As I try to decipher Japanese character descriptions

iDk why I made this a topic but it seems fun to try, try to join in or something idk

I already have English translations, but I’m trying to find out which part is which.

as a warning this post will literally make no sense, I am sorry.

ナンをこねて何千年…。幾年もこねて、こねて、こね過ぎるのです…。

I feel like this is weird, because the particle after NaN is wo, and isn’t it supposed to be ha(wa)

anyways, who am I to know, I’m a literal idiot at Japanese

NaN, knead??, why does it end with te

thousands of years

that’s weird

So I’m guessing, NaN has been kneading for thousands of years, which is a mood

Now I can’t really read the other kanji, except for the nen part (uses jisho.org)

several years, I guess.

several years, kneading

kneading, (i’m liking this description it’s being nice to me)

now, kone, guessing that just straight up means knead

kone, and unknown kanji, jisho time!

sugiro, specifically, I’m assuming, to be excessive,

knead, excessive, excessive kneading? Yeah that’s right NaN has been kneading too much she should stop

now the ending is confusing me,

no desu, the no part,

1 Like

more
神々へ踊りで祈りを捧げる孤高の踊り手。
人々のため愛の祈りを毎日捧げているんだって。

I know the first one! until I saw the repeater, godgod?? And then there’s hitobito, so, that might be kamgami, and like how hitobito means people, kamigami probably means gods

unknown kanji, (inhales) JISHOTIME

it means, dance! gods, dance

de particle

and then

unknown kanji which i learned to mean, prayer ! 祈り

gods dance in prayer, prayer in dance? for the gods? whoa deep

next kanji, out of the 3 descriptions I found, devote makes the most sense in this context.

gods dance in prayer dedicated

I’m assuming

dedicated to giving prayer in dance to the gods, but there’s more :slight_smile:

proudly independent, solitary.

dedicated to giving prayer in dance to the gods, solitary.

The last kanji, meaning dancer.

dedicated to giving prayer in dance to the gods, solitary dancer.

Now this would make more sense if we flip it around in english

as in

solitary dancer dedicated to giving prayer in dance form to the gods, I guess. FIRST SENTENCE DONE<

人々, people
i had to look up ため, ill see what it means after the kanji that follows
which means love, or affection
people, (sake? result? good? affecting?) love
love,

no particle

and then prayer again

everyday

everyday prayer of love for the sake of the people?

again, the devotion part.

and then the ending confuses me

and apparently, it’s quoting

they say that he devotes a prayer of love for the sake of the people?

Solitary dancer dedicated to giving prayer in dance form to the gods. They say that he devotes a prayer of love for the sake of the people.

I’m not sure if I’m right, but, it does seem to be similar to the English description I already have, but I never trusted the English translations from the pop’n wiki.

Feel free to help ;; and I want to know if this will actually help me. Like, trying to translate

it feels like my head hurts but at the same time it feels like I transcended pain itself

Naan ia a kind of bread, which you can knead, presumably.

2 Likes

in context, shes a character from a game named after the bread

her name is oddly spelled in romaji as NaN, and not Naan or Nan

But you wanred to know why it could be を and not は

1 Like

True, I just still assumed wa because well
character

or will she still have を anyways

It’s を because it’s the direct object, not the topic (or subject).

1 Like

It’s a pun. Unless you think the character is being kneaded. I don’t know what kind of thing this is.

1 Like

oh thank you now I understand!! so it refers to direct object.

Oh that makes sense as well.

no that would be terrifying

but the piece of dough seems to be sentient ahj

So were you just asking what does を do?

What?

1 Like

Ill show youaa picture lemme just downlood it

She may looofkind of weird if youre not familiat with object headsimage

Where did you get thousands? And do you know the て form?

It would help if we knew what level of understanding you have, because “why did they use the て form” is a different question from “what is the て form” in terms of scope.

1 Like

II learned in WaniKani 何千 means thousands and i genuinely dont know much about て forms

tell me more

Oh, I only saw 幾年 initially, never mind.

I think a guide or textbook would be better for explaining something as broad as て form. But here it’s presumably just the way to continue a sentence.

2 Likes

Oh ok! thanks! I was just wondering what it meant

I think studying more grammar would help with this, it sounds like you’re at the point where you’re just looking up all the individual words and hoping that you can make sense out of it based entirely on guessing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think learning the basic particles and sentence structures would help you figure this out a lot easier. Usually the sentence order is quite different from English, so until you can understand better it’s good to keep in mind that if you start by translating the first word into English, that word may not end up at the beginning of your translated sentence.
神々踊り祈り捧げる孤高踊り手
(Dancing for the gods) by (raising up a prayer) (solitary dancer)
He/she is a solitary dancer who raises up prayers to the gods by dancing for them.

The entire part before 孤高 acts as a relative clause that describes what this character does. This is a very common grammar thing in Japanese, you can recognize it whenever a verb comes immediately before a noun without a て form or any other connecting particles.

人々のため祈り毎日捧げているんだって
(the people) (for the sake of) (a prayer of love) (every day) (raise up) (it is said that)
It is said that he/she performs a prayer of love every day for the sake of the people.

のため is another common grammatical pattern, sometimes also seen as のために which means “for (the sake of)”. The って at the end is a quoting particle that indicates that this information is a quote. In this case, there’s no speech tag so it’s an indirect quote and means something along the lines of “people say” or “it is said that” or “I heard that” etc.

2 Likes

I don’t want this to sound super cold and discouraging, but instead of making threads and flailing around and hoping strangers will explain it all to you, you’d be a lot better served actually studying at least the most basic elements of grammar. If you don’t know what て is, for example, there’s really no point in even trying to read anything. I’m a big advocate of jumping in with minimal knowledge, but you have to know something.

Learn Japanese – Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese Is free.

2 Likes

thanks for the site

I’m just lonely