Flying Witch, Ep. 1a, scene 10

Flying Witch

Episode 1a 1b

Scene 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Makoto meets Nao

dialog


parsed 日本語

そう そう
ゆっくり 足 下ろし
どう し? まよった 
いいえ、上から 見え ので おり きました


literal

that is it, that is it
unhurriedly foot lower down do!
how did? it-is lost ?
no, above from saw because got-off came


English

that’s right
lower your feet slowly
what happened? Did you get lost?
nah, we saw you from above so we got down



にいちゃん、見
空 とんだ、空
見て 見て
びっくり し だろう
すご すご すご すご
まこ ねえ すご すぎ
おちつ おちつ
すご すご すご すご


big brother, saw?
sky flew! sky
saw, saw
amazed was, right?
awesome awesome awesome awesome
makone amazing beyond
calm down calm down
awesome awesome ! awesome awesome


Kei, did you see me?
I flew in the sky! in the sky!
I saw it, I saw it
I was so surprised!
awesome awesome awesome awesome
Makone was more than awesome
calm down, calm down
awesome awesome! awesome awesome



けいくん、こっちらかた
(ここさかや)むすめ…
石わたり なお
中学の ときどうきゅう生
ともだち で?
そう そう


Kei, that way’s lady ?
here ‘s liquor-store’s daughter…
Ishiwatari Nao
(junior-high season)’s classmate
your-friend is ?
that it is, that it is


Kei, who’s this girl?
She is the daughter at this liquor store…
Nao Ishiwatari
We went to the same junior high
Is she your friend?
uh-hum



ええと、はじめました
このたび こちらほう まじょ やらせ いただ
こはた まこと で


err… glad to meet you
this-time this’s side by-means-of witch’s to-allow go
Kowata Makoto is


err… glad to meet you
I just arrived to this area as a witch
I’m Makoto Kowata



ときに ごめいわく かけ かも しれません
よろしく おねがい します


ocassion in trouble spend possibly discovered ?
I am in your care


at times I might cause troubles
let’s get along



ああ、とんだ とんだ
ああ、すご、まこ ねえ すご
すご すぎ すご すぎ


ah, flew, flew
ah, awesome makone awesome
beyond awesome, beyond awesome


ah, I flew, I flew
ah, awesome Makone awesome
more than awesome, more than awesome


 

vocabulary

To listen to a word in Japanese, highlight it and press the speaker icon.


へや
ちゃんと
にもつ
とどく
おおく
いやいや

ひる
めし
じゅんび
いちばん
らく
たら

つかれる
けっこう
たいりょく

かいもの
いっしょ
ほんとう
でぶしょう
ふとい
ちゃいます


room
perfectly; punctually; in good condition
luggage; baggage; package
to be delivered; to arrive
many; much; plenty; a lot
(exp) not at all!

noon
meal
preparation; arrangements; getting ready
best; most
comfort; ease; relief; (at) peace; relaxation
indicates supposition; if … then; when; after

to get tired
pretty, as in ‘pretty far/soon/heavy’, etc.
stamina; endurance; physical strength; resilience

shopping
together
true
stay-at-home; homebody
fat
(exp) isn’t is? wasn’t it?


new expressions



How do you do?; I am glad to meet you
this occasion; at this time; now

sometimes; occasionally; on occasion


P&T notes – assigning sets

Besides the role of の as the casual question marker, we usually learn の as the possessive marker. This is an oversimplification because often ‘s is not a possessive, e.g., “it’s” and “she’s” are contractions of “it is” and “she is”; and often a possessive doesn’t have a marker, e.g., we say “Google webpage button” instead of “Google’s webpage’s button” and, very often, の is not representing a possessive but a more general set membership, as in half of the exaples below. Considering that “usually” we can translate の to English as either ‘s and “of”, we have:


lit. Japanese
ジョン
ジョン電車

メアリーいえ
メアリー学校

日本
日本

SONYスタジオ
SONY田中さん


lit. English – 1st form
John‘s car
John‘s train

Mary‘s house
Mary‘s school

Japan‘s island
Japan‘s car

SONY‘s studio
SONY‘s Mr. Tanaka


lit. English – 2nd form
car of John
train of John

house of Mary
school of Mary

island of Japan
car of Japan

studio of SONY
Mr. Tanaka of SONY

final English
John’s car
John’s train

Mary’s house
Mary’s school

Japanese island
Japanese car

studio of SONY
Mr. Tanaka from SONY


We can translate the Japanese 「<noun A><noun B>」 into either “<noun A>‘s<noun B>” or “<noun B> of <noun A>” in English. For example, in the pairs of sentences above, the first one is a possessive, e.g., John owns a car, Mary owns a house, Japan owns an island, and SONY owns a studio; while the second one is not, e.g., John doesn’t own a train but uses one to go to work, Mary doesn’t own a school but attends one, Japan doesn’t own a car but it’s its location of manufacturing, and SONY does not own Mr. Tanaka but employees him. As for the actual possessives, sometimes the final English translation approximates better the ‘s version (e.g., John’s car, Mary’s house) while some other times, it approximates better the ‘of’ version (studio of SONY), and sometimes neither (Japanese island).

However, our point is that whether の indicates a possessive or not, の always indicates a set membership, i.e., AのB always means that B is from a set of A. The possessive case is simply when the set is that of “belongings’. For example, let’s rephrase the above sentences using this premise:


lit. Japanese
ジョン
ジョン電車

メアリーいえ
メアリー学校

日本
日本

SONYスタジオ
SONY田中さん


lit. English – set form
car from the set of John (belongings)
train from the set of John (means of transportation)

house from the set of Mary (belongings)
school from the set of Mary (places she attends)

island from the set of Japan (belongings)
car from the set of Japan (manufactures)

studio from the set of SONY (belongings)
Tanaka from the set of SONY (employees)


final English
John’s car
John’s train

Mary’s house
Mary’s school

Japanese island
Japanese car

studio of SONY
Tanaka from SONY


In all cases above, possessive or not, の indicates membership on a set. The set should be obvious from context. For example, if our assumption is that John owns a car, then “John’s car” says that the car is in the set of John’s belongings; if our assumption is that John doesn’t own a train, then “John’s train” says that the train is in the set of John’s forms of transportation. This approach to describe の makes it very easy to explain that when Mr. Tanaka introduces himself as 「SONYの田中」です, he is not saying that he belongs to SONY (as a possessive), but that he is in the set of SONY’s employees (as a set membership).

Ambiguities

All language is ambiguous if the context permits it. For example, what would we mean by “Jeff’s newspaper”? We probably mean the newsaper that Jeff bought, but if this “Jeff” happens to be Jeff Bezos then, depending on the context, we might mean The Washington Post entire organization, which Jeff Bezos owns; there is no way to tell them appart other than context, because both are “the newspaper from the set of Jeff (?)”, but out of context we don’t know whether the set “(?)” is “(belongings)” or “(company aquisitions)”.

There are some compund words that contain の; for example, when we treat 男の子 as a compund word, it means “child from the set of males”, or “boy”, but if we treat is as a possessive, it means “child from the set of the male (belongings)”, or “the male’s child”. Thus, まことは男の子だ might mean “Makoto is a boy” (we are designating Makoto’s gender), or it might mean “Makoto is the man’s child” (we are designating Makoto’s parent); “Makoto” is a name that applies to both genders, like “Chris” in English, so in this last case we wouldn’t know Makoto’s gender.

Compound words that contain の also follow the interpretation of の as a member of a set, e.g.,


日本語
男の子 [おとこのこ]
男の人 [おとこのひと]
女の子 [おんなのこ]
女の人 [おんなのひと]
日の出 [ひので]


literal English
child from the male set
person from the male set
child from the female set
person from the female set
coming-out from the sun set


English
boy
man
girl
woman
sunrise


Thus, compound words that we contain の can often lead to multiple interpretations, and we need to use contex to disambiguate them.

の units

Normaly a particle forms an unbreakable unit with the phrase that precedes it, like in “(to Japan)” or “(日本)”; however, の is special because it forms an unbreakabe unit with both the phrase that precedes it and the one that follows it, e.g., “(まりこ車)” is a single unit.

(おにいちゃん の おんな)?
As an example, when Chinatsu meets Makoto, she asks her whether she is Kei’s girlfriend:


日本語
(おにいちゃん女)?


literal English
(big-brother ‘s woman)?


English
(Kei ‘s girlfriend)?


However, sometimes we use the possessive ‘s by attaching it only to the owner. For example, “Mariko’s car” and “Mariko’s” are the same thing if we know, from context, that we are taking about cars, e.g., “Mariko’s” is short for “Mariko’s {one}” where “{one}” is implicit and we don’t need to write it down explicitly because we can infer it from context, i.e., “{one}” is “{car}”.

In Japanese, “Mariko’s” would be 「まりこ」. In this case, same as in English, の explicitly forms a unit only with the phrase that names the owner. In reality, we are still forming a unit with both phrases, with one of the item being explicit and the other implicit, e.g., “Mariko’s {one}”, which is the same as “Mariko’s {car}” or 「まりこ{車}」.

Here are a couple examples:


日本語
(ほうこう おんち)の {?}?
(とうきょうのとこ)の {?}


literal English
(no sense of direction)’s one?
(the location of Tokyo)’ one


Implicit English
the one with no sense of direction?
the one located in Tokyo…


(ほうこう おんち)の
(とうきょうのとこ)の

In the first case, the implicit set “{one}” has to be something like “child”, “person”, or “girl”, because they are talking about peaople, while in the second case, the implicit set “{one}” is “city” because Yokohama is a city:


日本語
(ほうこう おんち) の {子, 人, 女の人}?


literal English
(no sense of direction)’s {child/person/girl}?


Explicit English
the [child/person/girl] with no sense of direction?




(とうきょうのとこ) の {町}


(the location of Tokyo)’ {city}


the city located in Tokyo…


The discussion in the last line is that Yokohama is certainly not “located in” Tokyo, but is barely 20 miles away, and the space between them is urbanized. Tokyo is so large that people tend to think of Yokohama as “in” of Tokyo; however, the population of Yokohama is 4M vs. 40M of Tokyo. In essence, in spite of Tokyo having 10 times the population of Yokohama, Yokohama is a huge city in its own right; actually, it’s the largest city in Japan after Tokyo; the only U.S. city with more people than Yokohama is New York, with 8M. Hence, simply bundling a city of the size of Yokohama as being “in” Tokyo is not “exactly” correct; just like Makoto replied to Chinatsu: “close, but no cigar”.

more about belonging to a set

The possessive nature of の comes from a more general case. A better way to think of まりこ車 is as “the car from the set of Mariko’s belongings”. This form also covers the end-of-phrase possession because “まりこ” becomes “the one from the set of Mariko’s belongings”. This also explains why we can say “赤い” to mean “the red one” (or “the one from the set of red things”) or “日本” to mean “the Japanese one” (or “the one from the set of things made in Japan”). Neither of the last two examples use の to indicate possession, because neither “red” nor “Japan” own the items in question; instead, we are saying that the items are from those particular sets, with no possession implied.

Since the “possessive の” is a subset of the “from-the-set の”, then we can generalize the possessive situations described above: の forming a unit with both the set and the item, like in 日本車 (a car from the set of things manufactured in Japan); and の forming a unit with only the set that it belongs to, like in 日本 (the one from the set of things manufactured in Japan).

むかしのはなし = old story

As an example, Makoto tells Kei that her getting lost all the time is an old story not worth mentioning:


日本語
そんな むかしはなしを しないで くださいよ


literal English
that-sort story from-the-old-set do-for-me(don’t-do), please!


English
please, don’t bring up that sort of old stories!


Clearly の is not marking a possessive because むかし (old, ancient) is an adjective, not a noun, so it can’t possess anything; however, むかし is the set of old things so, for example,


日本語
むかしはなし
むかしとき
むかしどうぐ
むかしくらし


literal English
a story from the old set
a time from the old set
tools from the old set
the way of life from the old set


English
an old story
the old times
old tools
the old way of life


chaining

A series of “from a set” relationships create large units. For example, “My friend Tanaka san who is an engineer at SONY” would be “SONY’s engineer’s I’s friend’s Tanaka san” or SONYエンジニアわたしともだち田中さん. Let’s see… this is “Mr. Tanaka, from the set of people that are friends, from the set of items that are mine, from the set of people that are engineers, from the set of people that are employed SONY”.

These long chains are confusing to the Japanese in the same way that a sentence like ‘the puppy of the dog of the sister of the mother of the friend of my teacher’ is grammatically correct but still is confusing to us, so we won’t find them very often.

Ishiwarari Nao

As an example, Kei introduces Nao to Makoto as the daughter of the family that owns the liquor store they are standing in front of. The anime simplifies the introduction to a chain of two s from the original manga intro, on the right, that has a chain of three s:


Japanese

Japanese units

set membership

 
English


ここさかやむすめ石わたりなお

((ここさかや)むすめ)石わたりなお

Ishiwatari Nao from the set of (daughters from (the set of liquor stores from (the set of things at this location))

the daughter of this store


The White house pet

Of course, the sentence is not exactly correct as liquor stores cannot have daughters, but it is understood that Kei is refering to the family that owns the store; this is similar to saying that “Socks, the cat”, was the White house pet during the Clinton administration, e.g., it is clear that we are actually saying that Socks was the pet of the family that lived in The White House, instead of the pet of The White House itself.