0:00 Konnichiwa.
0:01 Today we're going back to Alice, and we're going to be using quite a lot of trains this time
0:06 because I want us to really grasp the structure of these sentences.
0:15 So, if you remember from last time, Alice had just entered the rabbit hole
0:20 and quite surprisingly she finds herself falling very slowly down a vertical hole.
0:28 "Ochiru aida-ni hima-ga tappuri atte mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta."
0:37 Now, I'm going to tell you what this means first and then we're going to break it down.
0:45 "Ochiru aida-ni"
0:47 "Ochiru", as we know, is "fall".
0:50 "Aida" is a period of time
0:54 and it's also the space between two things.
0:58 And obviously a period of time is always, metaphorically
1:02 speaking - and we can only really talk about time in spatial metaphors -
1:06 a period of time is always a space between two points, isn't it?
1:10 It has a beginning and it has an end.
1:13 So "ochiru aida-ni" means "while she was falling / during the period of time while she was falling".
1:21 "Hima" means "free time / open time".
1:25 It's a word you'll see quite often, and it can be used in
1:29 both a positive or a negative sense.
1:32 It can mean free time to do what you want to do,
1:34 or it can mean empty time, being bored, having time hanging on your hands.
1:40 Here it just means having plenty of time available to look around, because she's falling, she
1:47 can't do anything else, and she's falling rather slowly.
1:52 "Tappuri" means "in large quantities".
1:55 It's another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.
2:00 And it means "in large quantities / in plentiful amounts" - rather like pouring from a tap:
2:08 "tappuri", "in large quantities".
2:11 And here it's an adverb describing the fact that the "hima", the "free time", exists.
2:17 So the free time exists in large quantities.
2:22 So that's our first logical clause: "Ochiru aida-ni..."
2:26 (which simply sets the scene, the time, for the action -
2:30 it's an absolute time expression because it's a particular
2:33 time, so it takes -ni)
2:35 "...hima-ga tappuri atta" ("there was a lot of free time").
2:40 Now, the next part - "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" - is interesting because this is another example
2:48 of what we were talking about last week:
2:52 self-move/other-move pairs.
2:54 "Mawaru" means to "go around/move around".
2:58 The rather childish name for a policeman is "omawari-san", which means
3:04 "someone who goes around / someone who does the rounds".
3:07 "Mawasu" means "make (something) go around/to send (something) around/to cause it to go around"
3:15 and of course, as we learned last week, we easily know which of the pair is
3:21 the self-move word (going around) and which is the other-move word (sending around) because
3:27 the sending-around one ends in -su.
3:30 Now, we don't actually have "mawaru" here; we have "mawari".
3:35 And as we've mentioned before,
3:38 when we take the i-stem of a verb and use it on its own
3:43 it usually becomes a noun.
3:45 There is another use which we're not going to enter into right now, but in this case
3:52 it is becoming a noun.
3:54 So, what does "mawari" mean?
3:56 "Mawari" can actually mean two things: it can be the noun-form of "mawaru", in which case
4:01 it's "going around", "doing the rounds", and that's what we have in "omawari-san", a policeman -
4:08 here's someone who does the act of doing the rounds,
4:12 "mawari" is "the act of doing the rounds",
4:14 but it can also mean "the surroundings",
4:18 and in this case it actually takes a different kanji to
4:21 show that it's a slightly different meaning of the word.
4:24 It's still the noun-form of "around", but in this case
4:28 it's the surroundings, not the act of going around.
4:33 So, "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" means
4:37 "she could in a leisurely manner...
4:40 ("yukkuri", that adverb we learned last week)
4:42 ... she could in a leisurely manner 'mimawasu' "
4:46 What does "mimawasu" mean?
4:48 We know what "mawasu" means - it means to "make (something) go around".
4:52 "Mi-mawasu" is attaching "mawasu" to the i-stem of "miru".
4:57 We can't actually tell it's the i-stem, because this is an ichidan verb, and all ichidan stems
5:03 look the same, as we know, but we know that this is in fact the ren'youkei, the i-stem,
5:10 because that's the one that gets used for attaching verbs to other verbs.
5:15 So, "mimawasu" means literally "send your looking around / send your eye-beams around
5:22 the place / make your looking go around".
5:26 So, "mawari-wo mimawasu" is "look around the place / send your eye-beams,
5:34 send your looking around the place".
5:35 And "mimawaseru" is, as we've seen, the potential form of "mimawasu".
5:41 So what this is saying is "because a lot of time existed she was able to leisurely send
5:50 her looking around the surroundings".
5:54 "Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite nanimo mienakatta."
6:04 "First of all, she tried looking down, but it was too dark
6:09 so nothing was visible (nothing could be seen)."
6:13 "Mazu-wa" means "first of all".
6:16 "Mazu" is "from the start / from the beginning".
6:20 "Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita". Now,
6:25 "shita-wo miru" is "looking down / looking at the down".
6:28 We know that in Japanese "down" is always a noun, don't we?
6:33 So you look "at the down" - "shita-wo miru".
6:37 But it doesn't say "miru" here; it says "mitemita".
6:41 And this is a form of speech that we're going to find a great deal.
6:47 When we add "miru" to the te-form of another verb, what we're doing is saying "try doing something";
6:56 literally we're saying "do it and see".
6:58 So, "tabetemiru" means "eat it and see / have a taste of it".
7:04 "Do you like this?"
7:05 "I don't know."
7:07 "Tabetemite kudasai.
7:08 Try it, taste it, eat it and see."
7:10 We often say "yattemiru" - "I'll give it a try / I'll try and see what happens".
7:17 "Yaru" is a more casual form of "suru",
7:20 and you can say "shitemiru", especially in more formal
7:24 circumstances, but more often we say "yatte-miru":
7:28 "Give it a try / give it a go / do it and see."
7:32 So here we're actually using "miru" with "miru".
7:36 "Mite-miru" - "try having a look / take a look / have a look and see".
7:41 So, "shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite".
7:46 "Kurai" is "dark" and "sugiru", as we've talked about before, means "going by, going beyond".
7:52 So in this case "sugiru" means "too much / going in excess of".
7:58 In other words, it was too dark.
8:00 It was excessively dark; it was too dark.
8:04 "Kurasugite nanimo mienakatta".
8:09 "Nanimo" means "even as much as (something)" - "nanimo".
8:16 And I've done a video on these uses of -mo which you might want to watch.
8:22 "Nanimo mienakatta" - now, "miru" is "see"; "mieru" is "be able to see".
8:30 And if we look at the trains here,
8:31 we've got to have a ga-marked subject in this second clause:
8:37 "nanimo zero-ga mienakatta".
8:41 What is the zero in this case?
8:43 If we're looking at it in English terms we might think it's
8:46 Alice - "Alice couldn't see anything".
8:49 But in Japanese it will usually in fact be "nani", which is "a thing / something".
8:57 "Nothing was able to be seen, nothing could be seen",
9:02 because usually with expressions like "mieru/mienai",
9:06 "kikoeru/kikoenai", "be able to hear" "be able to see" -
9:11 we apply it not to the person who's able to see,
9:14 but to the thing that's able to be seen.
9:16 And of course we've covered this, haven't we, in our lesson on the potential.
9:20 "Sono ato": "ato", as we know, means "after" - we've had it in following after someone,
9:28 but it also means "after" in the other sense, "after that".
9:32 "Sono" means "that"; "sono ato" means "after that".
9:37 So again, this is just a time-expression, setting it in time.
9:42 And this time it's a relative time-expression, "after that / after a particular thing",
9:48 so it doesn't need -ni.
9:50 "Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" So now she's not looking down.
9:57 This means "the surroundings", again, "mawari", of the hole "-wo mite" -
10:05 "after that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".
10:10 "Me-ni tomaru-no-wa gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta."
10:22 Right, so this is quite complex.
10:25 The first clause is simple enough.
10:28 "Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" - "After that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".
10:36 The second clause has quite a lot for us to consider.
10:41 "me-ni tomaru-no-wa" means literally "the thing that stopped in her eye".
10:49 Now this is a similar expression to, in English, "the thing that caught her eye", isn't it?
10:54 Various things passed through her eye, passed through her vision, and the thing that stopped
10:59 there was what we are going to talk about.
11:02 But we also need to look at this use of -no.
11:06 As we've seen before, -no is like apostrophe-s ('s) in English.
11:11 So if we say "Sakura-no doresu", we're saying, "Sakura's dress".
11:17 Now also, just as in English, if you say, "Which dress do you like best?"
11:22 Suppose that Sakura and Mary are both wearing dresses and you say, "Which dress do you like best?"
11:28 In English you might say, "Sakura's. I like Sakura's best".
11:33 You could say, "Sakura's dress"
11:35 but you don't have to, you can just say, "Sakura's".
11:38 And it's the same in Japanese.
11:40 You can say, "Sakura-no" - Sakura's, the one that belongs to Sakura.
11:45 But this can be taken much further in Japanese, and
11:49 I've done a whole video about this particular use of -no,
11:53 which you can look at if you want to go deeper.
11:57 But in this case the way it's taken further is "me-ni tomaru-no" -
12:02 this is "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".
12:07 "Which dress do you like best? Sakura's,
12:10 Sakura's one, Sakura's thing, Sakura's dress."
12:13 "Me-ni tomaru-no" - "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".
12:20 So, "ana-no mawari-wo mite me-ni tomaru-no-wa" -"looking at the surroundings of the hole,
12:29 the thing that stopped in her eye was...'"
12:33 And what it was, was "gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".
12:38 "Gisshiri" is yet another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.
12:46 "Gisshiri" means "tightly packed".
12:49 "Naranda" is the past tense of "narabu" which means "lined-up", so "gisshiri naranda" means
12:56 "tightly lined-up / packed together / lined-up and packed together".
13:01 "Gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".
13:06 All right. Well, we'll get to the "ya" in just a moment, but
13:10 "todana ya hondana".
13:12 The word for a shelf in Japanese is "tana", and when we add something before it to tell
13:20 us what kind of a shelf it is, we use that "ten-ten hooking" that we've talked about before.
13:25 So the "ta" becomes "da": "Todana" - that "to" means "door", so literally, "todana" is a "door-shelf"
13:34 and that is the Japanese word for a cupboard.
13:36 And it's quite a good word, I think. That's what a cupboard really is, isn't it?
13:40 Shelves, with a door.
13:41 It's a better way of saying cupboard than the English
13:44 way which says it's a board on which you put cups,
13:48 which isn't quite what a cupboard is.
13:50 "Hondana" is even easier:
13:53 it's quite literally a book-shelf, bookshelves.
13:56 Now, this "ya" is something we need to cover.
14:01 When you want to say "and" - something "and" something else - how do you say it in Japanese?
14:07 We know that when you're putting two clauses together, we use the te-form, or sometimes
14:12 we use other things, like "demo".
14:14 In English we use "and" in all cases: we say "bread and butter", "pencil and paper".
14:23 We also say "I went into the baker's and bought some bread."
14:27 But in Japanese we don't use the same "and" in the two cases.
14:31 We already know some of the ways we can "and" two clauses together, but when we're "anding"
14:37 two things together, there are two ways to do it.
14:41 And one is to use the to-particle.
14:44 We know that the to-particle is the quotation particle, but it's also the and-particle.
14:49 So if you want to say "pen and book", we say "pen to hon".
14:55 But we can also use the ya-particle,
14:58 so we can say "to" or "ya"
15:00 when we want to "and" together two or more objects.
15:06 What's the difference?
15:07 Well, as a matter of fact it's a very useful difference,
15:10 and one that we could do with in English.
15:13 "To" is an exclusive "and".
15:15 If I say, "What's in that box?" and you answer "pen to enpitsu" - "pens and pencils" -
15:24 you are telling me that there are pens and pencils and nothing else in that box.
15:30 If you say "pen ya enpitsu", you're saying there are pens and pencils and there might
15:36 also be something else - and very often you're implying that there is something else because
15:42 you're avoiding using the exclusive "and".
15:46 So what "stopped in her eye" was the fact that
15:49 cupboards and bookshelves (among other things)
15:51 were tightly lined around the walls.
15:56 "Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
16:02 "Tana-no hitotsu": "hitotsu" means "one";
16:05 "kara" is a particle meaning "from".
16:08 Now, here she's using "tana" on its own - "shelves" - and
16:12 because it's not joined to anything, it's "tana" not "dana".
16:15 And so she is saying "from one of the shelves"
16:18 - "tana-no hitotsu-kara", "from one of the shelves" -
16:22 notice here than "tana-no hitotsu" is really just the same
16:27 as English "one of the shelves" - "tana-no hitotsu".
16:33 "Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
16:39 Now, "toru" means "take", and "orosu" - the kanji, as you can see, is the kanji for "down",
16:49 and again this is part of a move-pair, self-move/other-move pair, which is why I introduced them early.
16:57 Most courses would regard that as an intermediate thing, self-move and other-move, but I think
17:02 it makes it much easier to recognize what words are doing if you're aware of this.
17:08 "Oriru" means "come down / step down" - come down the stairs, come off a bus.
17:13 "Orosu" means "bring down".
17:15 And once again, we know which is the other-move one - you "bring (something else) down"
17:20 - that's the one that ends in -su: "orosu".
17:25 So "tori orosu" means "take and bring down". "Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."
17:34 "From one of the shelves she took down..." "bin" usually gets translated as "bottle";
17:39 in fact in this case I think it was more of a "jar".
17:43 What was in it?
17:44 Well, we'll have to wait till next time to find out.
17:47 Now, before we go, there's something I want to ask you because I want your input on the
17:54 direction of this course.
17:55 You may have noticed a few changes this time.
17:58 The most obvious of them is that I am not using romaji for Japanese words any more.
18:06 I've been asked to do this, and also it's what I think I should be doing because it's
18:11 structurally very important to start thinking of Japanese in kana terms not in romaji terms.
18:19 And if we're in training for reading real Japanese, which we are, it's important to
18:25 start reading it in kana - and kanji as far as possible.
18:29 I will continue to use furigana prominently for all the kanji, but if I use romaji it
18:37 interferes with the process of your recognizing and ingesting Japanese, because your mind
18:44 will jump to the thing it finds most comfortable and easily recognizable -
18:49 that's the way it works, we can't stop that happening.
18:52 So if this is helpful to you, please let me know in the comments below.
18:56 If it's unhelpful to you, if it's making it harder for you to follow the explanations,
19:01 then let me know that too, because I need to know that.
19:05 But remember that if you need to pause at any point, you should be pausing the video.
19:11 If you need to take a minute to take things in, to read the extra information on the screen,
19:15 to work out the kana if you're still a little bit slow on that, please use the pause button.
19:21 I do take things quite fast.
19:24 There is a lot of information in these videos, and I do that on the assumption that you're
19:29 able to pause the video whenever you need to.
19:33 Nothing wrong in doing that.
19:34 Don't think you're being slow - the videos are made with that assumption in mind.
19:40 Thank you.
19:41 I'd like to thank my Gold Kokeshi patrons, my producer-angels, who make these videos possible,
19:47 and I'd like to thank all my patrons and supporters on Patreon and everywhere.
19:52 And I'd like to thank you for attending this lesson.
19:59 Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
20:03 Class dismissed.
