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The full text can be viewed here: じゃあるまいし https://www.docdroid.net/XIK9pCk/img-20171020-0001-new.pdf

The sentence in question is from line 8:

おかしなことですが、実は、日本へきて受けたカルチャーショックの一つは、子供のサンダルややかんのピーピーなる音だったんです。

My attempt at translation:

It is a weird thing but, well, concerning one culture shock I received coming to Japan, it was "peep peep" ringing sound of the sandals of the children.

In my translation, I simply left out ややかん since I have no idea what it could mean.

I couldn't find anything for ややかん, since I guess the first や is the enumerative particle. However やかん didn't render any useful results on jisho as well, at least not from my perspective on the full sentence. So maybe someone could solve this riddle for me?^^

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    If a dictionary failed, you could have done this. google.com/…
    – user4032
    Oct 24, 2017 at 13:20

1 Answer 1

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You are correct about や . Looking at jisho.org, it gave me the definition I was looking for, so I'm not sure you looked hard enough.

やかん is a kettle, and the "peeping" sounds are the kettle whistling.

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  • Ouh, thanks! I actually DID look hard enough BUT, english not being my native tongue, I confused "kettle" with "cattle", which didn't make any sense in this context xD Now that you brought it up, I looked for it in an english-german dictionary and found that it means something else which indeed makes some sense here...^^ btw. does ピーピーなる音 modify 子供のサンダル as well then?
    – Narktor
    Oct 23, 2017 at 18:10
  • @Narktor Ah, I see. As for the modifying, I think it can be interpreted both ways grammatically, but in this particular case, ピーピーなる音 only modifies やかん, since sandals don't make that noise.
    – Jimmy
    Oct 23, 2017 at 18:38
  • ピーピーなる音 modifies both 子供のサンダル and やかん, because some Japanese child sandals make sound like "pee pee". youtube.com/watch?v=pmhvv-L5mOg
    – Yuuichi Tam
    Oct 23, 2017 at 19:40
  • @YuuichiTam Ah, I knew about those, but I didn't think they were all that common. Thanks for the info.
    – Jimmy
    Oct 23, 2017 at 20:02
  • @Jimmy I think カルチャーショックの一つ could be interpreted as the peeping sound of sandal and kettle which is one of the culture-shock to the author in Japan.
    – user25382
    Oct 24, 2017 at 0:33

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