なぜ?どうして?科学のお話 - Section 1 Discussion Thread, Completed!

Quick tip: if you call the winky face with :wink:, that’s six characters right there. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The vocab list is awesome, you guys rock. Very useful for when they use full hiraganas instead of kanjis you’d know, making sentence structure confusing.

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For those on Bookwalker, the first page is 22 and last page is 46

here


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I am off of work tonight and I am going to sit down with a dictionary and try to work my way through the pages!

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Hey guys! This is my first book club ever! I am happy to join it!
I am not sure about the pace of reading. Do we read one page each day?

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Yes, it’s one page a day. But feel free to comment on any pages read up to the current date (So no worries talking about page 16 tomorrow, or even next week. But please refrain from discussing upcoming pages before the deadline).

We will assume the day starts at the same time as Japan day (just for the sake of synchronizing) :wink:

More info in main thread description: here

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Please cross check with the table of last words per page in the first post though, that looks like it corresponds to three pages in the physical version.

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Page 16 New Edition
Had the pleasure of being off work today so I’m spending my morning at a new coffee shop. Did my reviews and now starting this first chapter, very exciting :slight_smile: The first sentence was pretty easy, but the second is tripping me up a bit.

おとなには、まゆの かたちを ととのえたり、かいたりしている ひともいます。
My understanding is that it says something along the lines of “In order to get ready, adults draw on their eyebrows”? That’s the “feeling” I get. Anyone get something different that can explain the grammar a bit better? I’m mostly parsing the vocabulary and making sense of it that way while I get a hang of grammar stuff.

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Wait, is there a reason we don’t start at page 1 ?
Also why do I find the page 16 reference line (listed by @marcusp) on the page 100th ? (kindle)
and why does the sentence translated by @froobisu ont he post right above shows on page 97 for me ?
I don’t understand anything :see_no_evil:

The first few pages are the table of contents (もくじ if I remember the word correctly). There’s also some spreads with pictures (from the tissue box onwards) at the beginning of the new version of the book (and the ebook) which are not available on the old version of the book, so we’re not doing those (though there is some discussion about them in the home thread of the book club).

And there’s no pages in kindle, you must be looking at the “location” which does not correspond to actual pages in physical books. Indeed, location 100 is roughly where the end of page 16 is.

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Page 16 (in the new edition of the physical book) should be the first page of the first “story”. It looks like this in my book:

I’m not sure why you’re seeing things on later pages. Maybe they’re not labeled by actual page numbers.

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Ah so that’s why… kindle system is quite confusing.

Thanks a bunch for the picture, I found it on “location 95”. If anyone else struggles with kindle like me, that’s the place.

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P16 NE

I read it as : Among adults, some people even arrange or draw on their eyebrows.
or, more literally : concerning adulthood, there are also people who arrange or draw the shape of their eyebrows.
what do you think ?

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Yes, I think it’s about three pages worth in the ebook. I’d been quite worried about the amount to do till I realised that!

There should be a table of contents on the kindle that lets you skip straight to the right section! On the iPad app you can access it via a ☰ icon at the top left, and on a physical kindle you can access it via the GO TO button at the top right.

IMG_4917

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Yea I just found out about that thing after messing with the software a little bit. Thanks though, this is really how to solve the whole problem.

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I’d say that makes sense! Our understanding seems to be similar so I guess I’m not crazy lol.
As a side note, I’m more used to translating dialogue in manga and video games so far. It’s a little different to look at these types of sentences. But I guess that’s a good thing!

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Don’t worry I think most beginners, you and I included, are totally winging it :smiley:

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Page 16

I broke it down like this:
おとなには - in regard to adults
まゆの かたちを - eyebrow shape (plus を)
ととのえたり - arranging/tidying up
かいたり - drawing
している - doing
ひと - people
も - even
います - existing

The X たり…Y たり construction means - “doing things like X and Y” - here “doing things like arranging and drawing…”

The たりform is made by using the plain past form and adding り e.g. かく–> かいた → かいたり

So the whole thing means (I think):
In regards to adults, [doing things like arranging and drawing eyebrows] people even exist.

Or more naturally,
Among adults, there are even people who do things like tidying up their eyebrows or drawing them on.

By the way if you haven’t tried copying and pasting a sentence into ichi.moe yet then try it with this one. It’s like magic for breaking down the sentence!

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Yeah, “location” on the Kindle isn’t the same as a page. I haven’t been able to work out what it does mean, mind, or how it correlates to the length of the book. Maybe it’s paragraph numbers?

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