にゃんにゃん - Kitty Detectives - Vol. 1

Translation seems good.
Maybe put more focus on the fact that も attaches to 窓.
“The window, too, is locked from inside (the house).”

鍵が掛かる is listed in Jisho as “to become locked”.
so ている form would be “is locked”.

かかる seems like one of those tricky words that has 20 meanings that are only vaguely (if at all) related (and I doubt Jisho is being comprehensive here).
Like “jack” in English.
Or, famously, Zug and Schlag in German.

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Oh dear! lol!

Thanks again aiju!

Page 68

ニャーゴー!

Lovely word!

Got to be a combination of にゃー and ゴー don’t you think?!

“meow-go!” :joy_cat:

Well, I interpreted it myself as just the onomatopoeic sound of the cat going mad :slight_smile: I do not think that はなえちゃん tells the cat to go after the butterfly, it’s kind of happening unexpectedly…

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Yeah, I know! If you look at Jisho, one of the forms of にゃー is にゃーあご. But my theory was nice while it lasted! :smiley_cat:

[I have finally pulled my finger out and bought both books - should arrive by next week :cat2:]

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That is fantastic! It’ll be so nice if you can join us here Rowena!

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Both books? Are we reading another one afterwards O_o :smiley:

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I’m hoping so… :smile_cat:

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This is what motivated me to buy both (that and economising on shipping).

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I bough all (5?) books =P (2 cat, 3 dogs I believe it was)
I sure hope we continue with all of them! =D

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I didn’t know if I should go so far as to buy the わんわん books too so I refrained, but I’m cheered to know others are prepared to keep going! :dog:

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I didn’t even know there were more books beyond this one!
Hm, the only thing stopping me from getting those now is my stinginess

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Page 70

あ、わかりましたよ。キャサリンを つれて いったのが だれか!

The actual meaning is easy enough, “Ah, I’ve got it! I know who took Catherine!”, but as it’s a bit quiet at the moment (these pages are a bit light text-wise though the pictures are as gorgeous as ever!), I do have some questions about the grammar. There’s quite a bit here I still don’t get.

あ、わかりましたよ - 分かりました - the past tense of “understand”, but why is it past tense? The realisation is coming to her right now. It’s not passive, so it can’t be like the English “understood” can it?

キャサリンを - Catherine (plus object marker). No problems there.

つれて いった - this is the て-form of 連れる, to take (someone) with one, plus the past tense of 行く, - took and went. I’ve seen, in this book and when I was reading Yotsuba, verbs in the て-form plus come and go many times and I’m starting to get used to it. But it’s still a mystery to me just why this is done. Why not just ‘took’? Instead of ‘take + went’?

の - another of those dreaded nominalisers! This time with no だ or です. Why not? Is it because it is followed by が? In any case, it turns the whole thing into a noun phrase, doesn’t it?

が - particle

だれか! - okay, this looks like a question but it is not. 誰か means “somebody”

So I’m guessing the literal translation is “ah, understood! The Catherine taken away somebody!” Or am I miles off the mark?

You can rearrange the sentence like this to get the same meaning, but maybe easier to parse:

キャサリンを連れて行ったのが誰かわかりました

First, you’re right that the の turns the preceding phrase into a noun basically. So 「キャサリンを 連れて 行ったの」 is basically “[the person] that took Catherine”. And of course there’s no need to insert a 「です」 in between the subject of a sentence and the particle が.


Next, the usage of 誰 here is closer to “who” as opposed to “somebody”. You can use か to kind of embed questions inside a larger sentence.

Consider the question: 犯人は誰ですか? - who is the criminal?

You could then do something like this:

犯人が誰 か 知らない

Which means “I don’t know who the criminal is.” The book does something similar here.


Lastly, わかる can also be used in the context of “to realize/find out”. So in the book I’d say it means something like “I just realized [who it was]” to justify why it’s in the past tense.

A somewhat related note is that in English, if somebody tells you something, you can reply “I understand” (in the present tense)
But in Japanese, it seems like it’s more natural to say “I understood [what you just said]”, i.e. わかりました

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Thank you so much @Cychloryn! What a fabulous explanation! Like I say, I can get the gist, but your detailed breakdown of the sentences here has made it a lot clearer to me! Thank you!

This is an inverted sentence.
You can actually translate it by a similar construction in English:

あ、わかりましたよ “Ahh, I got it!”

As for the second part, it’s useful again to translate the relative clause in two steps:
キャサリンを つれて いったの(が) “the one who took Catherine”
… だれか “Who is …?”
(NB だれか here is informal だれですか, but だ disappears before か)

=>キャサリンを つれて いったのが だれか! “Who the one who took Catherine is!”

It’s called an inverted sentence because it violates the normal order of sentences.
It’s a fairly common pattern in both English and Japanese when it comes to casual statements or these very “heat of the moment” statements.
It’s kinda like you say the most important bits first and then briefly pause to tell the listener the parts that you forgot to mention.
e.g. “I saw him! The killer!”
(In English we often add “I mean” to clarify we’re adding information we left out:
“Did you read it? The book I mean.”)
Note that while the English has extra pronouns, the Japanese doesn’t, but Japanese leaves out pronouns a lot in general so it’s not particularly surprising.

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That’s great! Thank you so much for your help too @aiju!

Thanks @Cychloryn @aiju for the great explanations. I was having trouble with this sentence too but you helped clarify it.

I’ve wondered about the use of わかりました (as past tense) in situations like this myself and discovered that its use is kinda like a situational phrase spoken as an acknowledgement, comprehension, or confirmation of some new information, explanation, or instruction. It’s almost like something said automatically without regard to tense. So in many cases, the use of わかりました is determined by the situation in which it is used rather than when it spoken or stated in relation to time. There’s a useful article about it here.

So for instance, say the resident sensei gives you an explanation for a question about Japanese, your response would be, はい、わかりました as acknowledgement and comprehension of the new information given to you. Shes telling you something you didn’t know before.

Or if it’s instructions, she tells you to go to Lawson’s tomorrow and buy 4 salmon nigiris. Your response would be はい、わかりました as confirmation of what she said and also agreement to do it.

In the case with Hanae, the new information is Capone chasing the butterfly. So her reaction is acknowledgement and comprehension of the new information which “explains” who took Catherine. It also could mean “realized” as mentioned before and like aiju stated, “I’ve got it”.

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分かる is definitely an interesting word.
I think the confusing tenses are because each use references a slightly different meaning.
The response わかります is using the “to understand” meaning that works like the English word “to understand” and it is a continuous state of “understanding” (also found in e.g. 日本語がわかります).
The response 分かりました is using the meaning that’s closer to “to realise”.
In that meaning, 分かる describes a single event which is the point for when you go from not-understanding to understanding.
So わかりました → “understanding has happened” (i.e. “I got it”).

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