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Lesson 12: The と Quotation Particle

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Today we're going to continue with the narrative lessons that we started last week.

And this time I think we're going to be able to proceed a little faster.

So let's refresh our minds on the story we've read so far.

"Aru hi Arisu-wa kawa-no soba-ni ita."

(One day Alice was by the river.)

"Oneechan-wa tsumaranai hon-wo yonde ite asonde kurenakatta."

(Big sister was reading a boring book and did not play with Alice.)

"「Omoshiroi koto-ga nai」-to Arisu-wa itta."

"Omoshiroi" means "interesting or amusing"; "koto" means "a thing".

And in Japanese we have two common words for"thing , and they are "mono" and "koto".

Now, a "mono" is a thing in the most usual sense: a physical thing – a hat, a book, a pair of glasses, Mount Fuji.

"Koto" is a more abstract kind of "thing": an affair, a matter, a circumstance.

So, when we say, "Is there any thing in that box?" we mean "mono".

And when we say, "The thing is..." we usually mean "koto".

So, "omoshiroi koto-ga nai" means "There's nothing interesting going on here, no interesting circumstance."

"Itta" : "iu" means "say" and you can see it's like a mouth with soundwaves coming out of it.

But the important thing to notice here is that little particle "to".

There are actually two "to" particles: one means "and" and it's very simple; the other one is what we call the "quotation particle", and that's what we're dealing with here.

When we quote someone as saying something or even as thinking something, we use this particle -to.

It's kind of like a quotation mark that you can hear.

As you see, we use the square quotation marks in Japanese, which are the equivalent to English quotation marks, but we also use the -to.

So we don't just say, " 'Nothing interesting is happening,' Alice said".

We say, " 'Nothing interesting is happening,' -to Alice said".

Now, -to is a very interesting particle structurally and we're going to look into that a little more deeply in a few minutes.

"Sono toki, shiroi usagi-ga toori sugita."

"Sono toki": "Sono" means "that" and "toki" means "time", so we're literally saying "that time".

But this is a bit more like saying "just then / at that moment / at that time".

So we use just the way we use other relative time expressions: we don't need to put -ni or anything else with it, we just state the time and then continue with what was happening at that time.

In this particular sentence, the point of "sono toki" is that just at that moment when Alice had been saying that there was nothing interesting happening, just at that time, this happened.

"Sono toki, shiroi usagi-ga toori sugita."

"Shiroi" means "white"; it's an i-adjective.

"Usagi" means "rabbit".

And "toori sugiru" is made up of two words, and it's doing something that we're going to see over and over and over again in Japanese.

It's using the i-stem of one verb to attach another verb to give it extra meaning.

So, "tooru" means to "pass through" and "sugiru" means to "exceed or go beyond". So "toori sugiru" connects those two words together: "tooru" (pass through); "sugiru" (go beyond) and it means "passing by".

A white rabbit passed by.

"Sono toki, shiroi usagi (white rabbit) toori sugita (passed by)."

"Futsuu-no usagi-de-wa nakute..."

Now, "futsuu" means "ordinary", and the rest of this you already know.

"De-wa nai" means "it isn't / it wasn't" and we're putting into the te-form because this is part of a complex sentence – and we looked at complex sentences last week, didn't we?

So, "futsuu-no usagi de-wa nakute" – "It was not an ordinary rabbit."

"...chokki-wo kite iru usagi datta."

"Chokki" means a vest; "kiru" means "wear", so "kite iru" means to "be wearing /be in the act of wearing".

And "datta", of course, is the past tense of the copula.

So this is: "It was not an ordinary rabbit, it was a wearing-a-vest rabbit /it was a rabbit that was wearing a vest."

"Usagi-wa kaichuudokei-wo mite..."

"Kaichuudokei" is not a word we're going to encounter all that often because there aren't many of them around these days, but it is an example of something we're going to see an awful lot, which is that in Japanese, as you know, we can modify one noun with another by marking the first one with -no (or -na, which is a form of da) but we can also, when we're not just modifying one noun with another but forming a new noun, we can simply ram them together.

We don't have to modify them in any way, the way we do with verbs – we turn them into the i-stem, but you can't do that with nouns, nouns don't have any stems, they don't modify in any way – so, when you're putting two nouns together to make a new noun, you simply push them into each other.

This is the same as what we do in English, with words like seaweed or bookshelf.

We just push two nouns together to make a new noun.

So the parts of this noun, "kaichuudokei": "kaichuu" is a slightly unusual noun – it means "in one's pocket or the inside of one's pocket" and "tokei" is a very common word – it means "clock or watch" (we have the same word for a clock in Japanese whether it's a small one or a big one), so "kaichuudokei" is a pocket watch.

And the reason we say "-dokei" instead of "-tokei" is what Alice in "Alice in Kanji Land" calls "ten-ten hooking", and this is that when you push two nouns together, in the way that we are doing here, and the second one begins with a sharp sound like "t" or "k", we turn it into its equivalent dull sound like "d" or "b".

And of course in Japanese you do this by adding those two small marks to the kana, so "to" becomes "do", "ta" becomes "da", "ku" becomes "gu", "sa" becomes "za" etc.

So, for example, "ao" is blue, as you know, "sora" is "sky" and when you put them together you get not "aosora" but "aozora".

We put the ten-ten onto that sharp word, and Alice calls that "ten-ten hooking".

It's as if those two little points, those two little claws, hook into the word before it to turn them into a single word.

It's a thing you're going to see very often.

And just as in English you can't do this with any two nouns, but there are a lot of nouns that are made up of two nouns and so long as one of the nouns isn't a slightly unusual one like "kaichuu", they're very easy to understand, just as they are in English.

And then we have "...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte".

Now, we're going to look at what this -to actually does, and as we get into more complex sentences, three-level compound sentences like this one, we start to see how useful it becomes.

What -to actually does structurally is that it takes whatever it marks – and that could be two words like this or it could be a whole paragraph with all kinds of other grammar going on in it – it takes whatever it marks as a quotation and turns it effectively into a single noun.

So a to-carriage is a white noun-carriage marked with -to.

And we're going to find as we go on that this is used not only to mark things people say and things people think, but all kinds of other things.

And we'll have an example of that a little later in this lesson.

But this to-structure is essentially making a quasi-noun out of whatever is marked with -to, and the -to then makes it function as a modifier to the verb that follows.

When it's a simple quotation like that, the verb is going to be "iu" (to say), but it could also be "kangaeru" (to think) or "omou" (to think or feel), but it can be many other things too, as you're going to see in a moment.

So this is the structure of a to-marked statement of any kind.

"...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte, hashiri dashita."

"Osoi" means "late".

And in order to make it a sentence, obviously we have to have a zero-pronoun here.

So the rabbit is either saying "It's late!" or "I'm late!"

In the Disney version, of course, it was "I'm late!"

"Osoi! osoi!"

– "I'm late! I'm late!"

We don't need to say -to with usagi-wa itte this time because we've got usagi-wa at the beginning of the sentence and this is a compound sentence.

So the second part of the compound sentence has the same main carriage, the same subject as the first half.

"...「osoi! osoi!」-to itte" – "The rabbit said, 'I'm late! I'm late!'

"And that Itte" is another compound-itte, so this time we have a three-deep compound sentence.

The rabbit looked at his watch, he said "Osoi! osoi!", and then... he did something else: "hashiri dashita".

"Hashiru" means "run" and "dasu" literally means to "take out", but this is a combination we're going to see very often in Japanese.

Once again, we're using that i-stem , which is the main connecting stem, to connect "hashiri" to "dasu".

And what does it mean here?

Well, that "dasu" when it's connected to a verb means that the action of the verb "erupted".

So we can say that someone "naki dashita": "naku" is "cry", and we connect the i-stem of "naku'" to "dasu", and "naki dasu" means "burst out crying".

We can say "warai dasu": "warau" is "laugh" and if we connect the i-stem of "warau" to "dasu", we're saying "burst out laughing".

And in this case what happened?

The rabbit suddenly burst out running – it broke into a run.

"Usagi-wa kaichuudokei-wo mite,「osoi! osoi!」-to itte, hashiri dashita."

"The rabbit looked at its pocket watch, it cried 'I'm late! I'm late!' and it broke into running."

"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."

"Chotto matte, kudasai" is a phrase you're going to hear a lot in Japanese.

Sometimes the "kudasai" will get left off.

What does it mean?

"Chotto" means "a little"; "matte" is the te-form of "matsu", which means to "wait"; and "kudasai" means "please".

It's actually connected with "kureru", which we talked about last time; which also refers to giving down – it's "please give down to me / please lower down to my level", so that's a polite way of saying "please give".

But it's not just giving a thing, just as with "kureru" and "ageru", it's not just giving a thing, it can also be, if you connect it to the te-form of a verb, giving the action of that verb.

So you can see it's very related to that "kureru" and "ageru" that we learned last week.

"Chotto matte, kudasai!"

Now, because this is so common, very often when we put a verb into te-form and address it to someone, it's kind of short for "-te kudasai".

"Chotto matte, kudasai!" means "Please wait a little".

So she's asking the rabbit to stop; she wants to meet with the rabbit.

"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."

So we've got that to-particle again, the quotation particle, which we need when we quote anything, and then "yonda".

"Yonda": what does that mean?

Well, we've come across "yonda" before I think, haven't we?

And it means "read", "read" in the past.

That is the ta-form - the da-form in this case - of "yomu".

But in this case it's different.

It's the da-form of "yobu".

If you remember from our te- and ta-form lesson, the New Boom group of verbs, nu-, bu- and mu-ending verbs, all form their te-form with -nde and their ta-form with -nda.

So both "yomu" and "yobu" have the past form "yonda".

Fortunately, we're not very often likely to get reading and calling mixed up, are we?

This "yobu" means to "call", to "shout out".

It can mean "call" in any of the senses that "call" is used in English.

You can call someone a name, you can call an apple a lemon (but you'd be wrong) or you can call out.

"「Chotto matte, kudasai!」-to Arisu-wa yonda."

– " 'Please wait a minute!' called Alice."

"Demo usagi-wa pyon-pyon-to hashiri tsudzuketa."

"Demo" means "but".

"Hashiru" means "run".

And we're going to leave out "pyon-pyon" for just a moment here.

"Tsudzukeru" means to "continue".

So again we've got this form of taking the i-stem of a verb, "hashiru" becomes "hashiri" and then we add onto it the verb "tsudzukeru" (to continue).

So "usagi-wa hashiri tsudzuketa" means "The rabbit continued running".

"Pyon-pyon" is something we're going to find very often in Japanese and that is, a doubled word that is a sound effect.

There are lots and lots of these in Japanese, [e.g.] "shiku-shiku", which is the sound effect for crying.

And some of them will be literal sounds and some of them describe states of various kinds.

So we're going to be meeting a lot of these later.

"Pyon-pyon" is almost a literal sound effect.

It's the sound of a small thing jumping along, and you'll hear this an awful lot.

I do at any rate, but then, a lot of my friends are small things that jump along.

So "pyon-pyon" is the sound, or not quite a sound, it's... if it were an anime you'd probably hear the sound, wouldn't you, pyon-pyon-pyon-pyon-pyon – but in this case it's not necessarily a sound you hear, but it's the feeling, the sound-like feeling of a small thing, a small animal, jumping, jumping, little jumps.

So, because it's a rabbit, it didn't run the way you run, it runs in a little jumping, bouncing fashion the way rabbits do.

And the thing to note here is that we say "pyon-pyon-to".

So once again we're using that quotation particle.

In this case we're using it to show how the rabbit ran, and because this is kind of technically a sound effect, we're "quoting" the sound the rabbit made in order to tell the manner in which the rabbit ran.

It ran in a little-jumps kind of manner.

All right.

So next week we'll find out what happened.

What do you think Alice might have done?

No looking ahead!

So, as you see, we're getting better, aren't we?

It took us an awful long time to get through two sentences last week.

This week we got through a lot more a lot more quickly, and I think we've learned a lot again.