Help with が

[jim.schuler]

Just when I think I've got a handle on a particle, something comes storming in and flips over the table.

This time, it's the song Kiseki by NIRGILIS, where I come by the following lyric:

say goodbye hello
繰り返す 君と僕 めぐりめぐる中で
僕らが響かせた このメロディが 奏でたキセキ

Now, I have a lot of questions here--such as why is "Kiseki" rendered in katakana at the end--but no more confusing than what is going on with が in that last line?

There are three things in that line: "Us", a "melody that makes resonate," and a "path that played" or however the katakana kiseki translates (I understand it could be miracle, but as it previously uses 軌跡 and it fits with the theme of the song, I'm sticking with path). I'm simply unsure how が is supposed to connect them. I think it may simply be acting similar to の as a noun connector, but I'm not sure. Here's my translation attempt:

We say goodbye hello over again
You and me, through our revolutions
Our path played the melody that made us resonate

[community.japanese]

jim.schuler san,
Konnichiwa.

When katakana is used for kanji words, it means a writer want to emphasis the words.
僕らが響かせた このメロディが 奏でたキセキ means ‘キセキ which is that we played a melody.’

Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com

[jim.schuler]

ありがとう由紀さん

Here's the problem I'm having: ‘キセキ which is that we played a melody’ makes no sense in English. I can't tell how キセキ relates to "melody" in that sentence. It doesn't parse, which is the issue with が or the word order.

Now, it looks like you dropped 響かせた from your translation, and it strikes me that might be because there are two sentences here where I was thinking there was one:
僕らが響かせた。
-We made it resonate;

This simplifies it. The first part makes much more sense than my first attempt. The rest now seems to say "The path that was played by that melody." Is that a fair translation?

[thegooseking]

jim.schulerさん、

I'd say you're probably on track with the two sentences idea. "This melody that was made to resound" would be この響かせたメロディ, not 響かせたこのメロディ, right? I don't think you can put a descriptive subordinate clause before a demonstrative like この - I could be wrong, though.

In the second sentence, though, I'm not convinced that メロディが奏でた is a descriptive clause of キセキ. Bearing in mind that song lyrics don't necessarily follow standard grammatical rules anyway, sometimes in Japanese the topic comes at the end of the sentence, after the verb, rather than the beginning, for the sake of emphasis. I'd go so far as to say this is more common in songs than in regular speech - it fulfils a dual purpose in song, not only emphasising the topic, but also ensuring song lines can end with something other than a verb-ending for the sake of things like cadence and prosody - but it does happen in speech too.

The fact that キセキ is emphasised, like Yuki says (katakana can sometimes be thought of as "Japanese italics") supports this idea - my theory is it could be rewritten in normal grammar as キセキは、このメロディが奏でた。Something like, "As for the path, this melody was played."

小狼

[jim.schuler]

sometimes in Japanese the topic comes at the end of the sentence, after the verb, rather than the beginning, for the sake of emphasis.

The missing piece of the puzzle! ありがとうございました

I'm only up to lower intermediate, so I haven't formally run into that yet. Very useful, and now locked in my brain.

However, your translation still confuses me as to why が and not を. Using が here it seems to make more sense that the melody is playing the キセキ which, while a weird reversal, is not outside the bounds of what's already in the song, or even far off from reality (for example, playing a note can make a corresponding guitar string vibrate, so a song could actually play an instrument). If it was キセキ playing the melody, melody would be the direct object so it would call for a を, would it not?

[community.japanese]

jim.schuleさん、
こんにちは。
I think this creator wants to say メロディ makes キセキ so the person used the particle が.
Yuki　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com