みんなさん、おはよう、
I was going to put this in the practice section, but I have some questions about it that are probably better suited to this section.
今日は、私は家に出て、雪が降っていたと思った。しかし、私は降っていた雪じゃなくて桜だったに気がついた。家は桜の下に古い石臼がある。だから、私は石臼に座って、桜が降っているのを見た。風の音も川の音もとりの歌の音も木製の風鈴の優しい衝撃の音を聞こえた。うってつけに静かな瞬間でした。
日本国に花見に行きたいんですが、スコットランドに自分の花見もとても素敵でした。
In the first sentence, I want to say "I left the house and thought it was snowing", but I think what I've actually said might be, "I thought I left the house and it was snowing". There is no doubt about whether or not I actually left the house. Does と思う generally apply to a single clause, or the whole sentence, and is there any way to distinguish between the two?
In the second sentence, I wasn't sure about the て form of じゃない. Is じゃなくて right? I was thinking it might be じゃないで, as in じゃない plus the て form of です. Moreover, I know that the て form is often translated as 'and', but can it mean 'but' in a case like this?
Also in the second sentence, I'm a bit confused about tenses. In English it would be "It was not snow that was falling, but cherry blossoms." But in Japanese, should I use the past tense for the descriptive relative clause 降っていた? And would this be better written as 降っていた何が雪じゃなくて桜だった? (I.e. "What was falling was not snow, but cherry blossoms.") Or 降っていたもの…? ("The thing that was falling...")
When I'm describing what I could hear, do I have to put の音 after everything? Or maybe "have to" is the wrong term. I assume that 音 would be implied with a verb like 聞く, but what I mean is, can I list the things and then say "the sound of all these things" rather than specifying "the sound of" each one? (I actually quite like saying "the sound of" each one. The repetition is kind of evocative of the sounds themselves in a poetic kind of way, but I have curiosity about grammar!)
よろしくおねがいします、
小狼
