study after that but I did finish reading the third story before heading out of town and have to say that it’s my favorite of the 3 stories. I enjoyed the whole book immensely and learned an awful lot. It was a fun book to read and had interesting stories.

Speaking of the JLPT, you know a lot of the grammar we studied is N3 level. (I know this because I’ve been studying for it using Kanzen Master as preparation.) I didn’t want to say this at the beginning as we were going through the first story because I thought it might scare a lot of people away. Anyway, this book helped prepare me for the test!

Also thanks to everyone else in the group for their input and extra special thanks to @aiju. Wow, what a life saver for this group! Your posts to various questions should be compiled and made into a grammar book. I’m not kidding. Some of the answers were too deep for me to comprehend but it was real nice having someone we could turn to when we got stuck.

Anyway, just expressing my appreciation to all and maybe we’ll scramble our brains again if there’s another book (?) to follow. :v::beer::sparkler::grinning:

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にゃんにゃん文法. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thank you @trout! It is tough sticking to one book every day for months! I lost it last week when I went on holiday and came back to find my brain had deleted all the Japanese I thought I knew! (But it’s slowly coming back to me now!)

Now we’ve finished the book, I’m going to re-read it from the start and see how much I actually know! I actually bought two copies, one to make notes in (pretty much every page is jammed full of notes now!) and one, for now, to just read straight through. I’m really looking forward to that.

I started this book at sub-N5 level and passed the N5 (I say passed, it was by the tips of my fingernails, a bare scraping through) while we were reading it. So your revelation here (I hope you don’t edit it out!) about the grammar level in this book is a real surprise! It’s a testament to the fun of the book and all the superb help everyone gave in this thread (and on the vocab list) that it didn’t feel like that at all!

And now that we are pretty much done, can I join you in expressing huge gratitude to @aiju? Aiju, without your consistent and knowledgeable responses, this thread would have not been what it is now - a brilliant and perfect resource for anyone wanting to read and learn from this book. You made this thread just what a book-club ought to be. Thank you.

And thank you to everyone who read the book, who followed along, who posted, who asked questions, who answered questions, and who contributed to the vocab list. This has been an amazing experience that, for me at least, went way beyond just language learning. It’s been fun and friendly throughout. Thank you!

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It feels great to finish an entire book in Japanese! So glad I joined this group. Thanks everybody.

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Thank you @marcusp for the organization and @aiju for lots of help!
Sadly I couldn’t read together with you, but I’m going to work my way through the book with the help of this thread now.

I’m also surprised about the grammar being N3 - I’m not nearly as far as that in my studies, but hopefully I’ll be able to understand much of it. (The first few pages were promising :wink: ).

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Yes, I join the thanks ^^. I really feel that I’ve learnt a lot these last two months thanks to all people here.

So, what’s the next one? :smiley:

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It’d be great if we could do another. But, I’m too busy to set one up. How about you @guillepolito, would you like to do it? And my other worry is about how to get more people actively involved. If it weren’t for aiju, this club would have been a bit of a failure. Thank you again aiju!

Thank you everyone. Enjoyed reading with you guys and reading all the questions and answers that were posted.

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