Ethnography: The Crow and the Water Pitcher; An Aesop's Fable

 

This is another of the books from the Tadoku site - https://tadoku.org/japanese/book/7347/  

I had intended to look at level 1 or to go back and do another cute cat one, but the picture on the cover reminded me of an Aesop's Fable, and for a very good reason...

I will say that right out of the bag, even if it does nothing else for me, this book may help me with glottal stops - I don't think I had ever realised that there is a natural glottal stop in the name when we say Aesop's Fables in English too.

I also got to see a place as hot as Kansas is at the moment - とてもあついです!

And I got to revisit a phrase I heard a while ago in Japanese Pod - where to say that you are thirsty, you have to say that your throat (node) has become dry/parched －のでがかわきました

だめだ was an interesting new word, and I did love the feel that the reader gave it.  It was really interesting seeing the Japanese flavour put onto a story that I knew well - the despair croaks of the crow were not something I had seen in an English version :D.  I also feel that this story could well fit with the Japanese culture of 頑張ります、with the crow repeatedly struggling to get the water and coming up with a clever plan and carrying it all out himself, right till he just needs a ちょっと more... and finally gets the water.

It also introduced counting and the number forms used for that and the general item counter unit. It was also interesting that at the end of the book for when the crow finally gets the water, it was in the past tense, rather than the non-past for a sense of immediacy, like it may well have been in English.

I do like reading these books, they are always fun and interesting, and I always learn something new.


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