Japanese-Learners Homework

It’s been a rough and busy week, and I don’t really have the right mindset nor time to write the next in the “be with you.” translation series. As it is, I am strongly leaning towards writing the translation part of the post for one week and splitting off the footnotes for that post to the following week.

Anyway, what I shall write about instead is the homework for our japanese-learners group. Last week I decided that the group is pretty set on enough grammar and what’s mostly getting in the way of learning more is simply the lack of vocabulary (and other memorized things). The first homework assignment I sent out was to memorize commonly useful conjugations of する and 来る, and to look up the definitions of a list of vocabulary words and memorize them as well (I would’ve provided definitions to people for whom the process of looking up definitions wouldn’t help with the memorization, because I am one of those people).

I came up with this nifty idea yesterday: one of the hardest parts of Japanese is the lack of spaces, so I thought I’d give everyone a block of text in kanji/kana and the corresponding romanization, also in a giant block of text (i.e. no spaces). The task would have two parts: figure out where the morphemic breaks are in the romanization, and figure out how to pronounce the kanji (i.e. match the romanization to the kanji, similarly to how a web publishing/design class was once told to figure out tags for bold and italics by finding the corresponding text in the source markup and looking at what tags enclosed that text). Since not everyone has yet memorized the kana (which y’all should do, ASAP!), I think the first instance of such an assignment would have to be no longer than a few sentences, but I do feel like it would be a useful exercise.

Anyone have comments on this idea, or more ideas for homework assignments besides just memorizing vocabulary lists? I would probably combine the above exercise with the task of looking up the 生字 (shēng​zì​, literally something like “fresh words,” i.e. words you’re seeing for the first time) in the text, which would be one way of making vocabulary-learning more interesting, but more innovative ideas are always good to have!

BoA – “be with you.” Detailed Translation, Part 2

And this week, we’re on to the second stanza! For quick reference, I’ve copied the second stanza, both kanji and romanization (ローマ字, rōmaji), from the original post.

05 一歩ずつ　重ねては
06 今日と云う日が　明日に変わる
07 ふたりでいる時間が
08 わたしには　あたりまえなの

05 ippozutsu   kasanete wa
06 kyou to yuu hi ga   ashita ni kawaru
07 futari de iru jikan ga
08 watashi ni wa   atarimae na no

Line 5: ippo is composed of the kanji meaning “one” and “step,” respectively, and zutsu roughly translates to “each,” so we have here “each step,” more or less. kasanete is the te-form of the verb kasaneru, which means “pile up” or “repeat” — one of the meanings of the original Chinese characters is “repeat” (the other is “heavy”/”serious”) — so I might translate this line as “the repeating of each step” plus a topic marker¹.

Line 6: kyou is composed of the kanji meaning “now”/”this” and “day”/”sun,” so kyou means, of course, “today.” The next word, to, is a particle that functions as a verbal quotation mark (with which って — tte — can be used interchangeably), so in conjunction with the following verb yuu, which means “say” (and can also be written using the characters 言う and/or pronounced iu), to yuu refers to kyou as what is being quoted/called. (Yes, I know that didn’t quite make sense. Bear with me and keep reading.) Because yuu is the direct (a.k.a. dictionary) form of the verb (which implies that it is direct-style² and imperfect/unfinished³), it can modify the noun phrase that follows, which it does here. The noun phrase that follows kyou to yuu is hi, which is the same kanji as the second one in kyou and which I already stated means “day”/”sun.” Thus, the noun phrase kyou to yuu hi means “the day called ‘today.’”

Line 6 (continued): The ga that follows that noun phrase is a subject marker, which means that it is the subject that is carrying out the action of the verb that follows. Ashita, which is made from the kanji meaning “next” or “bright” — here it means “next” — and the kanji for “day”/”sun,” means “tomorrow.” Ni is a direction/destination particle here⁴, so, armed with the knowledge that the verb kawaru means “change” gives us the meaning of this line: “The day called ‘today’ changes into tomorrow.”

Line 7: Futari is normally written using the kanji “二人,” which mean “two” and “person,” respectively. Here, de is the te-form of the copula⁵, iru is the dictionary form of “to be” for animate objects (as opposed to aru, which is “to be” or “to have” for inanimate objects), and again, because it is the direct form, it modifies the noun phrase that follows, which, here, is jikan, meaning “time” as a period of time. This gets us “the time during which we were two people” or “the time during which we were a pair, together.” Finally, the line ends with the subject marker ga.

Line 8: Watashi is the first-person singular pronoun, ni is an indirect object particle here⁴, and wa is a contrastive particle that expresses that “to me” (the preceding phrase) might contrast with “to you,” for example. Atarimae is best translated as “natural” or “ordinary,” na is a pre-nominal form⁶ of the direct, imperfect form of the copula (da), and no is a nominalizer, i.e. a word that might be translated as “one” (e.g. “the black one,” “a pointy one,” “a heavy one,” etc). Thus, I might translate this line as “to me, at least, it was a natural one (period of time).”

So, to sum up this stanza:

Even as these footsteps repeat one by one, the day called “today” changes into tomorrow. The time when we were together was, to me, at least, a natural one.”

¹ Topic markers! Topic markers are a wonderful thing, if you know how to use them correctly. Japanese is what linguists call a pro-drop language, which mostly means, to the general public, that there is not always an explicit subject in each and every sentence. It is perfectly acceptable to say “ate already” in the middle of an ongoing conversation, and it could mean “he ate already,” “I ate already,” etc. The reason for this is because each conversation has an accepted topic, which is generally marked by the topic particle, and the sentences/verbs in that conversation refer to that topic, which can range from “that new restaurant that opened down the street” to “my parents” to “the terrible-looking new hairdo the weird girl in our linguistics class has,” etc.

² Japanese has two different styles called direct/blunt and indirect/distal. Basically, distal verbs used at the ends of sentences are more polite because they are indirect, or less confrontational. It is important to note that not all appearances of direct verbs means that the overall style of the sentence is direct; direct expressions can be used in a variety of ways, including modifying the noun phrase that directs follows it (as we have seen in this post), and only the style of the final clause of the sentence is used to determine the sentence’s overall style.

³ Similarly to other East Asian languages, Japanese does not have a complicated system of tenses for time in the same way that, for example, romance languages do. (Romance languages usually come with a past tense, an imperfect tense, a present tense, a future tense, and then some.) What Japanese has, instead, is a tense that indicates completion (the “perfect” tense/aspect) and a tense that indicates incompleteness (the “imperfect tense/aspect”). For example, if I have finished doing something, I would use the perfect tense, but if I am currently/planning to do it, I would use the imperfect aspect.

⁴ There are a number of different uses of ni. It can be used to mark a location, a destination/direction, an indirect object, a passive agent, or a purpose.

Location

大学にいる。

daigaku ni iru.

[I] am at college/university.

Destination/direction

図書館に行く。

toshokan ni iku.

[I] (will) go to the library.

Indirect object

教授にくれた。

kyouju ni kureta.

[I] gave [something] to the professor.

Passive agent

蚊にさされた。

ka ni sasareta.

[I] was bitten by a mosquito.

Purpose

よくなりに練習する。

yoku nari ni renshuu suru.

In order to become better, [I] practice.

⁵ Copulas are helping/passive/linking verbs that connect a subject to a predicate. “To be” is an English example of a copula. A good way to distinguish between an action verb and a copula is to try replacing the verb with the appropriate form of “seems”; for example, “jump” in the sentence “John jumps into a ditch” is an action verb, while “look” in the sentence “John looks enthusiastic about this project” is used as a copula. Common forms of the copula that are useful to know follow:

• da – direct-style, imperfect aspect
• desu – distal-style, imperfect aspect
• datta – direct-style, perfect tense
• deshita – distal-style, perfect tense
• darou – direct-style, volitional mood (roughly translated as “it’s probably … “)
• deshou – distal-style, volitional mood
• de – te-form
• (see footnote #6 about pre-nominal forms)

⁶ There are two pre-nominal forms of the copula in Japanese: na and no. Which of the two forms is used is determined by the noun phrase that precedes it: a subset of nominals (a term I use to refer to a grammatical class of words that are conjugated in a particular way, as opposed to verbals and adjectivals) that usually correlate with words that English-speakers use as adjectives are known as na-nominals. These pre-nominal forms are used to connect two noun phrases, such as “I” and “book” in watashi no hon, which means “my book,” or “beautiful” and “flower” in kirei na hana, which means “[a/the] beautiful flower.” (More on the other usages of no to come….)

BoA – “be with you.” Detailed Translation, Part 1

So I kind of feel like me just doing translations is kind of boring, both for me and for you. Sure, I spend a good amount of time per translation, but it’s hard to let the reader into the process without dumping vast amounts of time into it. Thus, I have decided to focus on a smaller portion of a song and explain the translation process as thoroughly as I can for each installment of this “detailed translation.” Hopefully it will aid people somewhat more in their Japanese-learning process than plain ol’ translations do. Here begins part one.

First off, I found the lyrics for this song online, and then transcribed a romanized version using the Hepburn romanization system. I preserved the spacing, and capitalized the romanization where katakana is used in the lyrics. The spaces between “words”¹ are my own, to increase readability, and I have romanized the topic particle (は), the subject particle (が), and the direct object particle (を) as wa, ga, and wo, respectively. I also added line numbers to make future references to various lines easier. Inline romanizations of Japanese words are italicized.

01 さくら舞う　この道を
02 あなたと並び　歩いている
03 風はまだ肌寒い
04 けどなんかシ・ア・ワ・セ

05 一歩ずつ　重ねては
06 今日と云う日が　明日に変わる
07 ふたりでいる時間が
08 わたしには　あたりまえなの

09 いつか　ねぇ、交わした約束をちゃんと
10 憶えていますか?
11 いつか　きっと　叶えられる
12 そう信じてもいいよね…
13 あなたとだから　今
14 わたしはここにいる

15 足を止め　立ち止まり
16 あなたは空を　あおいでいる
17 風に包まれながら
18 穏やかな表情で…

19 一秒って　ほんとうは
20 とっても長い　時間なんだと
21 そばにいてくれるから
22 そう感じられるの　きっと

23 いつか　ねぇ、交わした約束をちゃんと
24 憶えていますか?
25 いまは　まだ　叶えられて
26 いない約束さえ
27 大切なの　だから
28 あなたと共にいる

29 この時代　思いどおりの
30 希望なんて持てない
31 そのたびに　不安になるけど
32 あなたがいてくれるから…

33 いつか　ねぇ、交わした約束をちゃんと
34 憶えていますか?
35 いつか　きっと　果たせたとき
36 もっと深い絆
37 手に出来るの　だから
38 ふたりはここにいる

01 sakura mau   kono michi wo
02 anata to narabi   aruite iru
03 kaze wa mada hadasamui
04 kedo nanka SHIAWASE

05 ippozutsu   kasanete wa
06 kyou to yuu hi ga   ashita ni kawaru
07 futari de iru jikan ga
08 watashi ni wa   atarimae na no

09 itsuka   nee, kawashita yakusoku wo chanto
10 oboete imasu ka?
11 itsuka   kitto   kanaerareru
12 sou shinjite mo ii yo ne…
13 anata to dakara   ima
14 watashi wa koko ni iru

15 ashi wo tome   tachidomari
16 anata wa sora wo   aoi de iru
17 kaze ni tsutsumare nagara
18 odayakana hyoujyou de…

19 ichibyou tte   hontou wa
20 tottemo nagai   jikan nan da to
21 soba ni ite kureru kara
22 sou kanjirareru no   kitto

23 itsuka   nee, kawashita yakusoku wo chanto
24 oboete imasu ka?
25 ima wa   mada   kanaerarete
26 inai yakusoku sae
27 taisetsu na no    dakara
28 anata to tomo ni iru

29 kono jidai   omoi doori no
30 kibou nante motte nai
31 sono tabi ni   fuan ni naru kedo
32 anata ga ite kureru kara…

33 itsuka   nee, kawashita yakusoku wo chanto
34 oboete imasu ka?
35 itsuka   kitto   hataseta toki
36 motto fukai kizuna
37 te ni dekiru no   dakara
38 futari wa koko ni iru

And with that, we’re on to the actual translation!

Line 1: sakura can mean a number of things, but here it likely refers to cherry blossoms. Mau is a verb that perhaps desires to be translated as “dance” or “flutter” in this context, so sakura mau is a sentence saying that the sakura blossoms are fluttering/dancing (in the air). Kono is a demonstrative that refers to “this $noun” (which is necessarily closer to the speaker than the addressee, as opposed to “that” that is closer to the addressed party than the speaker — sono — or “that over there” that is not particularly close to either party involved in the exchange — ano), and the $noun is not implied here; kono (as well as sono and ano) must be followed by $noun. The noun that follows kono here is michi,² which refers to a path, a street, etc. Finally, wo is the direct object marker, so here it indicates that “this street/road/path” is the direct object of whatever verb follows.

Line 2: anata is a term of address for the second person, although most Japanese speakers and dictionaries will also add the information that it is most commonly used as an affectionate term of address between spouses, especially from the wife addressing the husband. to is perhaps best translated as “and”, and narabi is a noun that means “line” or “row.” aruite is the te-form³ of aruku (歩く), meaning “walk,” and combined with the imperfect (uncompleted) form of the verb iru, meaning “be,” aruite iru means that the subject of the verb is currently walking (or plans to be in a state of “walking” in the future³). Thus, kono michi wo anata to narabi aruite iru is best translated as “[I] walk in line with you on this path” (the “I” is implied).

Line 3: kaze means “wind,” wa is the particle that marks the topic of the sentence, mada means “still,” and hadasamui is an adjective that can be translated as “chilly” or “unpleasantly cold.” Basically, “the wind is still unpleasantly cold/chilly.”

Line 4: kedo is best translated as “but” or “however,” nanka is an expression that might be translated as “something like,” and shiawase means “happiness.” I should note that here, shiawase is written in katakana, which gives the word some special emphasis, since it would normally be written using a combination of kanji (漢字, literally “Chinese character”) and hiragana (平仮名, one of the Japanese syllabaries). Hence, interpreting this with the previous line, we get something like “the wind is cold, but somehow [we have] happiness.”

Thus, we have our translation of the first stanza:

The sakura blossoms flutter; I walk in line with you on this path. The wind is still cold, but somehow we have happiness.

¹ Japanese, like Korean, is an agglutinative language, which means that most words are formed by joining morphemes together, and thus it is not always clear where words begin and end; by some metrics, most sentences are composed of only a few words, but these sentences can also be said to contain a multitude of morphemes that can be broken apart, analyzed separately, and combined in other ways to create other meanings. Thus, in some places I have broken the morphemes apart as much as I can in order to explain them separately in the future, while in other places I have left the words alone and will explain the entire word in a giant chunk because it’s not necessarily useful to understand the parts of the word out of context.

² Michi (道) is not to be confused with machi (町/街). The kanji for michi refers to a path, a way (think “The Dao”, as in Daoism — or “The Tao”, as in Taoism, depending on your romanization system), while the first possible (and preferred) kanji for machi refers to a raised path between fields and the second possible kanji for machi refers to a street. In Japanese usage, however, while machi can also be used to refer to a street, it is more commonly used to indicate a town.

³ The te-form of a verb is sometimes called the gerund form, even though this is not entirely accurate. For now, let’s just say that one usage is to follow the te-form with another verb to indicate that the second verb follows the first (kind of — tabete kuru, the te-form of taberu (”eat”) combined with kuru (imperfect form of “come”), is roughly translated as “I will eat and come,” where the act of “eating” occurs before or during the act of “coming” but is definitely finished before one’s arrival at the intended destination). When the te-form is followed by iru, the imperfect form of “be”/”exist” (for animate objects only), it is intended that the subject is currently performing the first verb (e.g. tabete iru can be thought of as “currently in the act of eating”); it is also possible for the intended meaning to be that the subject is planning to be in the state of performing the first verb in the future — the imperfect tense is not always terribly specific, and context is often helpful in determining meaning.

F.I.R. – “天天夜夜” (Every Day, Every Night) Translation

Again, for the translated section: implied words appear in [square brackets], while alternate interpretations or more poetical versions of the preceding word/phrase appear in [(both square brackets and parentheses)].

当你的泪在微笑中滑落
回忆的风 吹着我走 我却情愿停留
等一颗心到时间的尽头
呼吸也会痛 可是我记得 你给我的梦

每一天在你的怀里等待
每一夜我感觉你的存在
走过伤害 我回头看 是永远都灿烂的爱
这一次我决定勇敢去爱
这一次我陪你看到未来
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

当世界都遗忘我的时候
你的一切 对我来说 紧握才能拥有
我明白一份真爱的背后
藏着苦和忧 心痛的时候 更深刻感受

每一天在你的怀里等待
每一夜我感觉你的存在
走过伤害 我回头看 是永远都灿烂的爱
这一次我决定勇敢去爱
这一次我陪你看到未来
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

每一天在你的怀里等待
每一夜我感觉你的存在
走过伤害 我回头看 是永远都灿烂的爱
这一次我决定勇敢去爱
这一次我陪你看到未来
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

是永远都灿烂的爱
这一次我决定勇敢去爱
这一次我陪你看到未来
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

When your tears fall in the middle of [your] smile
The wind of memories, blow against me to walk,  though I would rather stop
Waiting for a piece of heart [(one person(?))] until the end of time
Breathing will also hurt, but I remember the dream you gave me

Every day [I] wait in your embrace
Every night I feel your existence
Passing by pain, I turn my head and look, [it] is love that will glitter brilliantly for eternity
This time I decided to love courageously
This time I [will] accompany you until the future is seen
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

At the time when the whole world has forgotten me
Your everything, is, to me, [something that I] can only have if [I] tightly hold on to [it]
After I’ve understood a part of real love
Hiding bitterness and anxiety/sorrow, when my heart aches, [I] feel even more deeply

Every day [I] wait in your embrace
Every night I feel your existence
Passing by pain, I turn my head and look, [it] is love that will glitter brilliantly for eternity
This time I decided to love courageously
This time I [will] accompany you until the future is seen
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

Every day [I] wait in your embrace
Every night I feel your existence
Passing by pain, I turn my head and look, [it] is love that will glitter brilliantly for eternity
This time I decided to love courageously
This time I [will] accompany you until the future is seen
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you

[It] is love that will glitter brilliantly for eternity
This time I decided to love courageously
This time I [will] accompany you until the future is seen
So how do I live
How do I live
How do I live without you