うどみゆー – Exploring Tosa-ben 3

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.

Third in the series is うどみゆー which is pronounced udomiyuu, the meaning is ‘to be in uproar’ or ‘to be in a state of disturbance’. The ゆー at the end indicates that this is present tense progressive form so the meaning would be ‘is currently in a state of uproar/disturbance’.

The common Japanese equivalent for うどみゆー is 大騒ぎしている (おおさわぎしている – ohsawagi shiteiru).

The example sentence on the card is:

うどみゆーぜよ　国中が　龍馬がなぐれたとゆー　「大政奉還」で

うどみゆーぜよ　きにちゅうが　りょうまがなぐれたとゆー　「たいせいほうかん」で

udomiyuu zeyo kunichuu ga Ryouma ga nagureta to yuu “taisei houkan” de

共通語：大騒ぎしているよ　日本中が　龍馬が苦労したという　「大政奉還」で

おおさわぎしているよ　にほんちゅうが　りょうまがくろうしたという　「たいせいほうかん」で

common Japanese: ohsawagi shiteiru yo nihonchuu ga Ryouma ga kurou shita to iu “taisei houkan” de

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 : Throughout the country people are talking about how Ryōma succeeded through the struggle to bring about “taisei houkan”.

*大政奉還 (たいせいほうかん – taisei houkan) was the restoration of power to the Emperor (from the military leaders who ruled Japan for hundreds of years until this point in time). Ryōma Sakamoto was the integral figure in effectively ending Tokugawa (the reigning military family) rule, unifying a newly self-aware Japan and opening Japan up to outside influence. Sadly, he was assassinated before his efforts finally came to fruition.

This card was pretty tricky for me to translate hence the clunky sentence in English.. If you can translate it more cleanly then please leave your suggestion below in the comments section.

So, now to the rest of the sentence and a look at other Tosa-ben (if any) at play in this example.

• ぜよ (ze yo)– though I suspect this may be shared with other dialects, ぜよ is the Tosa-ben alternative to ですよ which is an emphasised copula, with ぜ being the copula and よ providing the emphasis.
• とゆー (to yuu) – this is just a different pronunciation of the standard という which in this context means ‘to say’.
• 国中 (kunichuu) – again I don’t believe that this is Tosa-ben but it is more likely to have been used at the period of time that the card and example represents as Japan wasn’t so much of a singular, unified entity at the time and most likely (in my humble opinion) it would have referred to the Tosa han (territory) rather than Japan itself.
• なぐれた – this is the past potential form of なぐる which I’m told is old Tosa-ben and must be roughly equivalent to 苦労する which means ‘to succeed through a struggle’.. sort of