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I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this chapter yet
Why are their boats all moored at San Marco this morning? And surely there are ways to keep the water out during the night.
But more to the point, how long has Neo Venezia had vaporetto? I feel a little like they’ve sprung out of nowhere. Especially considering the Aria Company building appears to occupy the site of a vaporetto station in real-world Venice.
Heh, Alice using Akari’s catchphrase along with her own on page 111, there.
Page 115, why’d Alice ask for two adult tickets? Even if Aika’s not still underage, Alice most certainly still attends school.
Page 118, third panel. (I’m quite proud of my timing for this photo. )
From memory I actually don’t think they use gangplanks in Olde Venezia - they just sling the rope over the bollard, then just rev the engine to hold the boat against the pier. (I don’t seem to have taken many photos of the actual boarding process, or the boats themselves, probably because I was busy boarding at the time.) The one shown in the manga here gives me all sorts of heebie-jeebies - it barely overlaps the boat or the pier, and the mooring rope is so slack that the boat could easily drift away, dumping the whole thing (and the people using it) into the water.
Though I can’t say I understood its usage in this chapter since the dictionary definition seemed weird in this context.
Also, Aika using ざる on page 113. 灯里の知られざる一面が見られるかも.
“Maybe we’ll be able to see an unknown side of Akari”
Is that right? What’s the difference between using ざる and ぬ in this context? I found two answers ([1]; [2]) but other than saying ざる and ぬ are both 連体形 or ず, they weren’t very helpful (took me forever to figure out what 連体形 was too).
It is right, and yeah, both ざる and ぬ are 連体形 of ず (that is, the form it takes when you want to put it in front of another word).
Yeah, considering the modern 連体形 for verbs is there dictionary form, and な for な adjectives, people don’t really need to distinguish with other forms. You really need a たる adjective to start to get a feel for it.
I don’t really know the difference between ざる and ぬ (you’ll probably need to ask @Carvs) but a quick search gave me this link on the particularities of ず 助動詞はここから!助動詞「ず」の用法 - キミノスクール | 偏差値40台から難関大へ【高校生・中学生対応】
It basically agrees with the two links you gave, though: ざる is the auxiliary form and used mostly when the word after is an auxiliary verb. (yay!) However, in adaptations of 漢文 (書き下し文, basically using Chinese words with Japanese grammar), apparently, they are using ざる exclusively, to look cool educated I guess.
It’s as you and @Naphthalene said, mostly. One thing that nobody seems to have mentioned, perhaps because it’s quite obvious, is that ざる is just the contraction of ず＋ある, so it’s really the same thing. The analogy is not perfect but ざる is to ぬ/ず what である is to だ/で (just that for whatever reason である doesn’t contract to *だる ).
It’s a big feature of Japanese, old and modern, that various things need support from ある or する in order to make extended forms and get access to the full spectrum of constructions. This is basically true of all the classes of words:
Nouns have the copula だ vs である as mentioned above; in the classical you had に vs なる (=に＋ある) and と vs たる (=と＋ある).
Adjectives Aい become Aから, Aけれ (sound change), etc. from Aく＋ある, which is the only way to make the negative with ない, and also mandatory when you insert contrast/focus, e.g., 高い “it is high” => 高くはある “it IS high”.
Same for verbs when they take contrast/focus: 呼ばない “I do not call” => 呼びはしない “I do NOT call”.
The pattern here is that you usually don’t use the extended form with ある or する unless you have to, because the form you’re trying to construct doesn’t work with the short/plain form: either because you want to attach a suffix otherwise unavailable or you want to insert a particle that wouldn’t be able to split the bound form. There are exceptions (in the sense of finding the composites even when not technically required), though, and classical Japanese had freer alternations, e.g., between ざる and ず, as you can see, but meaning-wise, there is basically no difference.
P.S.: I don’t know much about kanbun, but I would be cautious about attributing the use of ざる to it, since, as I just said, such formations are deeply rooted in Japanese itself, although it could well be that kanbun helped spread the form.
I wasn’t saying it’s used in 漢文 (since it’s literally Chinese and thus doesn’t include Japanese at all) but in 書き下し文 (well, at least both my link and Sean’s second link said so I think). I learned the word 書き下し文 today, so I won’t give any guarantees
It wasn’t obvious, so thanks. I think from now on I might just assume all two kana words rhyming with ある are contractions.
I think this is really helpful if I’m understanding correctly. Basically, だ・ぬ are the 終止形 and で・ず are the 連用形. It looks like then you can use 連用形 + ある to allow you to modify the following word. In the case of ぬ, it is also 連体形, which is why you can use it directly in addition to ざる, but that is not the case for だ, which is why you have to use である (or other seemingly unrelated constructions like のある) to modify a word.
This also makes sense with the contrast example. I’ve seen plenty of times a negative 形容詞 going from (for example) 高くない to 高くはない. I’ve just taken it as-is since the meaning and emphasis were always obvious, but now I can see that it’s really 高く＋は＋ない.
Anyway, である has a more literary feel to me than だ, particularly when it’s used in places where it’s not needed. Given than ぬ could be used in the original sentence, does using ざる instead also make it more literary? I mean, even ぬ would feel more literary or formal or antiquated since you could just use ない, so it’s kind of hard for me to tell.
Doesn’t need to be modifying anything, and also the specific rules of usage vary but as a rule of thumb it’s infinitive (renyô) or possibly/sometimes gerund (renyô+te / te-form) + aru/suru yes. (Depends on whether you take で as the gerund or infinitive of だ or something else; see below.)
The exact status of だ is hotly disputed so I won’t go there, but the analogy kind of works so why not. Note that there is an adnominal version of the copula, namely な (or の), but the usage is limited so again, when you cannot use it, you use the extended form である.
As for the literary feel, perhaps, I wouldn’t know. That’s the kind of question natives are better placed to answer.
And now I’m caught up. I have to say, the introduction of Maa really gave me the motivation needed to actually catch up, because I’ve read the chapters after that one a lot faster than those before.
About this chapter, it kind of felt like Alice and Aika were acting a bit more like Akari usually does in this chapter, at least dialogue-wise. Guess they needed to make up for her not having much dialogue! I like it.
That’s quite the difference from the buses here, where you count as a “child” until you’re 20(and then “youth” for another 6 years) That said, the bus system is a bit of an exception when it comes to ticket ages here, other things are not as generous
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