There is no doubt in my mind that you people have heard of Sailor Moon. If you are at all familiar with anything Japanese, I'm sure one of these three things pop into your mind: 1.) Hello Kitty 2.) Pokemon 3.) Sailor Moon. Maybe Dragonball Z, if you're a guy, or a woman who is madly in love with Vegeta like myself.
As a woman who likes to be respected by men, there is no reason I should love him the way I do >.<
Did I just admit to that? I suppose I could just use the old delete key, but... I don't care enough.
Anyway, Sailor Moon recently (and by recently, I mean about four or five years ago) had a reprinting that involved the original colors for most of the colored pages, unique stickers, and new cover illustrations. I totally thought I was over Sailor Moon until this special edition little beauties caught my eye. Needless to say, I left the store about four thousand yen poorer.
Isn't that a well prettier cover than the original. Of course, I could only find this super low quality version of it on the net, but here you are:
Coincidences of coincidences, I was at the bookstore last night, and I discovered they are rereleasing Sailor Moon as the special editions in English (with the full color pages, but no stickers)! What a blessing! The original translations were absolutely horrid!
In any case, we're going to go over the incredibly easy grammar form, UCHI NI. Hooray! It's nice because it's useful, and that's all I really care about when it comes to learning grammar points. Utility. There are so many I learn and forget simply because it doesn't come to mind fast enough.
UCHI NI means "while A ~ A/B is ~"... which is a little vague. Basically it just means "While". The way I like to remember it is that the word UCHI has two different kanji that have a very enclosed feeling to them. So, 内 means "within" and 家 means "house". So I imagine that housed in one action, is another. Or within an action there is also another. Perhaps that is just my weird way of thinking, but it's worked pretty well for me so far.
There are actually two separate grammar points in my book called UCHI NI, though I'm not entirely sure why. Once we get into, we'll see that they are pretty much the same, even if they are translated different.
But first, let's do it as "while" before I confused with a wily word that goes by the name of "before".
A typical UCHI NI sentence may go like this:
- 勉強するうちに平井堅を聞くのはいいね〜
- Benkyou suru uchi ni Hirai Ken wo kiku no ha ii ne~
Was that my facebook status a few days ago? Why yes it was, and I mean every word of it...
...
No matter what you think I'm not going to digress into how cool Hirai Ken is (though I desperately want to).
Strong, Boom. Strong. Okay, this is how you make a UCHI NI sentence.
- A(action) + UCHI NI + B(action)
- A(Studying) + UCHI NI + B (Listening to Hirai Ken)
- Listening to Hirai Ken (B) while studying (A) is nice.
- While studying, listening to Hirai Ken is nice.
The next is way to use UCHI NI is stay say "before an action is completed, this is done/should be done". While in English, these are two very separate phrases, they are quite similar in Japanese.
- 暗くないうちに、帰ったほうがいい。
- Kurakunai uchi ni, kaetta hou ga ii.
It goes like this:
Within the confines of it not being dark, it's best to go home.
Now let's think about the first one:
Within the confines of studying, it's nice to listen to Hirai Ken.
Do you see where I'm going with this? We would never speak like this in English, though, so the second UCHI NI is essentially:
It's best to go home before it gets dark.
That's right. UCHI NI means the same thing, and yet it is translated as "while" and "before". I'm sure some of you must think this is beyond irritating. I, being such a grammar lover, think it's awesome!
So, the example I'm going to give you from the manga doesn't translate very neatly into English like the ones I provided above, but I like it because it shows just how it can be used without strictly confining you into English contexts.
What? I've hooked up a scanner to my computer? No more crappy photos of manga pages?! Happy days!
- マーズ ーそして マーキュリーまで 目の前で一瞬のうちにつれさられた。 ーーーブラックムーン。
- MAAZU -- Soshite MAAKYURII made Me no mae de isshun no uchini tsuresarareta --- BURAKKU MUUN.
Ok, for those who want to know where I am in the series, the first story line is over. Now we have the Black Moon story line, where we are introduced to Sailor Moon's future daughter with a daddy complex, Chibi Usa. If you don't want to have plot spoiled, I would suggest you ignore this post altogether.
You gone?
No. Okay. So, it's not a big spoiler, but Mars and Mercury have been taken away by the Black Moon, and Usagi is struggling to grasp any sort of victory against this mysterious enemy. See, not too bad, right?
Let's go over the grammar, and translate it the way I say it usually is translated:
- "While a moment, they were kidnapped before my eyes."
- "Before a moment, they were kidnapped before my eyes."
So doesn't work, right? That's why my brief and annoying story about how I remember UCHI as something that is within the confines of another action comes into play.
Obviously, the way this should be translated is:
- "In a moment, they were taken right before my eyes."
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