Go home, verb. You're drunk.

[jim.schuler]

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

I am an almost complete beginner with Japanese, having recently reached lesson 51 in beginner season 1. To measure my progress, I like to spend some time seeing what I can translate from whatever ear bug anime has inflicted on me at the moment. Since the words won't leave my head anyway, I figure it's a good way to build vocabulary and maybe some grammar.

At issue is the following:

kokoro wo nurashita ame hitoshi zuku hikari ni tokete
itami ni furueru tsubasa mo chiisa na ai wo mamoru no

The kanji, if the romanji from animelyrics.com isn't clear enough:

心を濡らした雨
ひとしずく光にとけて
痛みにふるえる翼も
小さな愛を守るの

This is from Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line, the opening to Chrono Crusade. The entire stanza is for context, and the bold is where I'm scratching my head.

If I have this correct, the most literal translation of the last two lines is "wings that shiver in pain also protect a small love."

My question is: what the heck is "furueru" doing? Hasn't it learned Japanese? It's supposed to go at the end of the sentence. Instead, it's rudely cutting in front of tsubasa. It doesn't even have the decency to use a weird form so I can attribute this to some grammatical ninjutsu. Is this valid, or is this poetic license?

If I was going to recreate that on my own without musical consideration, I would (limiting myself to the formal for now) come up with "Tsubasa wa itami ni furuerte arimasu," which I think is "Wings that are shivering in pain." Is this in any way correct? And then how would it link up to the rest? Can "mo chiisana..." follow right on it, do I have to do something to "arimasu" for that to work, or is something more drastic needed?

[mmmason8967]

心を濡らした雨
ひとしずく光にとけて
痛みにふるえる翼も
小さな愛を守るの

My question is: what the heck is "furueru" doing? Hasn't it learned Japanese? It's supposed to go at the end of the sentence. Instead, it's rudely cutting in front of tsubasa. It doesn't even have the decency to use a weird form so I can attribute this to some grammatical ninjutsu. Is this valid, or is this poetic license?

It's standard Japanese. I'll try to explain how it works.

I'm currently reading a book that contains a number of stories. In the introduction, the author says that he is going to introduce us to a selection of stories.

この本では、話をいくつか紹介します。
この　ほん　で　は、はなし　を　いくつか　しょうかい　します。
kono hon de wa, hanashi wo ikutsuka shoukai shimasu.

But they're not just any old stories: they're stories that come from "Kojiki", which is the oldest of all Japanese writings. You can say that the stories come from "Kojiki" like this:-

話は、『古事記』の中にあります。
はなし　は、『こじき』　の　なか　に　あります。
hanashi wa, "Kojiki" no naka ni arimasu.

In the introduction the author combines both of these sentences into a single sentence that means "In this book I will introduce a selection of stories that come from 'Kojiki'". This is how it's done:-

この本では、『古事記』の中にある話をいくつか紹介します。
この ほん　で　は、『こじき』　の　なか　に　ある　はなし　を　いくつか　しょうかい　します。
kono hon de wa, "Kojiki" no naka ni aru hanashi wo ikutsuka shoukai shimasu.

Hopefully the colour-coding helps you to see how the two sentences have been merged into a single, more complex sentence. Note that the verb arimasu has to be changed to aru, the plain form, when you do this. This is what's happening with furueru in the song lyric. The same thing is happening in the first line of the song: kokoro wo nurashita is describing what kind of ame it is.

マイケル

[jim.schuler]

Arigato. Wakarimasu deshou.

If I have this right, and I wanted to switch "wings that shiver in pain protect a small love" to "wings that protect a small love shiver in pain," I could write:

Chiisa na ai wo mamoru tsubasa wa itami ni furueru (-masu).

Or "the introduced stories come from 'Kojiki:'"

Shoukai shita hanashi wa "Kojiki" no naka ni arimasu.

Or, let's be weird for the sake of completion, "the not introduced stories come from 'Kojiki;'"

Shoukai shinakatta hanashi...

The conjugation is based on the plain form, correct?

[mmmason8967]

Yes, that's pretty much the way it works! I'd probably translate 'shoukai shita hanashi wa "Kojiki" no naka ni arimasu' as 'The stories that I introduced come from "Kojiki"', mainly because using a phrase starting with that helps make it clearer what's going on--to me, anyway.

The use of plain form isn't a special feature of this construction. Only the last verb in sentence takes a masu ending; all the others will be in plain form. For example, you might say:-

犬は、庭にいます。
いぬ　は、にわ　に　います。
inu wa, niwa ni imasu.
The dog's in the garden.

But if you're not entirely sure where the dog is you might decide to add to omoimasu (I think, I believe, etc) to the end of the sentence. And if you do that, omoimasu gets the masu ending, so imasu needs to become iru, and you end up with:-

犬は、庭にいると思います。
いぬ　は、にわ　に　いる　と　おもいます。
inu wa, niwa ni iru to omoimasu.
The dog's in the garden, I think.

マイケル

[community.japanese]

マイケルさん、
こんにちは。
どうもありがとうございます。
古事記の入った文を使っているのは流石ですね。

jim.schuler さん、
こんにちは。
マイケル is like a teacher isn’t he?
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us.
Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[jim.schuler]

Sou desu ne. マイケル san wa Nihongo ga kantan ni natta.

(Probably horribly wrong)

[community.japanese]

jim.schuler san,
konnichiwa.
We probably can say ‘マイケル san wa takusan benkyoushita node ima wa nihongo ga kantan ni narimashita.’
Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mmmason8967]

We probably can say ‘マイケル san wa takusan benkyoushita node ima wa nihongo ga kantan ni narimashita.’

いいえ、違います。　私は、一所懸命日本語と戦っているが、日本語が勝っていると思います。

マイケル

[community.japanese]

マイケルさん、
こんにちは。
名言ですね。

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com