On Monday I was eating the first half of my sandwich, just staring out the window, when one of the Sales guys peeked his head in and laughed. I think I mumbled something like ごめんなさい, and he said いえいえ、誰かな～と思って… and then left.

The meaning of what he said is pretty straight forward here. Literally “Who is that? I thought…” Or in more natural English, “I was wondering who that was…” The point I’d like to make is that this is not a complete sentence in Japanese. He easily could have said 誰かなと思った, but instead it ends on a gerund, and much like the で discussed last week, there is a bit of causality implied. This makes more sense when you fill in the final clause of the sentence: 誰かなと思って、顔を覗かせた。In natural English, “I just peeked in wondering who was in here” or maybe “I just wanted to see who was in here.” (Other alternative second clauses include, ここに入ってきた or ちょっと見てきた.)

The point is that while the gerund clause modifies the implied, invisible clause, it’s the main point of the sentence since the implied, invisible clause is obvious to both parties. Most excellent. It also reminds me that you could probably go a whole day in Japan using only gerunds. Reminds me of my No 僕 Challenge, but I’m too lazy to try this one.

And for those who didn’t recognize the title, Geaux Saints!

When she finished eating, Treyvaud prompted her to continue her story with a simple, little で？ It was awesome – so simple but perfect for the situation and extremely effective. She then said, “で…” and then continued her story.

This is a great example of the two different roles of で – conjunction and implier of causality.

Today let’s look at how it implies causality. The most common examples are ので and それで。 They have essentially the same role, but ので works between two clauses in a single sentence whereas それで begins a new sentence. Observe:

ビールをいっぱい飲んだので、眠くなった。
I drank lots of beer, so I became tired.

In more natural English: I got tired because I drank a lot of beer. (It’s tempting to maintain Japanese sentence order when you first start translating, and I’ve produced some embarrassing examples myself, but I think it’s fine to flip stuff around BECAUSE ENGLISH IS A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE.)

A couple of usage notes:

- You may be familiar with から in a similar role. (ビールをいっぱい飲んだから、眠くなった。) They are very similar. The main difference, according to my Japanese teacher in college, is that ので is more polite than から and should be preferred when talking to people more えらい than your measly self.

- After verbs, all you need is ので, but after nouns you should use なので. For example: 月曜日なので、仕事に行かなくてはならない。 I’s Monday, so I gotta work.

- In spoken Japanese, ので often gets slurred to んで. Example: 明日するんで、心配するな。I got that shit covered tomorrow, yo, so just chill.

And the それで variety:

代休は、使わないと、3ヶ月間で無効になってしまう。それで、来週の水曜日半休をいただいて、映画見に行こうと思っている。
If you don’t use them, compensatory vacation days expire after three months. So I’m thinking of taking a half day off next Wednesday and going to see a movie.

In both cases, the で acts as a police officer blowing his whistle and pointing an accusatory arm to the left. This! This is why that stuff to the right is happening!

Let us speak of で’s conjunctive abilities next time.