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Lesson 16: "Try Doing"

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Today we're going back to Alice, and we're going to be using quite a lot of trains this time because I want us to really grasp the structure of these sentences.

So, if you remember from last time, Alice had just entered the rabbit hole and quite surprisingly she finds herself falling very slowly down a vertical hole.

"Ochiru aida-ni hima-ga tappuri atte mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta."

Now, I'm going to tell you what this means first and then we're going to break it down.

"Ochiru aida-ni"

"Ochiru", as we know, is "fall".

"Aida" is a period of time and it's also the space between two things.

And obviously a period of time is always, metaphorically speaking - and we can only really talk about time in spatial metaphors - a period of time is always a space between two points, isn't it?

It has a beginning and it has an end.

So "ochiru aida-ni" means "while she was falling / during the period of time while she was falling".

"Hima" means "free time / open time".

It's a word you'll see quite often, and it can be used in both a positive or a negative sense.

It can mean free time to do what you want to do, or it can mean empty time, being bored, having time hanging on your hands.

Here it just means having plenty of time available to look around, because she's falling, she can't do anything else, and she's falling rather slowly.

"Tappuri" means "in large quantities".

It's another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.

And it means "in large quantities / in plentiful amounts" - rather like pouring from a tap: "tappuri", "in large quantities".

And here it's an adverb describing the fact that the "hima", the "free time", exists.

So the free time exists in large quantities.

So that's our first logical clause: "Ochiru aida-ni..." (which simply sets the scene, the time, for the action - it's an absolute time expression because it's a particular time, so it takes -ni)

"...hima-ga tappuri atta" ("there was a lot of free time").

Now, the next part - "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" - is interesting because this is another example of what we were talking about last week: self-move/other-move pairs.

"Mawaru" means to "go around/move around".

The rather childish name for a policeman is "omawari-san", which means "someone who goes around / someone who does the rounds".

"Mawasu" means "make (something) go around/to send (something) around/to cause it to go around" and of course, as we learned last week, we easily know which of the pair is the self-move word (going around) and which is the other-move word (sending around) because the sending-around one ends in -su.

Now, we don't actually have "mawaru" here; we have "mawari".

And as we've mentioned before, when we take the i-stem of a verb and use it on its own it usually becomes a noun.

There is another use which we're not going to enter into right now, but in this case it is becoming a noun.

So, what does "mawari" mean?

"Mawari" can actually mean two things: it can be the noun-form of "mawaru", in which case it's "going around", "doing the rounds", and that's what we have in "omawari-san", a policeman - here's someone who does the act of doing the rounds, "mawari" is "the act of doing the rounds", but it can also mean "the surroundings", and in this case it actually takes a different kanji to show that it's a slightly different meaning of the word.

It's still the noun-form of "around", but in this case it's the surroundings, not the act of going around.

So, "mawari-wo yukkuri mimawaseta" means "she could in a leisurely manner...

("yukkuri", that adverb we learned last week)

... she could in a leisurely manner 'mimawasu' "

What does "mimawasu" mean?

We know what "mawasu" means - it means to "make (something) go around".

"Mi-mawasu" is attaching "mawasu" to the i-stem of "miru".

We can't actually tell it's the i-stem, because this is an ichidan verb, and all ichidan stems look the same, as we know, but we know that this is in fact the ren'youkei, the i-stem, because that's the one that gets used for attaching verbs to other verbs.

So, "mimawasu" means literally "send your looking around / send your eye-beams around the place / make your looking go around".

So, "mawari-wo mimawasu" is "look around the place / send your eye-beams, send your looking around the place".

And "mimawaseru" is, as we've seen, the potential form of "mimawasu".

So what this is saying is "because a lot of time existed she was able to leisurely send her looking around the surroundings".

"Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite nanimo mienakatta."

"First of all, she tried looking down, but it was too dark so nothing was visible (nothing could be seen)."

"Mazu-wa" means "first of all".

"Mazu" is "from the start / from the beginning".

"Mazu-wa, shita-wo mitemita". Now, "shita-wo miru" is "looking down / looking at the down".

We know that in Japanese "down" is always a noun, don't we?

So you look "at the down" - "shita-wo miru".

But it doesn't say "miru" here; it says "mitemita".

And this is a form of speech that we're going to find a great deal.

When we add "miru" to the te-form of another verb, what we're doing is saying "try doing something"; literally we're saying "do it and see".

So, "tabetemiru" means "eat it and see / have a taste of it".

"Do you like this?"

"I don't know."

"Tabetemite kudasai.

Try it, taste it, eat it and see."

We often say "yattemiru" - "I'll give it a try / I'll try and see what happens".

"Yaru" is a more casual form of "suru", and you can say "shitemiru", especially in more formal circumstances, but more often we say "yatte-miru":

"Give it a try / give it a go / do it and see."

So here we're actually using "miru" with "miru".

"Mite-miru" - "try having a look / take a look / have a look and see".

So, "shita-wo mitemita kedo, kurasugite".

"Kurai" is "dark" and "sugiru", as we've talked about before, means "going by, going beyond".

So in this case "sugiru" means "too much / going in excess of".

In other words, it was too dark.

It was excessively dark; it was too dark.

"Kurasugite nanimo mienakatta".

"Nanimo" means "even as much as (something)" - "nanimo".

And I've done a video on these uses of -mo which you might want to watch.

"Nanimo mienakatta" - now, "miru" is "see"; "mieru" is "be able to see".

And if we look at the trains here, we've got to have a ga-marked subject in this second clause:

"nanimo zero-ga mienakatta".

What is the zero in this case?

If we're looking at it in English terms we might think it's Alice - "Alice couldn't see anything".

But in Japanese it will usually in fact be "nani", which is "a thing / something".

"Nothing was able to be seen, nothing could be seen", because usually with expressions like "mieru/mienai", "kikoeru/kikoenai", "be able to hear" "be able to see" - we apply it not to the person who's able to see, but to the thing that's able to be seen.

And of course we've covered this, haven't we, in our lesson on the potential.

"Sono ato": "ato", as we know, means "after" - we've had it in following after someone, but it also means "after" in the other sense, "after that".

"Sono" means "that"; "sono ato" means "after that".

So again, this is just a time-expression, setting it in time.

And this time it's a relative time-expression, "after that / after a particular thing", so it doesn't need -ni.

"Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" So now she's not looking down.

This means "the surroundings", again, "mawari", of the hole "-wo mite" - "after that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".

"Me-ni tomaru-no-wa gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta."

Right, so this is quite complex.

The first clause is simple enough.

"Sono ato ana-no mawari-wo mite" - "After that, she looked at the surroundings of the hole".

The second clause has quite a lot for us to consider.

"me-ni tomaru-no-wa" means literally "the thing that stopped in her eye".

Now this is a similar expression to, in English, "the thing that caught her eye", isn't it?

Various things passed through her eye, passed through her vision, and the thing that stopped there was what we are going to talk about.

But we also need to look at this use of -no.

As we've seen before, -no is like apostrophe-s ('s) in English.

So if we say "Sakura-no doresu", we're saying, "Sakura's dress".

Now also, just as in English, if you say, "Which dress do you like best?"

Suppose that Sakura and Mary are both wearing dresses and you say, "Which dress do you like best?"

In English you might say, "Sakura's. I like Sakura's best".

You could say, "Sakura's dress" but you don't have to, you can just say, "Sakura's".

And it's the same in Japanese.

You can say, "Sakura-no" - Sakura's, the one that belongs to Sakura.

But this can be taken much further in Japanese, and I've done a whole video about this particular use of -no, which you can look at if you want to go deeper.

But in this case the way it's taken further is "me-ni tomaru-no" - this is "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".

"Which dress do you like best? Sakura's, Sakura's one, Sakura's thing, Sakura's dress."

"Me-ni tomaru-no" - "the thing, the one that stopped in her eye".

So, "ana-no mawari-wo mite me-ni tomaru-no-wa" -"looking at the surroundings of the hole, the thing that stopped in her eye was...'"

And what it was, was "gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".

"Gisshiri" is yet another one of these ri-ending adverbs that don't need -ni.

"Gisshiri" means "tightly packed".

"Naranda" is the past tense of "narabu" which means "lined-up", so "gisshiri naranda" means "tightly lined-up / packed together / lined-up and packed together".

"Gisshiri naranda todana ya hondana datta".

All right. Well, we'll get to the "ya" in just a moment, but "todana ya hondana".

The word for a shelf in Japanese is "tana", and when we add something before it to tell us what kind of a shelf it is, we use that "ten-ten hooking" that we've talked about before.

So the "ta" becomes "da": "Todana" - that "to" means "door", so literally, "todana" is a "door-shelf" and that is the Japanese word for a cupboard.

And it's quite a good word, I think. That's what a cupboard really is, isn't it?

Shelves, with a door.

It's a better way of saying cupboard than the English way which says it's a board on which you put cups, which isn't quite what a cupboard is.

"Hondana" is even easier: it's quite literally a book-shelf, bookshelves.

Now, this "ya" is something we need to cover.

When you want to say "and" - something "and" something else - how do you say it in Japanese?

We know that when you're putting two clauses together, we use the te-form, or sometimes we use other things, like "demo".

In English we use "and" in all cases: we say "bread and butter", "pencil and paper".

We also say "I went into the baker's and bought some bread."

But in Japanese we don't use the same "and" in the two cases.

We already know some of the ways we can "and" two clauses together, but when we're "anding" two things together, there are two ways to do it.

And one is to use the to-particle.

We know that the to-particle is the quotation particle, but it's also the and-particle.

So if you want to say "pen and book", we say "pen to hon".

But we can also use the ya-particle, so we can say "to" or "ya"

when we want to "and" together two or more objects.

What's the difference?

Well, as a matter of fact it's a very useful difference, and one that we could do with in English.

"To" is an exclusive "and".

If I say, "What's in that box?" and you answer "pen to enpitsu" - "pens and pencils" - you are telling me that there are pens and pencils and nothing else in that box.

If you say "pen ya enpitsu", you're saying there are pens and pencils and there might also be something else - and very often you're implying that there is something else because you're avoiding using the exclusive "and".

So what "stopped in her eye" was the fact that cupboards and bookshelves (among other things) were tightly lined around the walls.

"Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."

"Tana-no hitotsu": "hitotsu" means "one";

"kara" is a particle meaning "from".

Now, here she's using "tana" on its own - "shelves" - and because it's not joined to anything, it's "tana" not "dana".

And so she is saying "from one of the shelves" - "tana-no hitotsu-kara", "from one of the shelves" - notice here than "tana-no hitotsu" is really just the same as English "one of the shelves" - "tana-no hitotsu".

"Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."

Now, "toru" means "take", and "orosu" - the kanji, as you can see, is the kanji for "down", and again this is part of a move-pair, self-move/other-move pair, which is why I introduced them early.

Most courses would regard that as an intermediate thing, self-move and other-move, but I think it makes it much easier to recognize what words are doing if you're aware of this.

"Oriru" means "come down / step down" - come down the stairs, come off a bus.

"Orosu" means "bring down".

And once again, we know which is the other-move one - you "bring (something else) down" - that's the one that ends in -su: "orosu".

So "tori orosu" means "take and bring down". "Tana-no hitotsu-kara bin-wo tori oroshita."

"From one of the shelves she took down..."

"bin" usually gets translated as "bottle"; in fact in this case I think it was more of a "jar".

What was in it?

Well, we'll have to wait till next time to find out.