This week is going to be dedicate then, to all the grammar forms that involve WAKE, which is WAKE DA, WAKE GA NAI, WAKE DE HA NAI, and WAKE NI HA IKANAI. That's right! Five days of crazy, WAKE fun!
But let's start with the easiest to explain, and the one that will help us go onto understand the other grammar forms.
The kanji for WAKE, though it is rarely ever used in the grammar form, is 訳 which means reasoning/reason. So immediately, we can surmise that it means whatever it is, we use this grammar point to explain the reasoning for this. Here are a just a few of the translations of WAKE DA:
- As you know, ~
- The fact is that~
- The truth of the matter is that~
So really, in attacking this form, you just have to get the general idea of feeling behind it. My notebook from a few years back has this pretty useless sentence:
- 私の責任であるのわけだ。
- Watashi no sekinin de aru no wake da.
- As you know, it's my responsibility.
I don't really find that particularly helpful, so I had to go on a search for it. I struggled finding this grammar form in a fun way, so we're just going to talk about Japanese ad campaigns and domestic tourism. Fun, right?
Now, if you travel around Japan, you will find more than your fair share of posters like this at train stations. This poster, actually brings back some pretty vivid memories of walking over the bridge at Hakui Station. Generally, these posters are dedicated to domestic tourism, and they are usually on the train line for whatever they are trying to advertise.
This particular poster is featured on the blog of a hotel called the Sakurai which is located at the Kusatsu Onsen in the Gunma Prefecture. If you read the link I provided for the onsen, you would think it was the most famous place in all of Japan, though I have to admit I've never heard of it. That, however, is generally the way of tourists attraction in Japan. Everything seems to be world famous... But before I go into that, I need to say that I'm in no way an onsen connoisseur so it may well be famous. I'm usually forced to go, and the only time I ever had fun at one was when I went to Odaiba Onsen because it was Edo style.
あきちゃ〜ん！会いたいよ！アメリカ行ってくれね〜！
My Japanese hometown had the world's longest bench. At least, that is what the sign says. In fact, it's the third longest bench. Also, at the souvenir store at the base of it, you can get the specialty Togi ice cream, which is potato flavored. They give you a salt shaker to put salt on it even!
That's me surveying the length of the bench, and my bud Davin enjoying potato ice cream. The other two aren't enjoying the magnificence of my bench so let's ignore them.
Someday, I'll dedicate a full post to domestic tourism, but I think it's high time I stop reliving my Japanese double life and return to the topic at hand. The poster's phrase is:
- そりゃ、涼しいわけだ。
- Sorya, suzushii wake da.
I'm hesitant to translate this because suzushii is such a weird word. You usually hear it when you fan someone's face, if there's a nice cross breeze in your house, or if a breeze picks up and cools you off on a hot summer day. And yes, it is that specific of vocabulary. So, the literal way to say this is "That's cool, you know."
But I'm going to say this:
- It's a breeze, in fact.
Ok, so I interjected an English pun in there. So what? Yes, having taken French translation courses, I know you're not supposed to add, but I'm not professionally translating here, am I? I win.
And bonus points for those who have the same mind as I do and immediately thought:
Leave it! It's what they read.
Ah man, gotta love The Birdcage.
The reason the ad says this is because, if you read the blog, summer in Tokyo can be painfully hot. This, having spent two summers in Tokyo, I can attest to. It also is saying that it's cooler up in the mountains where the onsen is (1200 meters up, in fact) so it's an excellent place to escape the heat (by jumping into scalding hot water?). All in all, it's a nice little promotional poster to say, despite what you may have thought about coming here, you should get your butt up here! It's only two hours away in the Gunma Prefecture!
The structure of WAKE is as follows
- Sentence in plain form of which every tense (na for a na adjective is necessary) + WAKE DA.
- Noun + DE ARU/ DATTA + WAKE DA
Before I go though, I think it bears to mention that WAKE DA functions a lot like NO DA, which, if you are old school anime person like me, means you probably recognize it from this guy:
This is Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi, who generally ends every sentence he says with NO DA. Some people mistake this as some sort of dialect (like Tokyo-ben, or Osaka-ben), though I'm certain I've never heard of anyone except Chichiri ending their sentences with NO DA as a matter of accent as opposed to meaning. In any case, it's translated very annoyingly in the dub as "you know?", and left relatively untranslated in the sub. At least, as far as I remember. I'm really not interested in rewatching the series to find out. Though, I would have translated it as "actually", I'm not sure if that would make him sound less annoying. Wow, you would never believe he's one of my favorite characters from the series, would you?
But since I'm not into rape fantasy like Yuu Watase, I'm not really going to go details about the series. (That comment is going to cost me, isn't it?) It's weird, my distaste for the show, when I absolutely loved at age fifteen. I even painstakingly scanned in every page of the artbook, such was my dedication. I wonder where I put that, come to think of it...
Tomorrow, look forward to WAKE DEHA NAI!
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