On page 87 風香 says 「どうもご迷惑おかけしまして申しわけありません…」. What does おかけしまして mean? (Clearly I have difficulty with polite language…)
Thank you both Euphony and fl0rm! With your help, and your very kind patience, I think I’ve cracked this one! Thank you both so much! I’m truly grateful.
迷惑をかける means to inconvenience someone or to cause them trouble. Adding the ご and お prefixes make it more polite → ご迷惑おかける
Then, I think she is using the てしまう form to even further suggest that she did it by accident.
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As far as I understand, it is just a polite form of かける.
ご迷惑をかける would then be “to cause trouble.”
おかけしまして is the polite て-form of that , so the sentence ends up meaning “I have no excuse for the trouble I have caused you”. (Another reference)
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Page 77
I’m with you in believing that this is going to be a typical よつば mishmash!
I have no idea how it fits together, but the “Yotsubato! Volume One Vocabulary List”, which you can find a link for at the top of this thread, does a great job of breaking it down like this:
どーぞ is an informal form of どうぞ and, like you say, used to say “please, by all means”
あがりたまえ according to this list, is an informal form of 上がる/あがる, meaning “come on in” (informal!)
And then the list says おまかい is not a word, which is why Fuuka then repeats it, though the list suggests she may have meant こまかい (small), which strikes me as correct as many people will say apologetically “come in, come on in, though I’m afraid it’s very small”.
Like I say, all this comes from the Vocab List which you can find a link to at the top of this thread.
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My guess is that with the おまかい, she probably meant お構い (おかまい), which is often said as お構いなく when you go to someone’s house.
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Thank you so much SleepyOne! お構いなく would certainly be funnier as よつば has got her roles reversed! 
てしまう in te-form would be てしまって
Page 81
This morning I’m sitting here trying to get my head around 壊れてる
I guess this must be a passive form of 壊れる, ie, “to be broken” rather than “to break”.
So I looked around the net for how to form passives in Japanese, but can’t figure out how it was formed in this particular case.
Any pointers anyone?
I haven’t read that far yet, so I don’t know the context, but I can answer for the conjugations.
Passive verbs are made with the conjugation られる in Japanese. 壊れる→壊れられる
壊れてる is most likely the spoken form of 壊れている, which you are probably familiar with, that means “is broken”.
edit: if you are ever unsure about conjugations I can recommend this tool that I used when I started learning Japanese http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com
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And I love the visual jokes that sometimes happen as you turn the page!
Turning from page 81 to 82 is brilliant! Wouldn’t have worked at all if it was on the same page. Turning over and then getting that full half page image has such impact! So funny.
Just like the impact of turning from p.41 to p.42. Utterly brilliant!
Thank you so much Kumirei!
I’m slowly getting there!
And thank you for the link! Off to look at it now! Thank you!
Page 62, last panel, has me scratching my head a bit. Yotsuba calls out, あかなくなったー！
It’s clear from the context that this means basically “I’m stuck,” but what’s going on here linguistically? I believe this is 開かなく なった , literally “it has become not open.” Seems like a funny way to say it though. I mean, it was already not open… what’s new is that it can no longer be opened. I might expect some use of potential form here, but the negative potential (can’t open) is 開けない, and that doesn’t seem to be involved.
Page 67, last panel, そつとしておこう has me completely stumped. A little help?
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Page 71, top left panel: what’s the joke here? Fuuka has just explained the kanji of her name, which are 風 (wind) 香 (aroma). And Yotsuba brightly says わけわかんねー！, which offends Fuuka.
Yotsuba’s statement means “I don’t understand the reason,” if I’m not mistaken. But if that’s funny… then I’m the one who doesn’t understand the reason. 
Is it something like, Fuuka’s name implies she should smell good, and Yotsuba’s statement implies that she doesn’t think so?
I think the joke here is that Fuuka just went through the effort of explaining her own name and Yotsuba basically just replies with “I don’t get it!” like she doesn’t even really care. Wasted effort on Fuuka’s part is the joke, I think.
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In this case, it seems to be そっとしておこう.
From what I understand, it translates to: Let’s leave that alone.
Fuuka deciding not to get involved in that situation.
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I think it’s fairly close to what you described.
開く is a verb, so the translation would be “It has become doesn’t open”, which means “It can no longer be opened” or “It doesn’t open anymore”.
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I understood it as “I don’t get what that means” or something along these lines. 訳 has “meaning” listed as one of it’s possible translations, I guess it depends on the context.
Just made a quick search to check and found this comment by a native speaker (source):
わけわかんね is a very colloquial expression for わけがわかりません which we often use
just to say “what are you even talking about?” or “it doesn’t make sense at all to me”.
Or, even “…what(.)ever…” :mrgreen:
(I think this would be the closest translation in this scene)
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I thought of it as Yotsuba not being used to writing yet, so not realizing she uses two “words” (kanji) for her name like that confuses her (or just haven’t thought of it, I bet children are fairly used to it really. She just seems less used to what others consider normal). As in “what do you mean you are wind aroma? I don’t get it…”
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