I think that means something like:
If it’s so dirty that [etc], as long as it’s unusually spacious then that’s good/it should just be unusually spacious.
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聞けば同じ大学の学生だという。
What does conditional form 聞けば + という express here?
If I asked, he would say he’s from the same university?
If you ask who he is, he’s from the same university?
When I asked, he said he’s from the same university?
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I think this is simply “When I asked he said he’s from the same university”.
If it was “If I asked, he would say…” you’ll usually see a だろう or the like at the end. This type of thing depends a lot on context too though.
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Oh! That means ば form can not only be used as conditional but also as … hmmm… temporal of sorts?
Do you know of a grammar resource where I can learn more about this? (So far I only saw all the conditionals only be applied to future events, in the sense of “if X then Y”.) Thanks!
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Considering it’s not in past tense, I would actually translate it as “If I asked, he would say…”, but yeah, I feel as though context is neccessary. It usually is.
The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar has this to say:
“S1 ば S2” basically expresses a general conditional relationship between the two propositions represented by S1 and S2. S1 represents a condition and S2 a proposition which holds or will hold true under the condition. (ば is, in fact, the origin of the topic marker は.)
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Good point, I forgot to check DoJG. Reading further in the entry you mentioned, I found this:
From that I would feel like our sentence does not mean “when I asked, he said” but rather “if I asked, he’d say”, so it is describing a hypothetical question-asking situation (that did not actually take place) in order to convey the information to the reader that they both attend the same university.
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I’ve only read a little bit of the week’s reading but all the talk about sleeping in the kitchen next to the refrigerator because of its comforting sound is giving me コンビニ vibes. And the talk about light brings back the whole ‘box of light thing’. Or maybe I just want to relate all the comfy things because I’m sick 
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Haha, I actually thought exactly the same thing. 
I take it as a good sign!
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Thank you! I’ve added these name readings to the home thread by now.
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Yeah exactly, I realized that after I looked again, the English I put was just a bit more natural to say in English for this structure here (it’s still wrong, if we take it literally). It’s still hypothetical, and she probably didn’t even “ask”.
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Done!
I had some trouble with this sentence:
Summary
ベージュの布張りで、ＣＭに出てきそうな、家族みんなですわってＴＶを観みそうな、横に日本で飼えないくらい大きな犬がいそうな、本当に立派なソファだった。
As I read I thought it was describing the fact that there was indeed a family there but that didn’t make sense. Then again it was also weird to go into such detail about a simple sofa, specially the dog bit.
In the end my attempt at a translation would be something like “Covered in beige cloth was a truly splendid sofa, like you’d see on a commercial, with an entire family sitting on it watching TV and a dog too big to be raised in Japan laying next to it.” Which is far from a literal translation because English doesn’t work that way, but hopefully that’s at least the message?
If so it makes me wonder if all that is there because that would be a scene he would like to live or if that’s just his way of describing things. I guess we’ll see as we go on.
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Yeah the そうそうそう is there because your second translation is correct ^^
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I also have a question, if I may…
At 5%
あんまり晴れやかに笑うので見慣れた玄関に立つその人の、瞳がぐんと近く見えて、目が離せなかった。
I think I am mainly confused by the の and the comma in the middle of the sentence. I take it to be an omission, but of what? Of his smile?? Or is this comma simply astray and the の actually connects to the pupils? Then it would read something like this, I guess:
“He did not smile very cheerfully, therefore being able to see the pupils of this person, who is standing in the familiar hallway, from a short distance, I could not turn my eyes away.”
(sorry for the bad English, but I tried to stay rather close to the original…)
What I totally not get is the usage of “therefore”. Does it mean that if he had put on a broad grin, he would have squinted his eyes and therefore she would not have been able to see the pupils?
Thanks for any insights!
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First, that’s “He smiled brightly”. あんまり is “not very” when it’s with negative verbs, but “too much” when it’s with non-negative ones.
As for the の, honestly I’m not sure why there’s a comma 
I think it does connect with 瞳. I can’t but read it as “The person standing in the familiar entrance was smiling too brightly that I had to [come a bit closer] to see his pupils, I couldn’t take my eyes off.” or something like that.
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Oh, dang! That makes so much sense all of a sudden 
When I double-checked the rest of this week’s reading for questions, I came across another sentence where I thought that there was a misplaced/nonsensical comma. But I can’t find the sentence any more. Anyways, it’s good to keep in mind that this author likes to sprinkle random commas 
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Can’t really help with the question but it did remind me that I read a sentence with what seemed to me like a weird comma placement as well:
雨に覆われた夜景が闇ににじんでゆく大きなガラス、に映る自分と目が合う。
Maybe it’s the one you meant? And if not perhaps someone can give some insight…
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Actually, I think sometimes they add those commas in places where it would be harder to parse the sentence without it. It’s not meant as a comma where you’d momentarily pause before continuing, but one that helps in recognizing relative clauses and their targets. Now that I think about it, the first sentence asked by @NicoleIsEnough is the same, the comma helped me in parsing the sentence without even realizing.
A、B。
What this says is that A is primarily a relative clause that targets the last word (noun) in A. This helps because you know not to keep on parsing through B. I kinda now remember that I also read this before somewhere. That commas would be used in such cases, since Japanese in regards to agglutination of structures allows for remarkably lengthier statements, in theory, which in turn makes for harder to parse ones.
Incidentally, I have been attempting to read a book with lengthier sentences that include more complicated clauses, and I’ve never once seen this. So I guess it depends on the author, and maybe the target readers.
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Yes, I think that was the one, amazing that you found it! (I remember に being involved, and that it was in roughly that section of the story.)
Hmmm… isn’t it actually the case that A is a noun (ガラス) that is described by the relative clause that runs up until ゆく plus the adjective 大きな, and that this noun then attaches to B as the indirect object of the verb 映る?
Apart from that, I find it highly unusual to separate a noun from its particle by a comma, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that. So I still tend to consider it a stylistic twist 
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I didn’t mean it literally that A is itself the whole relative clause, I should have looked at my words a bit more. So yeah I took it as A ending with this last noun helping in conveying that the sentence in A up to that last noun is a relative clause to this noun, and the whole things continues to B. Otherwise, you might continue parsing inside B and mess up what noun the relative clause targets. (I realize I’m not describing things accurately here, I even probably totally messed up what A and B mean before, sorry about that, but I do think what I alluded to is why there’s a comma)
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Oh ok gotcha! Sorry for having been so nitpicky with your words. Now I get what you’re aiming at.
I can also imagine that it might help with the parsing. It’s just so random (as in, why in this sentence and not in the others? etc.) But I guess we cannot really answer this…
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