よみうち英語Read the classics by typingNotes Scene 2: The Morning Paper
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Notes on this scene
Watson uses a newspaper report about a married couple to argue that real cases are predictable. He lists the familiar ingredients he expects to find—another woman, drink, violence, and sympathetic witnesses—and treats the affair as proof that ordinary life is simpler than Holmes claims.
Japanese in this scene
- は
- は marks the topic of the sentence and can also contrast it with another topic. It is written ha but normally pronounced wa.
- が
- が marks the grammatical subject or introduces newly focused information. It can also connect clauses with a mild contrast.
- を
- を marks the direct object of a verb. With a movement verb, it can instead mark the route or place being crossed.
- に
- に can mark a destination, target, time, recipient, purpose, or resulting state. The predicate shows its role here.
Full text: original English and Japanese translation
I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here"—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—"let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude."
私は笑って首を振った。「きみがそう考えるのは、よく分かるよ」と言った。「もちろん、三つの大陸にわたって、どうにも途方に暮れた人なら誰でも助言と手助けを求められる、非公式の相談役という立場にいれば、奇妙で風変わりなことすべてに接することになる。でも、ほら」私は床から朝刊を拾い上げた。「実際に試してみよう。最初に目についた見出しがこれだ。『夫の妻に対する残酷な仕打ち』。半段ほどの記事があるが、読まなくても、何もかもおなじみの話だと分かる。もちろん、ほかの女がいて、酒があり、突き飛ばし、殴り、あざができて、同情する姉妹か下宿の女主人が出てくる。最も未熟な作家でも、これ以上単純な話は思いつけないだろう」