My best guess is something like: “The best part of dancing with Yukinoshita was her modesty,” but it doesn’t feel right. Not sure I see any possessives, more going by what would make sense? Another idea is “The best part was dancing with Yukinoshita”, but that omits “謙遜した” - that part confuses me to no end. Maybe it’s some grammar I don’t know? Idk.
手遊び is a word that you can look up in a dictionary. It means a plaything, child’s play, and some other definitons, but because the sentence is about her being modest, I decided to translate it as “even a child could do it”.
など is a grammatical word that means “things like”. I’m not sure if it’s technically a particle, but it functions similar to one by attaching to the end of a word. Then the と is a quoting particle. In narration, the “said” or “thought” verb is often ommitted, which means they said the thing while doing the action in the sentence, which in this case was “acting modestly”.
I’ve actually studied など, but this is not the first time I’m confused by its usage. It seems to me the Japanese use it places where I wouldn’t, and it’s sometimes even left untranslated, so that’s kinda weird, at least for me.
I ordered “A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners” recently, but it will take… a couple of months for it to ship to me It’s being shipped from Japan, so that’s why, I guess.
Wow, where did you buy it from? Amazon Japan will ship it to most places in just a handful of days. According to it, I could have it by Monday. Probably won’t buy it now but I’m putting that in a wish list of more future books to buy.
Fuck? I considered Amazon.de and Amazon.co.uk, but it seems like I didn’t consider Amazon.jp?! They say they could have it shipped between Tuesday, Mar. 19 and Monday, April 8.
I ordered it from Abebooks. Well, I don’t mind waiting that much, so whatever. Plus, I saved 6 euros by the looks of it!
I would recommend looking at it for future buys. The shipping is not necessarily cheap, so don’t just buy like a 5 dollar item because the shipping will seem enormous in comparison, but if you are buying multiple items it works out well. Plus I usually get my items from them within 2-3 business days. I get domestic Amazon orders slower most times then what I can get from Japan that has to go through customs.
手遊び is more commonly used referring to hand play songs I think. A song with hand motions that go with it for toddlers to dance to. 手遊び can mean other things but since they are dancing, this is what came to mind for me.
please note that while “japs” may seem like a common-sense abbreviation of Japanese, it was used as a racial slur during and after WWII (and sometimes now) in the US and is best avoided