Thank you for teaching me something new. I’ve never heard of that way of telling time. In every textbook I’ve taught from “to” or “til” have been exclusively used. Just for reference, where is that way of saying the time often used? (sorry for the off topic comment)
All I can say is that my parents said it that way growing up (and I confirmed with them after seeing that you hadn’t heard of this version). I honestly have no idea how common that version is, even in my area. I’m in the U.S., though there could be regional differences too.
I never use any of these ways (“of”, “to”, “before”) of saying the time personally. I’d just say “eleven fifty-five”, for example.
Here are some links.
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Well I’m from the West Coast with family who are from the southeast so I’ve never heard that before. Sorry for thinking you made a typo. I appreciate the links. It’ll be helpful when teaching my students about regional differences with regard to telling time.
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So interesting isn’t it, how much one language varies between locations! I frequently use “to” as in “five to nine”, “twenty to twelve”, but never “til”, “of” or “before” when telling the time. (I’m in Australia).
I was taught this, so it must be reasonably common, or at least it was at one point. I think with the transition from analogue to digital clockfaces (especially now on phones) people here are increasingly just reading the numbers they see rather than defining time in relation to the nearest hour and I guess it’s likely to be a similar story in Japan.
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Ah thank you, it makes so much more sense now! I think my brain had hit the ククク stage last night. 
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Sean, here is the illustration from p206 of the red book.
Why it is not all showing I don’t know… just click on it.
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I just checked with five coworkers and all but one used “of”, so it must be a regional thing. I’m in the Northeast part of the U.S., which is one of the areas that was mentioned in that article.
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It’s probably not that important, but I was wondering if anyone has a translation for くきくきと in the sentence on p214 of the red book where the people are standing in the square chatting and … 小指をぴんと伸ばしたり、くきくきと動かしたりしているのでした。
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Yeah, I couldn’t find anything for that either. I’d be interested in the answer as well.
I have a question about the very end of the chapter, so I’ll put it in spoiler tags.
「あんな魔法を使う魔女が、ひとりくらいこの町にいると助かるって。」
Can someone explain the ひとりくらい part? Does it literally mean something like “to the extent of being alone / one person / by herself”? And then would a more natural translation be something like “all on her own”?
あんな魔法を使う魔女 could mean both “A/The witch that uses that kind of magic” or “That kind of magic-using witch”, right? I’m going with the latter meaning for now.
If both of those are correct, I think the whole sentence could mean “That kind of magic-using witch, by being in this town, saved us all on her own”.
EDIT: This isn’t quite right because 助かる is intransitive, but I can’t figure out a way to rephrase it. So I’ll just leave it at that.
What do you guys think?
I think you’re trying to fit square pegs into a circular-hole. I believe you’re on the right track with the intended meaning of the sentence and that in itself is the most important. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you were looking for, but as you already know, some expressions in Japanese don’t cleanly transfer over into English.
Yeah, くらい is especially hard to translate. But if you’re saying I’m on the right track, including the ひとりくらい part, then I guess that’s enough.
I’m not entirely sure myself, but that’s roughly how I interpreted that passage. I tried searching for something concrete to share to help shed light on this, but I’ve come up empty handed.
@Kyasurin, I asked a Japanese friend about ～たんです vs. ～たんでした and he told me that the latter sounds a bit weird (even though it was written that way in the book). His impression is that both express the same thing, though. I keep asking around to see if there is anymore information I can unearth about this as well as about くきくきと.
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I think the clockmaker said “It’s really helpful having a witch in this town who can do that sort of magic (fixing the broken cog so quickly)”
Thinking back to earlier in the story, when the people of Koriko didn’t seem to want a witch in the town at all, this comment implies there is a growing appreciation that witches do “good magic” (not just ruining the milk or whatever it was they thought witches did), but also still no particular desire to have a bunch of witches around. So 一人くらい implies that one witch is enough.
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I found this chapter to be the most enjoyable in a while, if not in the whole book so far. Maybe I’m forgetting something (happens often), but was this the first time we had a long interaction between characters where Kiki wasn’t in the scene? I thought that was a nice change of pace. Hopefully the last two chapters continue on this high note.
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I actually laughed out loud at that section where the mayor tells the clockmaker he’s an idiot for wanting to travel via police car to steal the cog from the other town.
There is a picture on p219 of Kiki adjusting the hands of the clock, I will post it for you @seanblue
I was hoping to finish the chapter last night but I ended up doing that Japanese crossword that was posted in another thread (it took me ages but I managed to solve almost all of it myself, so I was pretty happy with myself!)
So, better get back to it…
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I give up! I have no idea why this has uploaded on it’s side. (Technology!!!)
Oh well, at least you can see Jiji still has his 腹巻 at this point.
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