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Lesson 14: Adverbs

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Today we're going to go back to Alice's adventures.

If you remember, Alice had spotted a white rabbit running along.

The white rabbit looked at his watch and said, "I'm late! I'm late!" and ran off.

Alice called to him to stop but, whether he heard or not, he didn't stop.

"Arisu-wa tobi agatte, usagi-no ato-wo otta."

"Tobi agaru" is another one of those words of the kind we looked at last week, where a verb is joined to the i-stem of another verb to create a new verb.

The first verb here is "tobu", which means either "jump" or "fly".

In this case, it obviously means "jump", since Alice can't fly.

And "agaru" means "rise up".

So when you put them together, "tobi agaru" means "jump up".

And we might notice that "agaru" here, it's the same kanji as "ue", which means "up", and "agaru" is a verb meaning "rise up", and we can see that it's related to "ageru", which we looked at recently, and that means to "give to someone upwards / (to) raise up toward someone else".

But "agaru" means for something to "raise itself up / rise up in itself".

So we can see that the two are related.

They're both "upping" verbs.

"Usagi-no ato-wo otta."

"Ato" means "behind" or "after", and "ou" (which is spelled おう) means "follow ".

"Ato-wo ou" is a common expression and it means to "follow after / follow behind".

But, as we've seen before, these positional expressions are always nouns in Japanese.

We talk about the "on" of the table, the "under" of the table, the "beside" of the river.

And here we're talking about the "behind" or the "after" of the rabbit.

So Alice followed the "rabbit's after" or the "rabbit's behind".

This is how we put it in Japanese.

"Arisu-wa tobi agatte, usagi-no ato-wo otta." –

"Alice jumped up and followed after the rabbit."

"Shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai."

"Shaberu" means "talk" or "chatter".

It's a bit like "jabber" in English, isn't it?

"Shaberu usagi" – in this case obviously "shaberu", the verb, is being used, as any verb-engine can be used, as an adjective.

So "shaberu usagi" is a "talking rabbit" or a "talk-rabbit" literally.

"Mita koto-ga nai" is a usage we're going to find very often: "koto-ga nai", "koto-ga aru".

What does it mean?

Well, "koto", as we know, means a "thing" and it means a thing in an abstract sense, a condition, not a concrete thing like a pen or a book.

So, "mita koto": "mita" is modifying the noun "koto", isn't it?

It's telling us what kind of "koto" it is, and in this case "miru" means "see", "mita" is "see" in the past tense, so the "koto" is actually "seeing" in the past tense.

So "mita koto" means "the fact of having seen".

"Mita koto-ga nai" means "the fact of having seen does not exist".

So what this is saying is, "Alice had never seen a talking rabbit".

("The fact of having seen a talking rabbit does not exist")

"Shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai" – "Alice had never seen a talking rabbit."

And of course in English we always want to make Alice the actor of this sentence, but actually the subject of this sentence, the A-car, is not Alice, it's "koto".

Even if we put Alice into the sentence, we would say, "Arisu-wa shaberu usagi-wo mita koto-ga nai".

She would still not be the actor of the sentence.

She would just be the topic about which the sentence was.

"Speaking of Alice, the fact of having seen a talking rabbit does not exist."

"Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte, kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."

Right, so this is quite a long sentence and there's quite a lot in it to unpack.

I'll tell you what it means to start with.

It means "The rabbit ran quickly and suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole".

So let's look at it bit by bit.

"Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte"

Now, "hashiru", as we know, is "run";

"hayai" is an adjective meaning "fast" or "early".

In this case, it obviously means "fast" – we know the rabbit wasn't early, don't we?

If we want to say "the rabbit is fast", we would say "usagi-ga hayai".

If we want to say that its movement is fast, its action is fast, we need an adverb.

An adverb is an adjective that describes not an object, not a noun, but a verb.

Now, we can turn any adjective into an adverb in Japanese very easily.

All we do is we take the regular i-ending adjective and use its stem -ku.

So "hayai" becomes "hayaku".

"Hayai" is an adjective describing a thing; "hayaku" is an adverb describing an action.

So, "usagi-wa hayaku hashitte" – "The rabbit ran fast".

"Kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."

Now, "usagi-no ana": "ana" means "hole", so "usagi-no ana" means "rabbit-hole".

"Tobi komu" is another one of these compound verbs.

"Tobu", as we know, means "jump", and "komu" means to "go into" something.

It's not just like "enter"; it tends to be to "put into", to "force into", to do an action into something.

So we have a lot of verbs actually which are made up with "komu", which is "doing an action into" something.

So "tobi komu" means "jump into", quite simply "jump into".

So, the rabbit "jumped into a rabbit-hole."

But "kyuu-ni", what does that mean?

Well, "kyuu" is a noun and it means "sudden".

And when we put -ni onto the end of it we turn that into an adverb as well.

So here we have two kinds of adverbs.

We can form an adverb from an adjective by simply using its ku-stem.

And we form an adverb from a noun by adding -ni.

And this works with some regular nouns and pretty much all adjectival nouns.

So, "kyuu" means "sudden" or "abrupt"; "kyuu-ni" means "suddenly".

"The rabbit suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole."

So, the entire sentence: "Usagi-wa hayaku hashitte, kyuu-ni usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda" –

"The rabbit ran fast and suddenly jumped into a rabbit-hole."

"Arisu-mo usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda." –

"Alice also jumped into the rabbit-hole."

Now here we're going to meet a new element that we haven't covered before, and that is the mo-flag.

"Mo" is a flag, just like -wa.

Why is that?

Well, we know that -wa is a non-logical topic-marking particle, don't we?

"Mo" is another non-logical topic-marking particle;

in fact, it's the only other non-logical topic-marking particle.

So -mo marks the topic of the sentence just the way -wa does.

What's the difference between them?

Well, -wa, as we know, declares the topic of the sentence, and obviously it can also change the topic of the sentence.

If we're talking about one thing and we declare a new -wa topic, we have changed the topic of the sentence.

Now, -mo declares the topic of the sentence as well, but it always changes it.

You can't use -mo unless there is a topic already current in the conversation.

So, the topic of our conversation up to this point has been the rabbit: the rabbit jumped into the hole.

And now we're changing the topic to Alice. "Arisu-mo usagi-no ana-ni tobi konda."

When we change the topic with -mo, we are saying that the comment about this topic is the same as the comment on the previous topic, the topic we're changing from.

When we change the topic with -wa, we are doing the opposite of that: we are drawing a distinction between the present topic and the previous topic.

So if we had said, "Arisu-wa oneechan-no tokoro-ni modotta" – "tokoro" is "place" and "modoru" is "return", so this would have meant Alice went back to her sister, to the place where her sister was, to her sister's place.

If we'd said this, that -wa would have been drawing a distinction between what the rabbit did and what Alice did.

We would be saying, "The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole.

As for Alice, she returned to her sister".

And you see that in English too.

This has the implication that what Alice did was different from what the rabbit did.

"The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole. As for Alice, she went back to her sister."

This is what -wa does.

If we'd used -ga: "Arisu-ga oneechan-no tokoro-ni modotta", we'd simply have been saying, "The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole and Alice went back to her sister."

But with -wa, we are drawing that distinction; we are saying, "The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole, but as for Alice, she went back to her sister."

Now, if we say -mo instead of -wa, then we are making the opposite point: we are saying that the comment we made on the rabbit is the same as the comment we're making on Alice.

"The rabbit jumped into the rabbit-hole and Alice also jumped into the rabbit-hole."

So, there are various uses of "mo", which we'll look at later, but this is the most fundamental one.

It's the topic-marking particle that tells us that the comment on the new topic is the same as the comment on the old topic.

"Ana-no naka-wa tateana datta. Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."

"Naka" means "the inside", either the middle or the inside of something, so "ana-no naka" is the inside of the hole.

"Tateana": the word "tate" means "vertical" or "upright" (and you can see it's related to "tatsu" – to stand).

So, "ana-no naka-wa tateana datta" means "the inside of the hole was a vertical hole" – it went straight down.

"Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."

Now, "shita", as we know, is "down" or "below".

"Sugu" means "direct"; it can mean "soon" in the sense of English "It'll happen directly (it'll happen soon)", or it can mean "straight / direct" in the other sense.

So "sugu shita" means "straight down / right down / directly down".

"Arisu-wa sugu shita-ni ochita."

"Demo odoroita koto-ni yukkuri yukkuri ochita."

And this means "But surprisingly she fell very very slowly".

"Odoroku" means "be surprised", and "odoroita koto" is an interesting expression because it literally appears to mean, doesn't it, a "surprised thing".

But as we've seen with Japanese adjectives of emotion and desire, with things that describe emotion and desire, in Japanese they shift very easily from the thing that experiences the emotion to the thing that causes the emotion and back.

So "odoroita koto" here doesn't mean a "surprised thing", it means a "surprising thing".

And -ni ("koto-ni"), is once again that technique of putting a -ni, putting -ni, after a noun to turn it into an adverb.

So, "odoroita koto-ni ochita."

(We'll come to "yukkuri" in just a moment.)

It means "surprisingly fell / she fell in a surprising manner".

And what kind of a surprising manner was this?

"Yukkuri yukkuri".

Now, "yukkuri" is a very common word that we'll encounter.

It's a slightly unusual kind of adverb – the third kind of adverb we're going to encounter commonly in Japanese.

The first two kinds, as we see, are the ku-stem of an adjective or a noun with -ni. "Yukkuri" is slightly unusual in that it is fundamentally a noun which can be applied as an adverb but we don't need to use -ni with it.

It stands on its own.

"Yukkuri yukkuri ochita".

"Yukkuri" means "slowly / leisurely / at a gentle pace".

So, "odoroita koto-ni yukkuri yukkuri ochita" – "But surprisingly she fell very very slowly".

So once again we've gone through the story a little more rapidly than the first time, and I think we've learned quite a lot.