Burden? You’re a pillar @guillepolito. Thank you for all your great input in this club!
And thank you everyone else too! I’m not yet quite finished (had a busy day) but reading fast now and almost there. I also could not have done this without all the amazing people here.
And just one hour to go (Japanese time) before we start story two!
Reading of the second story in the book にゃんにゃん探偵団 starts now! All questions and answers are welcome as we are here to help each other. This book club is for people of all levels. Please try to read along with the schedule in the thread title (which is approximately one to two pages a day) and please put the page number at the top of your posts. Let’s have fun!
Discusssion of chapter two, キャサリンはゆくえふゆい, starts here!
Links:
@marcusp, if the idea is to continue with the 2 day sliding window, here is a schedule.
For those who don’t know what I mean by sliding window: the idea is to keep the original “two pages per day”, but actually doing “four pages every two days”. So there is a window of two days that we are “sliding” forward a day a time.
This would mean first that each day we can still post questions about the previous day pages! (this is particularly handy for people in completely different timezones ^^). Also this allows people to have different routines: you can read two pages per day, or four pages every two days (reading one day all four pages if you there is one day you couldn’t read).
| Day (DD/MM) | Pages |
|---|---|
| 22/07 | 52-53 |
| 23/07 | 52-55 |
| 24/07 | 54-57 |
| 25/07 | 56-59 |
| 26/07 | 58-61 |
| 27/07 | 60-63 |
| 28/07 | 62-65 |
| 29/07 | 64-67 |
| 30/07 | 66-69 |
| 31/07 | 68-71 |
| 01/08 | 70-73 |
| 02/08 | 72-75 |
| 03/08 | 74-77 |
| 04/08 | 76-79 |
| 05/08 | 78-81 |
| 06/08 | 80-84 |
| 07/08 | 82-84 |
| 08/08 | 84 |
Here is am with the questions for the new story!
pag 52
「あね、あんた。 探偵はじめるってほんと？」
じめるって: I could not find the meaning of this verb.
ほんと: is this supposed to be ほんとう？
I would guess it means something like: “hey, you. Are you really a detective?”
「おもしろそうだから あたしも やろうと 思って。」
おもしろ interesting
そうだ people say / I am of the impression
から since/ because
あたしも me as well/ me too
やろとう with a guy
思って think
I must have got many things wrong because I can’t make sense of the sentence above with these translated words.
Pag 53
あたしは あのさぎ師のいえから おくられてきた ねこを ゆびさした。
あたしは I +は
あのさぎ師のいえ the impostor of the house
から from
おくられてきた could have send? I am not sure
ねこを cat +を
ゆびさした pointed
I guess she means she pointed at the cat she received from the impostor but I don’t how to fit all together especially the verb, I keep thinking she is referring to the fact that she could have send him to jail but that can’t be right.
That’s it for now, thanks for your help guys,I could not I without it!
にゃんにゃんのディスコードで、僕たちはボイスチャットしようと思っています。
興味があったら、これを書き込んでください： Nyan Nyan discussion - When2meet
みんなは違う場所に住んでいるので、UTCを使ってください。
ディスコードはメセージを送ったり、ボイスチャットで話したりできるアプリなのです。
まだ入っていない人は、このリンクが使えます： Discord
In the Nyan Nyan discord, we were thinking about doing a voice chat sometime.
If you’re interested, please fill this out: Nyan Nyan discussion - When2meet
Since we’re all from different time zones, please use UTC time when filling out the form.
If you’re not aware, Discord is a cool messaging application that also has built-in voice chat.
If you haven’t joined yet, you can use this link: Discord
Edit: to clarify, in the voice chat, we could do stuff like read a few pages together, taking turns reading sentences and making sure we understand them as a group. Or we could just ask questions and share any notes we have from nyan nyan. I’d also be down to drill people with comprehension questions in japanese to get some speaking practice, if anyone would be so daring.
The preceding は isn’t actually the particle は-- it’s a part of the verb.
はじめる (始める） is to begin/start doing something.
In casual conversation I also hear ほんとう said more shortly as ほんと, so you’re right on that.
やろう here isn’t the noun 野郎, but the volitional form of the verb やる (to do). The と afterword does not mean “with”, it’s like the quotational と.
So you always see the construction 〜と思う (I think 〜). The volitional form + と思う then means that “I think I’ll do [something]”, showing your intentions to do something.
To translate that sentence, it means something like Since it seems interesting, I thought I’d do it too
It’s more like “that imposter’s house”
And then the 送られる used here is not the potential form, but the passive form. “it was sent”
Page 52
「ねえ、あんた。探偵はじめるってほんと？」
Thank you both for that!
探偵はじめるってほんと？
探偵 - detective
はじめる - 始める - to begin/start something
って - I hear that
ほんと - short version of ほんとう - 本当 - really
Because of that って I would translate this as
“I hear that you’ve started to be a detective! Really?!”
or
“I hear that you’ve become a detective! Is it true?!”
Yes, that’s the idea. To continue as we have been. But thanks for the schedule. That saves me having to do the maths myself.
Page 52
「おもしろそうだから あたしも やろうと 思って。」
Thank you so much for this amazing breakdown of the sentence! The only question I’m left with is why the final very ends with って. I assume this is the て-form here (for linking to another verb) and so I guess she has just dropped the final part. Is that right? And what has she left out?
(Is the full form やるうお思っている or やるうと思っていります…?)
Page 53
The word さぎし, (swindler; imposter; crook; cheater) has three kanjis according to Jisho: 詐欺師, bu the book writes it as さぎ師, only using one of the kanjis. I guess it is to keep the level of the kanji low for kids. I’m just surprised that words are broken up into kanji/non-kanji like this, though I think I’ve noticed this elsewhere too.
Yes. People sometimes drop the final verb from an AてBて…C construction.
I think the tense is kind of undefined in that case but I’m not sure.
It’s pretty common. Arguably one of the downsides of the “Wanikani method” is that you think of words too much as Kanji sequences, which doesn’t match the way native speakers think (since they learn to speak before they learn to read :)).
(The author of JSL actually thought it was a bad idea to teach people kana or kanji until they can speak basic Japanese.)
There are also alternative Kanji spellings for words which might keep some things as okurigana.
待合 vs 待ち合い.
Thank you for that!
Wow, that’s the opposite of me. I can read a little, but can’t say a thing!
Okay, danger of a diversion here… back to the book! Thank you @aiju!
Page 52
Phew, looking up kanjis that you don’t know the sounds or meanings of is hard!
But I want to figure out the sign in front of Hanae’s shop:
The first line is, of course, easy! It’s the title of the book!
にゃんにゃん探偵団
にゃんにゃんたんていだん
“Meaw meow detective team!”
The second line is difficult!!
ご用の方は裏へお回りください
ごようのかたはうらへおまわりください
ご用の方 - customer, guest
は - topic marker
裏 - back
へ - direction particle
お回り - from 回す - to turn. The お clearly makes it polite. Not sure what the り is doing there!
ください - please
Meow meow Detective Team
Visitors please go round the back
Yes!
I found Jisho far more useful than other Kanji lookup things but I wish there was something that did fuzzy matching of all the radicals or something like that.
I found the SKIP method to be quite useful on occasion as well, but it’s pretty useless when you can’t see all the strokes clearly.
回す a transitive verb, i.e. when you turn something else, not yourself.
It’s actually 回る (まわる) → 回り → お回り. (polite nominalised form).
Something like (literally) “Customers, please give me a turn towards the back”
(EDIT: BTW, if you haven’t noticed, with す/る pairs the す is transitive, with -eru / -aru pairs the -eru is transitive (both have some exceptions I believe))
I have to admit to a misty haze coming down and covering the eyes when I read words like “transitive”, but I know that if I can buckle down and study this stuff it will be useful in the long run! Thank you so much for the great pointers @aiju!
An additional note: You might find yourself wondering, what is the difference between this and 回ってください？
Both are perfectly correct, but the one used in the book is even more polite than 回ってください。
This dives into the wonderful world of keigo.
This construction お + verb stem + ください is used to make very polite requests-- something that you would say to a respected person like your customers.
That is brilliant! Thank you @Cychloryn!
(And the verb stem in this case being り has to do with the transitive/intransitive stuff aiju was talking about I guess! I have much to study!)
Transitivity refers to whether a verb takes an object or not.
A transitive verb takes an object.
An intransitive verb doesn’t.
(Maybe helpful to remember that the transitive verb is acting “through” something? If you know your Latin prefixes…)
English is pretty confusing and English terminology is confusing, too!
In English it literally refers to presence or absence of an object. It is considered a property of the sentence, not the word.
That’s because a lot of English verbs can work in either transitivity.
In the first case, the intransitive form literally just doens’t specify the object.
In the second case, the subject has to move to object position!
(If you want to be technical, the second case is sometimes called “ergative”. “Ambitransitive” (ambi=both) covers both cases)
In Japanese instead it’s actually much less confusing!
(But I understand it is difficult coming from English)
Verbs usually either take an object (transitive) or they don’t (intransitive).
If they do take an object, and it’s not there, you know you have to infer it.
EDIT: Of course, English being complicated, it also has verbs that don’t like the ones I mentioned:
(This is what it will sound like to Japanese speakers if you mix up your intransitive/transitive verbs…)
Wow, thank you so much for all that. There’s a lot there for me to be getting on with! Thank you!