Help with きたけりゃ and a sentence translation in general?

[KristiW]

I'm pretty new to Japanese, and I'm working my way through a children's book, もり の なか, a translation of "In the Forest".

I'm working on the second part of these sentences, about the little boy meeting a rabbit in the forest and inviting the rabbit to come along on his walk:

"こわがらなくって いいんだよ" と、 ぼくは、 とおくから うさぎに
いいました。 "きたけりゃ、 ぼくと ならんで く れば いいよ"
それで、 うさぎも やってきました。

The original English is

"Don't be afraid," I called to him. "If you want to go too
You can walk with me." So the rabbit came too.

My tools are "Japanese the Manga Way," "Japanese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar", a couple of dictionaries, and Google Translate and search.

I am really stuck on きたけりゃ.

I'm guessing it's either a base 2 noun-forming or base 7 informal past of くる, but I can't figure out which one, or make any sense of the (た)けりゃ part of the word. Can someone help me figure this out?

I'm finding this a pretty tricky sentence in general, and if you'd help confirm my understanding, I'd be most grateful.

ぼくと
with me (me and)

ならんで
along (come along), according to Google Translate, but why can't I find the word in any of my dictionaries?

くれば
if you come - if form of to come - ば form of くる - く + れば?

いいよ
good/okay + emphasis (よ)

それで
so ...

うさぎも
the rabbit also

やってきました
the きました part is the past tense of "come" but I'm a little stumped on the "やって"、which I'm guessing is the -te form of やる; my dictionary says that's "to give, send, do, or set about", so I've provisionally translated it as "set about coming"

So:

If you wanted to come, with me along, if you came it would be good/okay" ; so the rabbit also set about coming.

Corrections? Confirmations?

Thank you VERY much!

Kristi


P.S. Can anyone tell me how to type proper Japanese square corner quotation marks on a Mac? That's the one part of Japanese punctuation I haven't been able to work out.

どうも ありがとう ございます！

 

[Toritoribe]

きたけりゃ is the contruction/colloquial form of きたければ, which is the -ba conditional form of 来たい.

ならんで is the -te form of 並ぶ.

やってくる indeed originally from "やる + くる", but it actually performs as a single verb, meaning "to come" here.

やってくる【やって来る】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - goo辞書

 

[letianchen]

@KristiW to give you a tip of advice, I recommend getting a textbook that goes through grammar points like Minna no nihongo. Or something similar to such. You'll get a lot more examples than reading "Japanese the manga way" (I have never read this book, but I have seen similar titled books and they tend to be utter bs) or using Google translate. Manga is often hard and even after studying nearly a year I cannot make sense of a lot of it, not to say it is a bad tool, but I think it should be more supplementary until your at a point where you know lots of words and vocabulary. Children stories seem to work good though depending on your level.

Just something to think about

 

[KristiW]

Thank you, Toritoribe - that's very helpful!

 

[KristiW]

Thank you, letianchen - I appreciate the suggestions.

I actually have several textbooks, including Hugo Japanese in Three Months and Japanese for Beginners; I just don't use those as much when I'm trying to analyze a sentence in a book. I've also borrowed the Michel Thomas audio from my library and that's helped me quite a lot with understanding basic grammar.

I also appreciate your thoughts about "Japanese the Manga Way," but I have to say - since you haven't seen it - it's really an excellent book. It's basically a very detailed grammar book that uses manga as examples. It has an excellent index, so when I'm looking up something like the -tai form or the uses of -no , I can find several examples of each, and when there are different types of uses (as with -no), it breaks them out by category (explanatory -no , and so on) and, again, typically provides several examples. For each example, the author goes word for word, giving both a literal translation and a more natural English translation when appropriate, and providing grammar notes on individual words. It's one of my favorite resources for learning Japanese. If I were limited to a single book, it probably wouldn't be a great choice, but I'm lucky and have lots of different materials available.

Thank you for your thoughts!

 

[letianchen]

Wow , excuse my ignorance, that book is cool indeed! Even though I have gone through most of those points the examples are quite cool I must say