見せて - て-form of 見せる, to show, to display
もらう -
ことにした - decided to do ~
Jisho tells me that もらう means (1) to receive; to take; to accept or (2) to get somebody to do something (this, Jisho says, comes after the て form and so might be the one in use here). I know I’m on the edge of some vewry complicated grammar here, can someone give me a gentle nudge? Thank you!
You probably know Xて ください to make a request.
Literally “[please] give me X”. (it’s actually just an imperative but it’s ok since it’s an established pattern with a polite verb)
もらう literally means “receive” and it’s the opposite pattern.
Xて もらう => Someone gave me X => Someone did X for me.
The sentence here is something like
“I decided to have her show me the room”
“I decided to be shown the room”
“I decided to ask her to show me the room”
etc
Confusingly, と is often used for things that are not literal quotes at all.
Thing of it as a way to embed a sentence into another sentence and make a comment about it.
Here her long explanation is embedded into her comment “X is also possible”. I’m not 100% sure whether いう has implications of saying here but I suspect it might just be that (here) ということ corresponds to something like English “that”.
English: “It is also possible that XYZ”
Japanese: “XYZということも ありうろ。”
The breakdown seems fine but the translation is based on the wrong structure.
With relative clauses it is useful to translate it piece by piece and then assemble the pieces
三日まえにあたしがでかけたとき
“The time when I left three days ago” (yeah, a bit silly in English)
ときのままよ (note: だ dropped because of feminine language)
“It is in the condition of [that] time!” (the condition that it was at the time)
=>
“It is in the condition of the time when I left three days ago!”
or less awkwardly e.g.
“The room is in the same condition as it was when I left three days ago!”
“The room is just like it was when I left three days ago!”
EDIT: Your translation is actually almost right with some small changes
“There has been no change since I left three days ago”
トイレ - toilet
の - possessive
しつけ - 躾 or 仕付け - discipline; training; teaching manners
も - also
できれる - 出来る in ている form with dropped い. “Is up to the task”
し - sentence ending particle “in addition”
Just wanted to know if the use of ということ acting as a nominalizer is the similar or the same as using の as a nominalizer. What if the sentence were contructed as
どろぼうがかぎあなからはりがねで かぎをあけてはいったのは
ありうる
Yea, I know the way it’s used in my question is kinda weird but just wanted to know if の as a nominalizer could be used similarly to ということ or if there were restrictions or limitations to their use in comparing them to each other.
The grammar is different. の forms a “true” relative clause. For instance, if you say
XはYのZ
It would not, I think, be valid to group it as
(XはY)のZ
Unless X is a contrast marker (relative clauses can’t have topics).
The power of と is that it can contain arbitrary clauses. It functions like English quotation marks in that regard since it doesn’t care what’s in it (excluding American rules about comma moving in and out…)
e.g. “He loudly shouted ‘Watch out’ as the piano was about to drop on my head.”
Here, an imperative is contained in the middle of a sentence, and the result is treated like a noun phrase, because it’s talking about the phrase.
So you can perfectly well have
(XはY)ということZ
It might in this case actually indicate hearsay.
I’m often really not sure whether it does or doesn’t.
OK. So this helps me understand why one is used vs. the other. Sometimes when I see something new I don’t know why it is used vs. some other familiar way. Thanks.
You’re translation seems correct but when analysing I think you’re reading too much English into the Japanese.
I suspect it’s more like
“[She] is also capable of toilet discipline.”
which makes the verb and noun fit together, even though the result is not idiomatic in English.
I’m not sure what you think you’re missing. I think she’s just pointing out that the cat will use the litterbox. (Not all cats will. Particularly if they’re upset about being locked in. I know this from experience…)
し is listed in Jisho as a particle indicating a reason, with some implications that there are other reasons.
So something like “For one,” in English but it can simply be repeated along the lines of “Xし. Yし.” whereas English is more complicated “For one, X. Also, Y.”
I found this use to be consistent with every time it appears in the book.
Maybe we discussed this before for other page but i really don’t remember. And searching does not yield any results, so here it goes ^^
窓にも うちがわから かぎが かかっている。
窓 + に + も = also in the window
うちがわ + から = from the inside of the house
かぎが + かかって + いる = is locked?
Would you think this is a good translation?
“Also the window is locked from the inside of the house”
I had a hard time getting that “かぎがかかる” may mean “to lock/to be locked” because my first impulse was to look for the definition of かかる/かかって without かぎが and it has certainly not the meaning “to lock” in the dictionary ^^.
