that foreign music blog🌎

Okay, so for those of you who read this blog, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of pop-punk/punk…most varieties of punk, honestly. One Japanese band I came to love after an encounter with a handsome waiter was ELLEGARDEN.

You could say that ELLEGARDEN is the Blink 182 of Japan. They’re one of the bands that made pop-punk popular, and you can hear the heavy Western influences in their music. Most Japanese people will be impressed if you drop their name in conversation; they’re extremely well-known, although they’re not active anymore.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to their album Figurehead’s Compilation on my way to work and I thought about doing a segment on one of their FEW Japanese songs, 風の日 (かぜのひ/ Windy Day). This song uses the possessive grammar  の and given that particles can be extremely hard to understand,  I figured it’d be best to try to introduce them through this song.

Let’s break down the chorus:

雨の日には濡れて

晴れた日には乾いて

寒い日には震えてるのは当たり前だろう

次の日には忘れて

風の日には飛ぼうとしてみる

そんなもんさ

の (noh) has 2 functions. The first is like the apostrophe ‘s’ in English. It’s fairly easy to use, as you simply place it next to a noun.

雨の日には

あめのひ

ah-me noh hee

Rain‘s day= Rainy day

次の日には

つぎのひには

tsu-gi noh hee 

Next‘s day= Next day

風の日には

かぜのひには

kah-zeh noh hee

Wind‘s day= Windy Day

The second function of の is to form gerunds, or what native English speakers know as -ing verbs that act as nouns. Ex: Running is fun.

This is also fairly easy to do, as long as you can identify the verb. Take this lyric for example:

寒い日には震えてるのは当たり前だろう

さむいひにはふるえてるのはあたりまえだろう

sah-moo-ee hee nee wa foo-roo-eh-teh-roo noh

The cold day that is trembling is just right

To start, I’ll introduce the verb stem/dictionary form of “to tremble”, which is ふるえる (foo-roo-eh-roo)

In the lyric, the verb is in the present progressive form, trembling ふるえてる (foo-roo-e-teh-roo) In other words, it’s a verb: “The girl is trembling”

However, once we add の, it becomes a noun.

In contrast, let’s look at that line without の

寒い日には震えてる…

sah-mu-i hee nee ha foo-roo-eh-teh-roo

It translates to something like:

On the day that is trembling….

With の in play, we can change the verb into a noun: The cold day that is trembling is probably just right.

Although the phrase itself doesn’t change, notice how you have “is” right after it, now. This の modifies this phrase into a noun phrase. The subject becomes “the cold day that is trembling” because of の.

Basically, just keep in mind that の is a noun modifier and changes everything into a noun. *In some cases の is a pronoun, but let’s not worry about that for now. That’s a completely different usage.

Now, some kanji practice!

日 ひ hee (day)

晴れた はれた ha-reh-ta (sunny)

乾いて かわいて kah–wa-ee-te (dry)

震えてる ふるえて (foo–roo-eh-teh-roo) (trembling)

寒い さむい sah–moo-ee (cold air temperature)

次 つぎ tsu-gi (‘gi’ as in girl) (next)

忘れて わすれて wah–soo-reh-te (forget)

風 かぜ kah-zeh (wind)

飛ぼう とぼう toh-bou (let’s fly)

Let’s try a translation, but before that, let me say that this song uses grammar I’m not too great at using. Still, let’s try!

雨の日には濡れて

On the rainy day that is wet

晴れた日には乾いて

On the sunny day that is dry

寒い日には震えてるのは当たり前だろう

The cold day that is trembling is just right

次の日には忘れて

On the next day, forget

風の日には飛ぼうとしてみる

On the windy day that we shall try to fly

そんなもんさ

That’s the life

All right guys, that concludes today’s tidbit on possessives! Until the next post! 😀