Hello everyone! Just finished reading this week’s pages, just in time for week 9. This discussion + the vocabulary list have been super helpful!
I’ve got a question though, about page 54.
探偵小説をよむのはすきだが、ほんとの探偵なんかやったことはない。
I would translate it as “Even though I do like to read detective novels, I’ve never actually been a real detective or something like that”, would that be correct? And why is the verb やる used here? (maybe as “do real detective stuff”? idk 
)
5 Likes
Page 54
That is pretty much how I translated it.
As for やる, I see it as being a rather more active version of ‘to be’ where it is used in English with occupations: English - ‘to be a detective’, Japanese - ‘to do, to undertake, to perform detective-thing’
3 Likes
Ok, that makes sense, thanks a ton! I always get confused with words with multiple meanings.
2 Likes
Late to the party, thankfully this week’s reading was pretty easy, so that allowed me to catch up!
So that monster sentence on page 52:
飼い主がひっこしさきにつれていけないというので、
Because his owner could not take him to his moving destination
しかたなくおれがひきとったが、
I took him in as a last resort, but
うちの犬のなかでいちばん大きくて、
[because] he is the largest of all my dogs, and
よく食べるし、
he eats often,
体をあらうのにも時間がかかる。
washing his body takes a lot of time.
What is the added value of という at the start? Is it literally quoting his owner saying ‘I can’t take this dog with me’, or is it one of those nebulous functions of という?
And in the last part, how does のにも work exactly? の nominalises the ‘dog body washing’, も could be ‘even’ in this sentence, but に?
And on page 53, this bit:
そのためにはすこしでも、かわいく見せないといけないから
What does すこしでも go with? With ‘look cute’? So ‘because he has to look even just a little cute’?
Also, maybe a dumb question, but what am I to make of そこに? I feel like it’s one of those transitional phrases, like ‘and then’, but I can’t find it in Jisho so I wonder if it’s even a set phrase.
4 Likes
Correct. I don’t think it needs to be verbatim, but it’s essentially:
飼い主が「ひっこしさきにつれていけない」という
The の bundles the clause 「体をあらう」 into a noun.
You may be familiar with that already, but it’s like in English saying “Washing the dog takes a lot of time”, the clause “washing the dog” acts as a noun. (In English grammar, this is called a “noun clause”.)
In the main portion of the sentence (which takes place after the も), the action (the verb, the predicate) in this sentence is かかる, meaning “to take (a resource)”. The resource being taken is the subject, marked by が, which is 時間 (time). So the basis of the sentence is “time is taken”. (It’s hard to translate that into English without it sounding passive.)
(Forgive my not having a explanation for this, but) the place where the time is being used up is marked by に. The particle に can only attach to a noun, which is why 「体をあらう」 is bundled into の, making it into a noun.
You could say:
「 体をあらうのには 時間がかかる。」
This makes the topic “to wash the body”. “As for to wash the body, time is consumed.”
(My explanation here will probably be bad, but) since a few items were listed (large dog, eats often), it may be that は becomes も to be additive, to say “also”. “As for also to wash the body, time is consumed.” (Or in common English, “On top of all that, giving it a bath takes time.”)
In the following screenshot, each word has a line pointing to the word it goes with.
If the sentence parser I’m using (Juman++) is right, then as written, すごしでも modifies 見せる. If there was no も, then it would modify かわいい.
I don’t yet know the “why”, though.
Edit: Forgot this part:
Since this is narration, I’m going with this meaning of そこ:
“[pn] then (of some incident just spoken of); that (of point just raised)”
From there, に simply marks the word as the “when” of the sentence (I think).
“Blah blah wash the dog blah. At that point, an old man blah blah…”
4 Likes
Just sharing another example of 先(さき) meaning “address”. We had 連絡先 (れんらくさき) in the first chapter of ゆるキャン⛺️ - meaning “contact address”.
4 Likes