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So, I volunteered to take a stab at these mini-lesson things. Let me know what it’s like. =)
This is the headline and opening paragraph of an article from the current issue of Cheers, a Japanese-language newspaper that’s published here in Australia. Happened to pick up a copy of it the other day. =)
豪米関係は「強固で親密」ターンブル首相
マルコム・ターンブル首相は米大統領選でドナルド・トランプ氏が勝利したことを受けて、11月9日のテレビ番組に出演し、オーストラリアとアメリカの関係は引き続き「強固で親密」なものであると述べた。公共放送ABCの番組「７３０」で述べたもの。Take a moment to look up any unknown words in the dictionary. Here’s the questions. There’s a couple of hints at the bottom.
1. You probably won’t find 豪米関係 in the dictionary. It’s not in mine, at least. Take a stab at what you think 豪米関係 might mean.
2. What function is 首相 playing here? As in, what part of speech is it?
3. What funtion is こと playing here? (As in …勝利したこと)
4. What part of speech is 引き続き
5. What’s the で doing in 強固で親密?
6. What sort of language is this? What level of formality? When would you speak like this?
7. Do your best at a translation. You may find you’ll need to reorder some of the clauses to get natural-sounding English.Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to break down.
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Hint for #1: Try looking up 日米 or 英米. Also look up オーストラリア and check out other ways that it’s written.
Hint for #2: マルコム・ターンブル is a person’s name – Malcolm Turnbull.1. I’d translate it as “Australia-USA relationship”.
2. I’d say it’s a noun.
3. Nominalization.
4. I’d say it’s an adverb.
5. I’d say it allows to determind the second noun (親密 – friendship) with the first one (強固 – strong).
6. I think that, despite being in newspaper, it’s still a casual language, becouse 「述べた」 is used, instead of 述べました at the end of the first sentence。I’d speak like this with people I know well, people who are equal in rank or lower than me.
7. Here is my translation:
Prime minister Turnbull described the relationship between Australia and USA as “Strong friendship”.
When prime minister Malcolm Turnbull found out that Donald Trump has won the presidential election in USA, he (Turnbull) appeared on the ABC channel’s “730″ tv-show at the 9th of November and stated that the relationship between Australia and America are continuously “strong friendship”.Aha, whoops. It’s been five months and I never responded to this. (Actually, I’m kind of impressed that it’s been a whole five months already). My bad.
1. Pretty much. Or “Australia-US relations”
2. Not quite. It’s ordinarily a noun, but here it’s functioning as an honorific. “Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull”.
3. Correct
4. Correct
5. Here, the で basically means “and” – 強固で is the て-form of the な-adjective 強固, and you need to use the て-form to join series of adjectives (or nouns).
6. Little bit of a trick question here, because I kind of didn’t expect you to have enountered this type of language before. It’s a formal literary form called the である form (called this because the copula is である instead of です). There’s a few structures and words that are only ever used with this form. No, you’d never speak like that – despite the use of plain-form verbs, it’s a formal style, and it’s only ever used in writing.
7. Nice translation, but it doesn’t quite flow. Keeping in mind that it’s a newspaper as well, I’d go with something more like this:Australia-US Relations “Strong and Intimate”, Says Prime Minister Turnbull
After Mr Donald Trump won the US presidential election, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appeared on the ABC’s “730″ program on Novermber 9th to state that the relationship between Australia and the US is still “strong and intimate”.Or something along those lines. My newspaper-speak is not really all that strong. =)
Hope you’re still studying, trunklayer.
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