That sounds exactly like what we should be doing, indeed!
For your example:
The main point is, as usual, at the end:
最初から信じてなどいなかった I didn’t believe it from the beginning.
Now, there are a few subordinate clauses:
サンタクロースをいつまで信じていたなんてことは About the question “until when did you believe in Santa Claus?”
たわもない世間話にもならないくらいのどうでもいいような話だが、-> 世間話 is small talks, タワもない話 is a story no one cares about (combine both: small talks no one cares about). にもならない doesn’t even become. → “this is a topic so boring that it can’t even reach the status of small talk no one cares about, BUT”
それでも even like that
俺がいつまで until when did I
サンタなどとういう想像上の赤服じーさんを in Santa Claus or whatever, the way we imagine him, that is, an old guy clad in red cloths
信じていたか believed?
というと if we talk about
→ if we still want to ask until when I believed in Santa Claus as an old guy clad in red cloths,
これは確信を持って言えるが最初から信じてなどいなかった。I can say with confidence I haven’t believed in him since the very start.
My break down is probably messy as I was distracted by real life while trying to race @QuackingShoe. I guess I lost on all fronts. Well, I tried.
Thanks for the breakdown, @QuackingShoe and @Naphthalene. This is prose, and prose is a whole different cookie to reading newspapers or Wikipedia or manga dialogue…
This definitely makes sense to do at least for some of the longer, more confusing sentences, or parts of them. That would cut it down to the point where it’s probably manageable.
I’ve been meaning to ask about a couple of them myself but haven’t gotten around to going back to find them. I’m glad you asked about that first sentence. There were some things in there that confused me and I wasn’t sure if I understood it correctly or not. Thanks @QuackingShoe and @Naphthalene for the explanation.
(幼稚園のクリスマスイベントに現れた)サンタは偽サンタたど理解していたし = I understood that the Santa (which appeared at my kindergarten Christmas event) was a fake Santa,
記憶をたどると = and consulting my memories (now),
周囲にいた園児たちもあれが本物だとは思っていないような目つきで(サンタのコスプレをした園長先生を眺めていた)ように思う = I’m pretty sure from their expressions that my fellow kindergarten students (watching the principal doing Santa cosplay) didn’t think he was real either.
Third sentence, I’m not too sure where the first half of it is going.
The English version invokes a reference to the song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but while I can see キス in there, I’m not too clear on how it relates.
Something something kiss something clever little me came to doubt that an old man who only worked at Christmas could exist, I also came to realise that aliens, time travellers, ghosts, youkai, ESPers, and the sorts of evil organisations that anime-, tokusatsu or manga-style heroes fight against also did not exist in this world.
Though, what’s 相当後? I don’t think I’m misreading the kanji. *Squint*
A kinda literal translation would be: “it wouldn’t happen until a suitable time later on”. 相当 = “suitable”, and if you add 後 as a suffix, it becomes “suitable time in the future”
So basically:
…ことに気付いたのは相当後になってからだった
“[it] was a thing that I wouldn’t realize until much later”.
Regarding the 2nd sentence, I don’t know that reference but he’s simply saying exactly that, that he doesn’t need to see his mom kissing Santa to doubt his existence. Actually I have no idea what this means even in English… Unless if it’s a reference to something as you said.
I don’t think 後 is a suffix here. I would say 相当 is used as an adverb meaning „considerably, fairly“ here, not suitable.
And then you only have 後になる after that
Yeah, both seem possible. But as I couldn’t find any dictionary listing 相当後 as a vocab, you might be right in that it is 相当.後. Although, I have seen 後 used as a suffix in some words I couldn’t find in dictionaries too, so no idea how to read this one.
And couldn’t find any furigana on the net when it was used. Hope someone could clear this up.
そんなこんなで is like saying いろいろなことで, like, “with this and that…”
I think maybe you don’t know, オフクロ is a way of referring to your own mother (if you’re a boy).
So yeah, オフクロがサンタにキスしているところを目撃 = witnessing mamma kissing Santa.
And like others have said, the 相当後 means much later, and that’s actually the driving point of the sentence and in fact the last two paragraphs. His point is, that oh-so-clever and pretentious he who knew Santa couldn’t POSSIBLY exist, nevertheless didn’t realize that superheroes and manga heroes didn’t exist until an embarrassingly long time later.
Oh for people who don’t know, the whole mamma kissing santa claus thing comes from the idea that dads would sometimes dress up as santa to give their kids a surprise. But of course after the kids go to bed, “santa” and mom might get a little intimidate, and if you saw that, whoops! That’s not santa! It’s my dad!
But the joke/cuteness of the song is that the singer instead witnesses this and misunderstands further, assuming mom is having an affair with santa.
I’m guessing the first bit means she looks like she wants to pick a fight but I’ve never seen 売る used like that.
About the second thing, I’m not sure about the もせず bit.
I thought the first sentence meant that even sitting still she didn’t look like a simple high school student but idk maybe it’s the opposite. Plus I don’t know what 限り is doing.
In the second sentence I thought I was following along nicely and then suddenly I’m like ??? what
