Help about a text...

[Sirius]

Hello, I am a beginner in Japanese. I will be grateful if someone could help me.

I have a book... a 4th Grade Science Book from Elementary School (Shoogaku shi-nen rika), that I am trying to translate by myself, to complement my formal studies of the Japanese Language.

I wonder if someone could help me with the following:

はしがき.

みなさんは, ニュートンの話をお聞きになったことがありますか?. ----- そうです. あの偉大科学者ニュートンの話です.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. " はしがき " I guess is something like "introduction" or "prologue". It is just that I don't find it in any dictionary.


2. Could you help me with a grammatical explanation of " お聞きになった"? Is it a conjugation of a verb?... or... I am including more than one element here?

3. Could you translate this little text... just to be sure that I have more or less the meaning of it.

Regards.

[Exidez]

this is my understanding of the text..

はしがき gave me a meaning of "preface" at http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate
this is where i get some of my reference from..

anyway the rest of it goes...

has everyone herd ot newtons story?
It is the greatest scientist story of newton.

thats my translation of it

i cant really explain お聞きになった but the があります at the end means "have you experienced"

i hope someone else can clarify this

[okaeri_man]

はしがき.

みなさんは, ニュートンの話をお聞きになったことがありますか?. ----- そうです. あの偉大科学者ニュートンの話です.


お聞きになった is keigo (sonkeigo to be precise), and therefore you shouldnt worry about it. most people dont cover it until uni. a simpler version is 聞いた. therefore its:
みなさんは, ニュートンの話を聞いたことがありますか?. ----- そうです. あの偉大科学者ニュートンの話です.

"Has everyone heard of the story of Newton? It is the story of that great scientist (Newton)."

i dont like the way i translated that last sentence, but thats pretty much what it says.

[Sirius]

Thank you for your explanations.

Most helpful.

Regards.

[Sirius]

In the following text:


かれは, リンゴの実が木から落ちるのを見て, 地球には引力があるのだということを発見したそうです .


I don't understand the meaning or the grammatical role of :

... だということ...


I will apreciate some help.

[Elizabeth]

ということ is basically a way of rendering things more abstract -- in this case Newton discovered the fact that there is or the existance of (= koto) gravitation (to iu = in reference to a specific term or name/it is called that) as opposed to saying simply he discovered that there is a gravitational pull on the earth.

[Sirius]

I already finished the "Preface" and I began de actual lessons...

I found an expression:

1. Kon-Mushi no seichou... (こん虫の成長.)... but I wonder if this "kon" was meant to be for something like (今虫の成長.) or it mean something else in this contex.

2. The development of insects is shown in this book in form of a flow chart... that seems to follow a sequence tamago, kaiko and sanagi... (that I would assume are "egg", "larvae", "crisalid".

However, I am confused with other flowchart which follows the sequence アゲハ, カイコ, さなぎ.

What is Ageha and what Kaiko? Am I confusing stages with species of Insects?

Regards.

[Sirius]

Oh.. I used the "Word-Lingo" online translation selecting "Life Sciences" contex

INPUT:

こん虫の成長.
今虫の成長.
アゲハ.
カイコ.
さなぎ.

and I obtained this:

OUTPUT:

Growth of insect.
Now growth of the insect.
アゲハ.
カイコ.
Pupa.

++++++++++++++++++++++

So apparently "Kon" is not the same as the Kanji "ima" (or maybe yes, but then we need 'human intelligence'). The assumption for Sanagi was correct... but Ageha and kaiko were not recognised by the translator.

Regards.

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Sirius
I already finished the "Preface" and I began de actual lessons...

I found an expression:

1. Kon-Mushi no seichou... (こん虫の成長.)... but I wonder if this "kon" was meant to be for something like (今虫の成長.) or it mean something else in this contex.
Kon is just "kono" or "this" but in a temporal rather than spatial context. I don't think it matters whether you use katakana or kanji (such as Konban or Konnichi ; ima is when it is not in a compound), but for kids the former is probably more common.