A few sentences on this page took me a while to make sense of – could someone please check if I’ve got the gist of these ones?
Summary
だが、外から - but from outside
棒かなにかを - post or something [object]
さしこんで、- put in
テーブルの上の金魚ばちを - goldfish bowl on the table [object]
たたきおとすことは - knocking off [topic]
できるだろう。 - seems possible
But it seems possible to shove in a post or something from outside, and knock the goldfish bowl off the table.
そこで、- so
その犬を - that dog [object]
つかって - use
鉄ごうしの下の土のにおいを - smell of the ground under the iron grill [object]
しらべ、ここに - investigate here [location]
犯人が - criminal [subject]
来なかった - did not come
かどうか、- whether or not
しらべてもらえんかね？ - have (someone) investigate?
So should we have the dog use the the smell of the ground under the iron grill to investigate whether or not the criminal came here?
じつは - In reality
あやしい人物が、- suspicious person [subject]
ひとりいるんだ。- is alone
In reality there’s one suspicious person.
This feels wonky…
Your first sentence looks pretty much perfect at a first glance. さしこむ has a meaning of “to insert; to thrust”, so I think the nuance is a little closer to inserting a pole between the bars (blocking the door), rather than the more brute-force ‘shove’. That’s pretty nitpicky though
I wouldn’t put these two together. しらべ is from しらべる, and is acting on the object that comes before it, 鉄ごうしの下の土のにおい. Using the verb stem like this is similar to て-form, where it means ‘verb and’ - connecting two clauses. It has a slightly more literary feel to it, apparently.
So it’s “investigate the smell of the ground under the iron grille and…” - no “here” involved in this clause.
Then we start the next clause - “whether or not the culprit came here”. This has it’s own しらべる acting on it, so it’s very much that the dog is being asked to study the smell of the ground and then investigate whether or not the culprit came to that spot..
Just one thing to notice - it’s もらえる, the potential form of もらう. So it’s saying “would it be possible to have that dog do … for us?”
This can just mean “there is one person” more directly.
Thank you so much!! I’m so used to just glossing over the bits I’m not 100% sure of (laziness on my part) – but this time it felt better to try and understand more precisely.
Thanks for this. I thought it was the noun しらべ (which didn’t make sense with the を preceding it), but have since looked this verb form up and added a hyperlink to the vocab sheet. It’s called the continuative form or 連用形.
This is probably nit-picking, but a small question from page 18:
「あれ、庭にめんしたガラス戸があいてますよ。
Why would めんする (面する) be past tense here? If it’s a door that faces onto the garden / courtyard, wouldn’t it be めんする戸? Although even then I guess it would be めんしている is it like it was installed facing the garden? It was faced towards the garden?
Also, a note for others reading which I don’t think has been mentioned yet?- あいてます is an example of something you will see everywhere in “real life” - あく has been conjugated to て-form and combined with いる to form the continuous, あいています (polite!), but then the い has been dropped. This い-dropping is super common, to the point of being the norm.
thanks for all the questions being asked and answered already!
I have a question for page 20:
Please help ^^
こんなひどいことをするのは、となりの秋田さんしかいません。
I roughly translated this as
As for who would do such a cruel thing, there is not only my neighbour Mr. Akita.
But this makes no sense?
My breakdown:
こんな - such
ひどいこと - cruel thing
を - particle (marking an object)
する - to do
の - possesive
は - particle (topic marker)
となりの秋田さん - my neighbour Mr. Akita
しか - only
いません - is not
So, why is it “いません”? Does or does she not suspect her neighbour?
Depending on the next sentence I thought she would suspect him, so why is “いる” negative?
For some reason that I’ve never understood, it seems to be the done thing to teach しか as meaning ‘only’, and then tell people that it’s “used with a negative verb”.
I find it hugely more helpful to understand the meaning as ‘except for’, or ‘excepting’.
In that case, you could translate the sentence as: “As for who would do such a terrible thing, there is nobody but my neighbour Mr Akita.”
It does sound a little more natural to translate it as: “As for who would do such a terrible thing, there is only my neighbour Mr Akita.”, and probably puts the emphasis more in the right place. But I think it’s easier to understand the usage of しか this way, and you get less tied up in knots thinking “now if this is negative, does that mean this is positive?”.
Either way, the reason いる is negative is specifically that it’s being used with しか, and she does suspect him
@Radish8 ah, that explains it.
Now that you mention this I feel like I’ve read something along those lines before. Did we come across this with the にゃんにゃんbooks (meaning: the parts of the books I already read… ) before?
Thanks! If you know what to look for, it is much easier finding something
If it makes you feel slightly more comfortable with the しか…ない combo, Japanese is not the only language that pairs the concept of only with a negative - French does, too.
Latin! Impressive. I wasn’t expecting you to know French, I just hoped you might possibly feel more comfortable with the notion of only + negative by knowing it happens in more than one language.
Oh man, for suuuure, haha ^^ that’s why I think asking questions in a club is so valuable - the person helping you probably knows exactly what the key point is, and then that one answer helps everyone who wasn’t sure. That’s a lot of saved time and frustration over multiple people.
is it like it was installed facing the garden? It was faced towards the garden?
) before?
