Saturday, March 30, 2024

Super Mario 64 1-5

Star #5 - 空に羽搏け 羽マリオ > そらにはばたけ はねマリオ > Sore ni habatake hane mario > Wing Mario Flaps to the Sky



The fifth challenge was officially localized as "Mario Wings to the Sky".  Merely walking around in Mario 64 for the first time was perhaps the most amazing video game experience I've had, so what further joy it was to go flying! This phrase introduces に、 which is another extremely important particle.


1. 空 > そら > Sora > Sky

First seen in the posting concerning Star #3, 空 once again has the exact same function and kana spelling. There's nothing new to learn here. If you've made it this far, congratulations! Just like how you must know to be wary of the incessant water cannon balls in certain parts of this world, you're already memorizing Japanese and encountering redundancies, leaving precious bandwidth to learn more new things...


2. に > Ni > Denotes target of action

に has a ton of important uses. In this particular phrase, it's pointing out that Mario should be flying up within the sky. 


3.  羽搏け > はばたけ > Habatake > To flap one's wings

羽 (は) is wings (explained more fully in the following paragraph) and 搏 has dozens of meanings, including forceful movement. 羽搏け metaphorically (or in this case literally) means to spread one's wings in the world.  If you spread them out far enough, 羽 looks just like the wings on Mario's cap.


4. 羽 > はね > Hane > Wings

羽 is a visual depiction of a bird's wings. Notice how when used alone, it's pronounced はね (Hane), but when directly attached to a verb, it's just は (ha). The kanji pronunciations vary according to the other characters they're used in conjunction with. Commonly, the Japanese pronunciation (Kunyomi) is used when a kanji stands alone. When compounded with other words, it tends to use the Chinese pronunciation (Onyomi). That sounded like a real mouthful, but it becomes much easier with experience.


5. マリオ > Mario 

Here's Mario's name written in Katakana. Go ahead and get a pen and paper and try it yourself. Have some fun: search for the box art/title screen of any other Japanese version of a game he's featured in and actively read it just like a native Japanese speaker would.


All those pieces add up once again to: 空に羽ばたけ 羽マリオ > そらにはばたけ はねマリオ > Sore ni habatake hane mario > Wing Mario Flaps to the Sky

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