アメリカの人とか... / お茶のお稽古してた / です / あおい

Hi,


1. で、アメリカの人とか上手な人いますけど、子供の時からやってると、なんかね～、その優雅な、例えば、手とか足とかって、なんかちょっとそのね、優雅な感じ。

My guess: "Well, Americans for example are skillful [at ballet], and when they start doing it as children, like, (with) their graceful hands and feet for example, they have a kind of, like, graceful feeling."

Is this reasonable? As well as any major errors in my interpretation, I am particularly unsure if I have correctly understood the little words in red.


2. After the above line, another person says うん, and then the first person continues:

お茶のお稽古してたからか、なんかわからないけど・・ ・。すごいなんかそういうところとか違うなあって思っ て・・・。ああいうのって教えてもなんか習えるもんじ ゃないから・・・。

I do not understand enough of this to attempt a translation. What is she saying?

She seems to say なんか an awful lot...?


3. Next sentence:

鈴木さん、普段からすごい優雅な感じですよね。

I believe this roughly means "Suzuki-san, you've always had an incredibly graceful manner..."

a) Is my translation of 普段から as "always" reasonable? I'm not very sure what から is adding...

b) I know have asked similar questions before, so apologies for any repetition, but I am slightly uneasy about this use of です. It looks to me as if the speaker is literally saying that 鈴木さん is すごい優雅な感じ, which appears to make no sense. Exactly what function is ですperforming in this sentence? I'm sure this seems like a silly question to native speakers...


4. あおいは、苦学生だから、そんな高級なもの、持てない です。

Translation given: "I'm a self-supporting student so I can't have that sort of high class thing."

What is あおい?

1)
Yes, you can ignore those words, but after reading #2 and #3, I feel that the last half of the sentence would refer to 鈴木さん, not "general they" or "skillful Americans".

2)
She seems to be saying that Suzuki took lessons in tea-ceremony therefore she(=Suzuki) looks gracefully, and we can't learn those kind of gracefulness only by having taught in ballet lessons.

Yeah, you can think なんか as "well/you know" in English.

3)
As I wrote in #1, Suzuki refers to the person in the topic, i.e., not "you"?

a)
Yes. That's 普段からレッスンのときまでずっと.

b)
優雅な感じだ means 優雅な感じを持っている, 優雅に見える.

4)
That's the speaker's name. As is often the case among young girls, she is calling herself by her name.

Thank you.

1. Suzuki-san, who is being praised for her dancing ability, and is modestly denying it, previously said 私、子供の時から始めたわけじゃないから、ほんと、そんな上手じゃないの. I thought she was saying here that she isn't really very good because she didn't start (learning ballet) when she was a child. If that's correct then 子供の時からやってる presumably can't be referring to Suzuki-san, but the rest of the stuff about graceful hands and feet etc. could be.

2. a) Does わからない mean "I don't know (whether it's because you studied tea ceremony, but...)"?

b) I failed to parse 違うなあって思って when I first read it. Now it seems to me that it means 違うなあ ("for sure") + って (quoting) + 思っ て, right?

c) Suzuki-san is the ballet class pupil, not the teacher, so in 教えてもなんか習えるもん, is Suzuki-san the subject of 習える, and some other unnamed/abstract person the subject of 教えて?

3. There are three people present: Suzuki-san, another girl who is also taking ballet lessons, and their friend who is asking about the lessons. The line 鈴木さん、普段からすごい優雅な感じですよね is spoken by the third girl. It is not clear to me whether it is addressed to Suzuki-san or to the other one, or to neither in particular.

2) a)
Yes.

b)
違うなあ means そういうところとかが他人と違うなあって思って.


I'm not so sure who the speaker of each line is, i.e., who Suzuki is. I've just known that there are three people there. It would be a tough work for you, but what is the whole conversation, including 私、やっぱり一番できなかったんですけど･･･ and でもね、ジャンプする時とか･･･???

What expression am I thinking of, then, that means "for sure", that is like 違うなあ?

The whole conversation is not massively long, but it is just a bit too much for me to type out in full. 私、やっぱり一番できなかったんですけど･･･ and でもね、ジャンプする時とか･･･ are both said by the second girl – the one who is doing ballet lessons with Suzuki-san. The main point of the conversation is that this girl (as well as the third one) is praising Suzuki-san for her ability, and Suzuki-san is being modest. Don't worry about this point any more... I think I'll put it to rest now.

違わない, maybe?

2)
Then, the speaker(=Suzuki) is saying that she took lessons in tea-ceremony therefore she(=Suzuki) would be able to understand that they(those who start learning ballet since children) are different from her(=Suzuki) and it's impossible/hard to learn thier gracefulness.

3)
Since Suzuki is actually there, this person is no doubt talking to her. Thus, your initial interpritation is correct.

Thanks. I have remembered now, it's 間違いない. Well, two characters are the same!