(untitled)

[lnhammer]

Suzumushi mo
kokoro mo kimi de
nakareta na

—18 October 2009

Unpoetic, probably unidiomatic, and no doubt ungrammatical, but yes, a haiku I wrote in Japanese. Assuming I knew what I was doing, a rough translation would be something like "Like the bell cricket / (my) heart too because of you / could chirp/sing/cry" -- "my" being unstated but I think would be understood. The intended meaning is chirp/sing, but without kanji, it could also be read as cry as in weep.

Corrections appreciated.

ETA verb fix.

---L.

Comments

[lnhammer]

I need my grammar books to follow parts of that, but for "nakaretta" -- I was trying to construct the plain past tense of "nakaresu", the passive form (being used as a potential) of "naku". Did I mess that one up?

---L.

[ex_asakiyume313]

I'm not good on what all these forms are called, but:

naku: to cry/call (I call)
nakareru: to be cried/called "nakareru namida" (the tears [I] cried; the cried tears)
nakasu: to make cry, causatively "nakashita" (I made [him] cry)
nakasareru: to be made to cry "nakasareta" (I was made to cry)

I think you maybe want the last one? The crickets and your heart are made to cry? Because if you just had the passive one, it would be that you and the crickets were the thing that was cried [by something else].... I think.

So I think you'd want "nakasareta." But if you did want the simply passive, then you'd want it just nakareta. Not with the doubling of the consonant. A simply past of naku would be naita. Only some verbs (like "kau" [buy]) do that doubling thing (katta -bought). Naru, "to ring," would do it in simple past: "natta" (rang)--but if you made it "narasu" (make ring), the past would be "narashita," with no doubling.

I am the world's worst explainer because of being rusty. Take what I say with a few teaspoons of salt. I'll get Waka to check and correct any mistakes I've made.

[lnhammer]

Eh, I see where I went wrong: I was conjugating nakareru as a consonant stem ending in -ru instead of a vowel stem. So I was going for nakareta.

According to The Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya section 3.24 (p.134) (as well as other authors), the passive form is also used as a potential -- "is able to cry/chirp". I've no idea how idiomatic this is, though, compared to the koto ga dekiru construction.

---L.

Consider this a comment edit

[lnhammer]

Eh -- meant to make that, "was able to cry/chirp" in the past tense.

Re: Consider this a comment edit

[ex_asakiyume313]

LOL, I was looking around for the edit button up in above, for one of my comments, and then remembered, oh yeah, that's a feature of an LJ paid account... not a Dreamwidth free account...

[ex_asakiyume313]

Oh yes, you're right--that's another thing it can mean. And it's very idiomatic--I think it's easily as common as koto ga dekiru.