Actually, I would say something along the lines of it snowed, X was later than normal. X can be either a person or the snow itself depending on context.
I wasn’t responding to you in particular or correcting anyone, I just wanted to make sure he had a clear idea of how the whole thing fit together since that’s what his question was about. It’s not necessarily the speaker that was late, but I think that’s how that sentence alone would be interpreted most of the time so that’s what I went with.
Actually, I would say something along the lines of it snowed, X was later than normal. X can be either a person or the snow itself depending on context.
That’s true, but I wanted to give him an unambiguous translation of how I think it would interpreted without any other context.
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oooh right, here’s the full sentence:
”今年は先月下旬に雪が降っていつもより遅くなりましたが、きれいなピンク色の花が咲きました。”
The article is about sakura blooming, so I assumed they were saying “It snowed later than usual in the last third of last month, but the trees still blossomed”. I didn’t consider interpreting the って form as giving a reason, in fact I’m not sure I knew that was a thing 
.
In that case, yeah, it seems like the snow was what was late. Just because that sounds like the right time for sakura to bloom, and a late time for snow to fall, but what do I know about that stuff.
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What??? The sakura are definitly what is late.
It snowed at the end of last month and even though its later than usual this year, the pretty pink flowers bloomed.
is maybe a close translation.
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Ok, so it was the blooming of cherry blossoms that was late, not the speaker. My main point about how the -て connects the two parts is still valid though. Because it snowed at the end of last month, the cherry blossoms bloomed later than usual.
I didn’t consider interpreting the って form as giving a reason, in fact I’m not sure I knew that was a thing
If you don’t believe me check the section on the て form in A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. It should be mentioned there. If you don’t have it ask and I’ll take a picture or something. Since -て strongly relates the two parts of the sentence it’s often interpreted as a sequential or causal relationship. It’s like how in English someone might say “I got in a car wreck and hurt my leg.” If someone just says that outright most people are going to interpret that as causal: “I got in a car wreck and hurt my leg because of it.” In a different context, e.g. someone is enumerating the bad things that happened to them last year, it could mean “I got in a car wreck, and at another time in an unrelated incident I hurt my leg.”
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I guess my question then is… where in Japan is it late for them to start blooming at the end of March? Isn’t that the earliest they bloom anywhere?
EDIT: I guess it doesn’t say when they bloomed, though. So yeah, I take it back. In my head everything happened last month.
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You actually made me curious so I googled @UntitledName’s quote and found the source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10011391421000/k10011391421000.html
It’s from April 9th of this year, and also it’s about cherry blossoms in Washington State and not Japan. So I looked up Washington cherry blossom blooming season and found this:
So according to this the cherry blooming in Washington IS later than normal this year because of the cold weather.
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Gotta go with my gut. That’s how I read it the first time and deleted it.
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If it was going to be the snow that was late, I think the lateness would be before the snow.
今年は先月下旬に遅くなった雪が降った。
or something
In any case, I’d heard they were blooming earlier than usual this year in Japan. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, because I head over on Thursday…
Yeah, they’ve already bloomed and like 満開ed last week if you are going to tokyo. Then as you go south less and less would be left.
Yeah. I considered following them north, but there’s stuff to the west we want to see, so we’ll just have to go some other time for the sakura. Supposedly they’ll still be blooming at higher altitude too, though, like Mount Takao.
Yeah, they’re already basically gone where I am. There’s mostly just petals on the ground.
We got rained on last weekend here that wreaked the sakura just in time for the new school year to start sniff
(They also bloomed super early this year)
I am using Minna no Nihongo and I stumbled across this sentence:
犬を散歩に連れて行ってやりました。
Why is 犬 marked with を, even though it is the receiver (I am giving it the action of taking it with me for a walk.)
I get the usual NにNをVてやる construction, but this confuses me.
(Btw first post, yay.)
やる is like あげる but more crude and frequently used when doing something to or for animals like feeding them (えさをやる).
Effectively, that means you are giving the dog a walk.
連れて行く is a special class verb that has the meaning of taking someone along/take someone somewhere, so it uses を to mark who is being taken along (here, 犬) and に/へ to mark the target/purpose/destination
EDIT: I found this article explaining the “Person を Place に/へ 連れて行く” structure (scroll down to point 12)
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@Carolinsp is expecting に with 犬, because usually the recipient of one of these て + “giving as a favor” verbs is marked with に. I don’t think there’s a question about what やる means.
That actually makes a lot of sense, I can’t believe I’ve never learned that. Thanks!