いらばかしよった – Exploring Tosa-ben 2

Following on from Tosa-ben Card Game (龍馬・土佐弁かるた) I thought it may be interesting for some people if I were to do a series of short posts relating to the vocabulary that I learn from the game.

Even if not, I’m learning that maintaining a Gaelic blog is helping me learn the language so hopefully this will help me with Tosa-ben.

Second in the series is いらばかしよった which is pronounced irabakashiyotta*, the meaning is ‘to show off’ or ‘to flaunt’ though this is in past tense progressive form so the meaning would be ‘was showing off’ or ‘was flaunting’.

• the っ signifies a short pause in the pronunciation generally protrayed in English for pronunciation purposes as a double consonant.

よった (yotta) is the past tense of the Tosa-ben ゆう (yuu) which is one of two present tense continuous forms (the other is ちゅう (shichuu)), this differs from common Japanese where there is only one present tense continuous form and that is ~ている (~teiru).

The first ゆう represents present progressive tense, for example I am doing my homework now (not finished) would be おらは宿題しゆう (おらはしゅくだいしゆう – ora wa shukudai shiyuu).

Whereas ちゅう expresses perfect tense for example, I have already done my homework would be おらは宿題しちゅう (おらはしゅくだいしちゅう – ora wa shukudai shichuu). The past tense for ちゅう is ちょた.

Some verbs cannot be connected with ゆう but more information on this can be found on the Tosa Wave Blog.

The common Japanese equivalent for いらばかしよった is 見せびらかしていたよ (みせびらかしていたよ – misebirakashiteita yo).

The example sentence on the card is:

いらばかしよった　龍馬さんが　晋作に　もろーた　短筒を

いらばかしよった　りょうまさんが　しんさくに　もろーた　たんづつを

irabakashiyotta Ryouma(Sakamoto)-san ga shinsaku ni morouta tandzutsu wo

共通語：見せびらかしていたよ　龍馬さんが　(高杉)晋作に　もらった拳銃を

みせびらかしていたよ　りょうまさんが　(たかすぎ)しんさくに　もらったけんじゅうを

common Japanese: misebirakashiteita yo Ryouma(Sakamoto)-san ga Shinsaku(Takasugi) ni moratta kenshuu wo

Now for the part of the post which is likely to go through various transformations as I’m corrected by my はちきん (hachikin) wife or family and friends from Kochi!

English : Ryouma (Sakamoto) was showing off the handgun he received from Shinsaku (Takasugi)

The rest of the sentence is pretty easy to explore this time as it is basically consists of peoples’ names (Ryouma Sakamoto and Shinsaku Takasugi) and alternative vocabulary for a pistol/handgun.

• もろーた would appear to just be Tosa dialect’s pronunciation of もらった which means to ‘receive’.