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Conversation Translation/Explanation

Rei Yahya

ぺらぺらになりたい生徒
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This is a very quick snippet from Doubutsu no Mori: Machi e Ikou Yo, the video game for Wii. The conversation opens with a friendly neighbor talking to you when you enter their home.

あら、シルビア
よく 来てくれたんわね、かいどう

Rough, slightly educated translation:
Oh, Shirubia
You've been coming by often, ????

Breaking it down piece by piece how I understand it, and what I don't understand:
あら - A feminine sort of 'oh!'
シルビア - A name.
よく- Often
来てくれた - To come I understand, but 'kureta' is something I see a lot and I don't understand the precise meaning of it and its uses.
わね - 'wa ne'. The wa is a feminine ending particle to soften things, as well as the ne.
かいどう - I don't understand the meaning.

If anyone could clear up what I have missing, that would be wonderful.
 
Are there any typos except くれたんわね, or the sentence following かいどう?


よく means something like "kindly", "well" in this case.

3 〔相手の行為がうれしいことを表して〕

よくおいでくださいました
How kind of you to come!
Click to expand...
「よく」の検索結果 - Yahoo!辞書

～てくれる: to give me a favor of doing
Thus, 来てくれた literally means "you've given me the favor of coming".
 
答えをどうもありがとう。
No, the text itself is 'kite kuretan wa ne'. Either the game made a typo or it is colloquial. I can grab a screenshot of it soon and post it here.

Also, I remember that in this game, you give your neighbors set phrases which they will repeat by habit. かいどう is the word that the player chose for the neighbor to repeat, so it means nothing to the conversation.
 
Yeah, the ん is no typo It is a short form of の and is part of the grammatical ending んだ/のだ. Here the だ is just replaced by わね to match the purpose of the sentence.
The んだ/のだ is used (in this case) to add an explainatory sound to the sentence or when stating something. Furthermore it's only used in informal speech and as you say yourself, it's colloquial.
Don't think too much about it. You wouldn't translate it and there are no rules as to when to or not to use it. The added meaning is very vague. Hope this helps
 
No. The explanatory ん can't be directly connected to the sentence final particle わ or わね. The copula だ/です is ALWAYS needed. Plus, よく and わね can't be used with it since semantically odd. Thus, if the ん is actually used, the form should be 来てくれたんです/だね or 来てくれたんだわ. Although the meaning is changed from the original よく来てくれたわね "welcome" in that case.
 
Last edited:
Aha! Interesting Thank you for clarifying that. My mistake.
 

It's possible because it's a video game, that the talking will not follow grammatical rules because of the personality/strangeness of the character. For example, there are many 'dialects' of english that people sometimes talk in like 'ye olde english' or 'redneck english' that are in no way, shape, or form 'proper', they're just looked at as an odd but acceptable way of speaking depending on context.

Or I'm absolutely wrong and it's a complete typo on the game's part, but I can't see that really.
 
Another example would be this - if someone could tell me if I have this right, that would be super:

遊びに来て くれたんだね!
"you've kindly come back to play!"?
 
That's exactly the explanatory ん we were talking about here.
 
Toritoribe said:
That's exactly the explanatory ん we were talking about here.
Click to expand...

It's sometimes difficult to discern why they bother with an 'explanatory' tone in some sentences. I guess with more practice and the like it will get easier to discern?
 
Noun-related particles - Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide

As in Tae Kim's explanation I linked above, 遊びに来てくれた is just a simple description, whereas 遊びに来てくれたんだ（ね） has an explanatory tone of "(the speaker interprets) why you are here", i.e., "you are here to give me the favor of your coming".
 
Here is another example text. Toritoribe, if you could answer this that would be great. The context is that you are the town's new mayor and you are introducing yourself to someone who replies:

みんなで 楽しい村に
していきましょうね！

Now, I understand that ~te + iku implies 'will be', that things are going that way. このリンゴが食べていきます。these apples will be eaten (正しい？) I am not sure what the effect of ikimashou is on the ~te form verb. My only guess to the translation of this would be 'we will/let's make a fun town for/because of everyone!'
 
このリンゴが食べていきます。
This apple will keep eating something. (Killer Apple!!! )
が indicates the subject, and 食べて is not the passive.


～ていきましょう is just "～ていく + ～ましょう".
みんなで literally means "by everyone/we all/together".

みんなで楽しい村にしていきましょうね！
Let's keep going to make this/our village pleasant/happy together!
 

Ahh, I meant 'o', not ga, I don't understand why I keep making these gaffs. But thank you!!

So, tabete + iku would never happen because it's not passive? What would be said in its place? I have a funny feeling in my gut that memorization of which verbs are passive or not is involved.
 
No, I wrote "passive" just because what you wanted to say is "these apples will be eaten".

このリンゴを食べていきます means "I'll keep on eating this apple/these apples".
 
Toritoribe said:
No, I wrote "passive" just because what you wanted to say is "these apples will be eaten".

このリンゴを食べていきます means "I'll keep on eating this apple/these apples".
Click to expand...


Ahh, it's more clear now. Thank you very much!
 
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