Zero to Hero

1. Wa, ka, and desu

We sat in the girl’s garage, which she used as a storeroom. On my arrival, I’d banged my head against a shelf, dislodging oddly shaped scrap and bits of junk.

The girl looked at me with concern. 「大丈夫だいじょうぶですか」

I scratched the metal collar around my neck. Since she’d fastened it there, the sounds she made were distinguishable, even if their meanings were an enigma.

Yet, trying to speak my own language yielded that same garbled white noise as before.

The girl rapidly fired off several more sentences.

「どこが痛いたいですか」

「あなたは旅人たびびとさんですか」

「どこに行いきたいですか」

「あたしは手伝てつだいしますか」

She looked at me expectantly, frowned when I shook my head. Then she pointed at a small cylinder on the floor near me. 「それはあなたの物ものですか」

Unsure of how else to answer, I shrugged.

The girl leaned over me to pick up the cylinder. Something soft brushed against my legs.

The cylinder happened to be a scroll. I couldn’t understand the complex shapes written on it, but the girl apparently did. She finished reading and exclaimed, 「なるほど！　記憶消失きおくしょうしつですね　ラッキー　モルモットさんが欲ほしかったです」 The scroll disappeared somewhere amazing, and she got to her feet. 「こち来きてください」 she said, pulling me toward the door.

We relocated to a room that would be at home in my world, filled with familiar furniture and gadgets.

「ここはリビングです」 said the girl taking in the whole room.

A lightbulb exploded, blinding my mind’s eye!

I rubbed at the collar. Was it a magic item? In my last life, my memory had been a sieve. With this collar on, I could recall much of what the girl said, and had become aware of a pattern across several sentences:

「大丈夫だいじょうぶですか」

「どこが痛いたいですか」

「あなたは旅人たびびとさんですか」

「どこに行いきたいですか」

「それはあなたの物ものですか」

「ここはリビングです」

The word です was in each of these, か in all but one, and はわ in half the sentences. The last one also contained リビング, which sounded like living in my language. From the looks of the room we were in, it was very much what I’d call a ‘living room’.

When she said, 「ここはリビングです」 I had the distinct impression she’d told me, "This is my living room".

She spoke with distinct pauses. I used those to identify individual words, which gave me four—one I was sure I knew:

My expected English sentence had five words. This wouldn’t be a direct one-to-one translation. The question was which part of the English sentence was implied or which of the foreign words pulled the weight of two English words?

How about:

I shook my head. First, no verb. If this was a full sentence, it needed a verb, right? Second, unless the girl was a room groupie, です didn’t fit my assigned definition based on frequency of use. I tried again:

Before I could further my analysis, the girl waved her hand right in front of my face. Close enough I could feel a cool breeze on my nose. 「あの・・・　聞きいていますか　本当ほんとうに大丈夫だいじょうぶですか」

This was directed right at me.

Which meant, I could discard the notion of です being equivalent to my. A single word meaning both me and you as individual entities would be a ridiculous contextual nightmare!

Plus, that か again, and I think I detected a rising tone. What if this was how people here asked a question? Did か act as a verbal question mark?

ピンポン！

The words vibrated in my head.

Had I got something right?

Recalling the sentence that had started this train of thought, I added か to the end and said what I thought meant "Is this the living room?"

「ここはリビングですか」

The girl’s eyes lit up.

「はい！リビングです」

With renewed energy, she pointed at a familiar shape. Thin and rectangular, its front surface matte black.

「これはテレビです」

Another helpful sounding word! Very much like the first part of television.

All right! I felt certain she had told me, "This is a television."

I got to work:

Feeling that ここ and これ had similar meanings, I treated them as one word for simplicity’s sake.

は still bothered me… Come to think of it, I’d been assuming that the word order of this language, in particular verb placement, had to match that of mine. What if it didn’t?

If I assigned です as the verb…

Adding か at the end changed a statement into a question, right?

Certain this was correct, I wandered over to the low table in front of the couch, picked up what looked like a magazine and asked, 「これはテレビですか」

The girl laughed and hopped about clapping her hands. Her delight distracted me for… reasons.

Settling down, she said:

「いいえ、それはテレビではありません　それは雑誌ざっしです」

ぱち ぱち ぱち！ 大変良たいへんよくできました！

As the words resonated in my head, I felt immensely proud. I’d taken the first step to understanding a new language; I’d asked a silly question and got the (silly) answer I expected. With this, fatigue washed over me.

The girl grabbed my hand and led me to a room with a thin mattress on the floor.

「ここはあなたの寝部屋ねべやです　おやすみなさい　続つづきは明日あしたですね」