にゃんにゃん - Kitty Detectives - Vol. 1

I’d rather this stays a forum topic, as I will be able to refer to it once I reach a high enough comprehension level to actually understand the books :wink:

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We have three weeks to do the first story, which gives us about two pages to read per day on average in order to keep up. That ought to be do-able by even the lowest levelers among us with a bit of determination.

Of course questions and comments can come from anywhere in the chapter during the next three weeks, but it would be a bit unsporting for someone to post tomorrow with questions about page 47! It’d be really nice if people can read along more or less together, that would really help the true beginners here, but if people read ahead, that’s fine!

I wasn’t aware of the problem with page numbers. I’m using the physical book and using the page numbers printed there. I have no idea how page numbers work on e-books. I’m a bit disappointed if they are different!

As for the cover, the inside flap, the table of contents and so on, up to you! You can read it if you like and post about it if you like, up to you! Personally, I’ll be heading right into the story, but I see @guillepolito included vocab from those first pages in his wonderful google vocab list!

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I’ve no idea what that sentence means, but don’t like the idea of moving things. Is it possible to have the slack and discord channels (whatever they are) running as well as this thread rather than replacing it?

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Agreed for exactly the reason stated above :point_up:
A thread will remain here for years to come and will be useful to other members.

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I browsed my book this week and I am beginning reading today. I’ll do most of my reading on weekends when I have more time and participate in the forums during the week.

For people on Goodreads that may want to add the book to their reading count, I created an entry for both hardcover and Kindle. First book I ever added fully in Japanese, hope I didn’t mess things up!

Goodreads link for the book:

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The にゃんにゃん探偵団 Reading Group is open! Thank you everyone for your amazing enthusiasm! All questions and answers are welcome, we are here to help each other. Please put the page number at the top of your posts. And let’s have fun!

Discussion of chapter one, あいうえおどろぼう事件 starts here!

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p. 7
Aaaaaand here comes the first question :sweat_smile: :
Does the も after より belong to だれ somehow, or is that grammar? “Nobody” doesn’t quite seem to fit as translation here if I understand the context correctly (I’d translate the whole sentence as such: “Working in the book store can be hectic, but being able to see new books before everyone else is fun”).
Oh and please tell me if my page number works out (guessed what it should be on basis of the voc sheet - is p.9 on my version XD) - thanks :slight_smile:

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I have the exact same question! I came to the same conclusion for the meaning of the entire sentence, but I haven’t been able to make sense of “だれよりも”.

If anyone who’s a little more advanced can give a more literal breakdown of what’s going on here, it would be super helpful. :slight_smile:

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@anon38003452 @Cristina-Z @marcusp @rotry

Discord is like Skype but better, with the ability to voice chat and, more importantly, have separate chat channels you can use. Slack is more complex with it’s chat abilities allowing separate threads within a text channel, as well as separate chat channels.

Keeping everything in this thread is completely fair though, as this thread topic would persist indefinitely (whereas Slack would slowly delete things after 10000 messages). Additionally, both work in a “most recent first” ordering, which would be hard for anyone picking this up later to follow.

@marcusp Since you started this post, you could always make a Discord or Slack later if it ever seems useful to have one.

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Thank you! If you think one of those things would be useful, feel free to make one and we can link to it from here, no problems.

Right. I try to create the chapter threads for Aria on my Friday night, so it’s available Saturday morning in Japan.

Anyway, I hope everyone has fun reading the book! :blush:

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The translation you’ve come up with is right. だれよりも means ‘more than anyone’.

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@polenep @MosbyNeko If you type up the whole sentence with your questions, you might get help from people who aren’t even reading the book.

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Page 7

Maggie Sensei says:

When you want to emphasize something, add も after より
よりも
Ex. 天ぷらよりもお寿司の方が好きです。
= I prefer sushi to tempura.

Though I still don’t get it myself.

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Page 3
I already have a question about the title of chapter 1 (off to such a good start, lol).

What does あいうえお mean in あいうえおどろぼう事件? (Something thief case) If I put that in Jisho, I get 愛上男, meaning skilled male lover. I don’t think that’s the meaning in the context of this book. :joy:

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あいうえお is the Japanese equivalent of abc.
As in the book “The ABC Murders” by Agatha Christie. (Blurred as it appears a little later and I don’t want to ruin your surprise!)

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I had a feeling it meant something along those lines, but I was like “nah, that can’t be right”. Guess I should trust my gut more.

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Correct me if I am wrong:

より means ‘more than’.

Like when you say A より B, it’ll mean B over A.
Example: 私は犬より猫が好きです。
I like cats more than dogs.

Now, よりも is the more emphatic form according to jisho. So, same meaning, but more emphasis. Hence, だれよりも is ‘more than anyone else’.

Hopefully, this helps :smiley:

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Page 7

Thank you! So…
If より means ‘more than’, then よりも means ‘much more than’. Is that correct? How about these sentence pairs here?

私は犬より猫が好きです = I like cats more than dogs.
私は犬より猫が好きです = I like cats much more than dogs.

だれより早く = earlier than anyone else
だれより早く = much earlier than anyone else

Thank you!!!

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Yup, that’s right
I should be the one thanking you for introducing me to this series :smiley:

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