A question about the study question 「空に三日月が掛かっている。」

Japanese
#1

The way I’ve interpreted this translation, is more as “The moon is hanging in the sky”, meaning that the moon is clearly there. But the provided translation uses “coming into view”. This would imply that, rather than already being in view, that it is coming. Either it is barely in view or the sun is low enough to where you can see it more clearly. But, in my opinion, that doesn’t seem correct.

掛かる does have a meaning to “come into view” but I have a hard time getting that meaning from the above sentence. Is this an acceptable translation? If so, in which ways should I use 掛かる with this meaning rather than what it’s usually used as (something hanging somewhere)?

1 Like
#2

The “coming into view” part might just be a loose translation of 三日月.

#3

imho, you are right, the new moon is indeed hanging in the sky and “coming into view” translation is an oversight to be corrected.

In the first place, I would remove “to come into view” definition from 掛かる card, and even from JMDict.

かかる has more than 30 definitions with examples in kotobank, and out of those the only one that is related to coming into view is the expression 目にかかる (definition ８イ). 目にかかる already has a separate card in Bunpro (even 2 cards, actually, one of which is unclassified), so this card should just be simplified and link to that one.

The definition related to the moon is １イ:

中空など、高い所に位置する。「月が中天にかかる」

There’s also a note that both 掛かる and 懸かる spellings are used when related to objects hanging in the sky.