なぜ?どうして?Finished!

Well, the best starting point for any grammar related issues: “A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese Grammar”.

You should be able to get them for less than 50 bucks both, and they come in handy every day – especially for readings. :wink:

Yes, they’re on my list but I just can’t afford it right now, especially with shipping… But Christmas is coming soon so I might just stand a chance of finding a kind soul to gift them to me :wink: Cheers!

I’d even go further, suggesting creating a new thread for each chapter (yes, every four pages).

Unfortunately, for keeping track the WaniKani forum structure is an utter nightmare…

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I think as long as we type what page we are talking about in every single reply, it might be easy for anyone to search. Also the Google docs is there…

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Until you do, you can have a look at Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide and/or other online resources like http://maggiesensei.com/category/grammar.

Depending on your fundraising skills :innocent:, you could ignore the Intermediate Grammar Dictionary for now and just stick with the Basic Dictionary; it already covers a lot on its own! :smiley:

Yes, I do look at all those resources, just have very little time to search through them… I did a search for verb+to and nothing relevant came out, hence my asking for a direct link… My grammar studying regimen sucks right now, as I’m trying to keep up with vocab SRS, WK and reading… I plan to maybe drop one of the books I’m reading right now in favor of studying grammar, but I also know that associating grammar points to sentences in books or manga works better for me than example sentences and the likes… Hence my conundrum :slight_smile: Thanks for all the recommandations, I wish I was still a student and had all the time in the world (that’s how I learnt English 20 years ago…)

Ok, I’ve realised that on the reader I’m using I have no idea where the page breaks are. It’s definitely showing pages 10 and 11, but no idea where 10 stops and 11 begins.

As I’m not looking at other people’s translations until I’ve posted my own, the split may have already been mentioned…And i may overlap in to p11.

Anyways, here’s my attempted. I’ve maybe flowered the English up a little in some places for it to make more sense in English…Phrasing/nuance may still be terrible though…

外国にも、お寿司はあるの?

Do other countries have sushi as well?

あんたは、どんなお寿司が好きですか。卵? 鮪? イクラ? 海苔まき? いなり寿司や、ちらし寿司も 美味しいですね。

What types of Sushi do you like? Egg? Tuna? Salmon? Norimaki? Dishes likes Inari sushi and Chirashi sushi are also delicious, aren’t they.

お寿司は、子供たちからお年寄りまで、たくさんの人に人気の、日本の食べ物です。

From children to the elderly, sushi is a popular Japanese meal for lots of people.

酢を混ぜるとご飯が長持ちするので、昔からよく食べられてくました。

In the olden days, when you mixed the vinegar and rice, it would last longer and you would be able to eat it later on.

That’s my guess for the end of p10. Am I close?

Anyways, the final sentence is the one that I struggled with the most, vocab wise.

As for grammar:「酢を混ぜるご飯が」That 「と」can’t be a linking ‘and’ can it? As 「と」is used for nouns and 「混ぜる」 is a verb. Can anyone expand on that or am I missing something?

It’s a conditional “if” there :wink:

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An “if” indeed. Also, 「昔から」means “since the olden days” rather than “in the olden days”. You’ve interpreted たべられて as (the て-form of) a potential form, when the prevailing view in this thread interprets it as passive voice, which is identical inflexion-wise. I wonder if your reading is more defensible than I first thought, but it seems more likely that “the thread” had it right. :slight_smile:
All your other translations seem pretty much bang on to me. (I’m no expert tho.)

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omg yes thank you I was so confused at my ebook version :expressionless:

I also didnt realize we were going off of japan time so I guess I’ll just always be a day behind. oh well!

Hey maybe a simple photograph of the paperback page at the start of the day would solve this ebook page number confusion. I would volunteer if you’d like.

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Page 10

This is my first Reading Group so sorry for the basic questions, but I’m not 100% sure how best to get started if this is my first time reading Japanese literature.

Firstly, in the sentence:
あなたは、どんなおすしがすきですか。

How do we get to “kind” from どん? I get that the sentence is a question to the reader but not the meaning of どん, as I haven’t seen it before.

Secondly, my grammar is quite basic - I have taken a year of beginner Japanese classes once a week and understand basic sentence structure, but my verb and adjective conjugation hasn’t progressed beyond polite present/past positive/negative (e.g. ます). What is the best way for me to look up grammar points/conjugations I don’t understand, and should I be immediately searching any vocab I don’t know in a Japanese dictionary? So far, glancing at the first few pages at least, I’m familiar with all the Kanji from WaniKani, but vocab like どん and the vinegar people have been talking about is beyond me.

Thanks in advance!

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Hello, I’m really confused about the といえば on p11. Reading through the thread it seems there are two different readings for this?

I managed to understand the rest with help from the google docs and the thread, so thanks very much! I think I’ll need to look up what chirashisushi is as I’ve never heard that term before - I think I would have called that sushidon or sashimidon, but have never been sure what the official term was. The す for vinegar was also very confusing without the google doc.

どんな:
Pre-noun adjectival

  1. what; what kind of​

Good rule of thumb: when in doubt, check if what you think is a particle is not actually part of the word…
For grammar I can’t really help, as I’m winging it myself. Tae Kim is great, so is Bunpro and Google is general will help you :slight_smile:

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I think this is a case of the Japanese language being at times untranslatable in a “right or wrong” way… It seems といえば here is the conditional form, as in “if you say/said”, but that in Japanese people also use that form to say “speaking of”. In this case, I think the first translation is easier to understand.

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Ah thank you! and Emucat, above.

I don’t think I’m aware of the conditional ‘if’ use of 「と」then, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
And yep you’re right, that’s exactly how I interpreted たべられて. It being identical to a passive voice may trip my up again.

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It sure is trippy.

I’m not a Pro, but in order to learn I would recommend:

  • Read Tae Kim’s grammar book (it’s posted on the top of this post)
  • When reading, try to identify as many word you recognize. If you check my posts in here, you will see I do that, and then I try to fill de gaps.
  • Check the google docs
  • Ask as many questions as you can!
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I’m totally confused! Buying the ebook was a mistake, I have no idea where the pages start nor end.

On my phone with the ebookjapan app page 10 starts on page 28, but on the browser it starts on page 13, very weird. I can easily see the page ending on the browser though.

Anyway, page 11 was a lot harder to parse than page 10 was.
「きました」in「むかしから よく食べられてきました」, what does this mean?

Does this literally mean, “since old days, the possibility to eat came often.” ?

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I’m already behind because I forgot yesterday was November 1st… Well I guess I’ll be reading pages 10 and 11 once I get home from work today!