よつばと!Vol 1 Discussion Thread (Beginner's Book Club)

Page 189

ジャンボ says ほれもってみ?
I know he is saying “do you want to hold it?”
But can anyone tell me what the み is?

I might be wrong but I thought it short for みる which you adds after verb to say try.

So ほれもってみ?

Would be : Do you want to try holding it ?
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/try

However I might be wrong, since I didn’t bother looking up if I was wrong or not because it made sense in the context.

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Perfect! Yes, it makes perfect sense in context! Thank you so much!

That one confused me a bit too, it made sense in context as a form of ~てみる, but I’ve never seen it shortened like this before.

What I found after some quick research is:

~てみ is a colloquial form for V+てみて(ください)

That makes sense to me, as it fits the context perfectly (since Jumbo asks Ena to try and hold it, ~てください form is a perfect match) and also explains why we don’t see ~てみる shortened like this in general.

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Well, it looks like we’ve just about reached the end of the book!

I haven’t had time to ask questions for the past few weeks, but I’ve been reading along and following the discussion.

Thank you to everyone that both asked questions and answered them! Before staring the book, I had never read all the way through a Japanese book before (well, it’s a manga but whatever), so I’m proud that I not only finished it, but was also able to understand most of it (largely thanks to everyone here).

Even some of the most basic questions helped reveal things which I didn’t know I didn’t understand, so this has been truly enlightening for me.

Now, since this is a discussion thread, I guess I should discuss the book. Keep in mind there are obviously going to be spoilers if you haven’t read it.

I loved this book a lot more than I thought I would. Despite being a children’s book, it still managed to make me laugh. Some of my top moments included: The bathroom window gag, the measuring tape gag, Yotsuba hiding in a drawer in the store, Yotsuba ramming her dad with the bike, Yotsuba’s dad taunting her with the bird repellent balloon, the view on pages 166-167, the third panel on page 202, page 220, and just Yotsuba’s fiendishness in general. All the characters were great, and they all had their own quirks that made them unique.

I bought up to book 3, but I’m sure I’m going to get all the rest of them once I’ve finished the ones I’ve got. I’m already starting book 2 while I wait for Kiki.

Once again, thank you to everyone on here!

Until the next book!

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I made it! :woman_cartwheeling::trophy:

This is the first book/manga/not-dialogue-in-a-textbook thing I’ve ever tried to read in Japanese, and I finished it, so that’s pretty cool. I actually feel like I learned some grammar along the way, too - I still have a lot of work to do on that front, but there are things that were completely foreign to me at the beginning of the book that I can now at least somewhat readily understand (after reading everyone’s helpful notes and/or looking them up 50 times :sweat_smile:). Also, being able to laugh out loud at a joke in a different language is a pretty neat feeling.

The ending was really cute. :3 I’m really curious to learn more about where Yotsuba came from and how her dad ended up with her, so I feel like I have to keep going with the series to see if we ever get more info (I mean, I’m sure I could probably look it up on Wikipedia, but what fun would that be?). I’m also curious about what other language(s) her dad knows, that he can be a translator? I feel like that would (maybe) be a big clue as to where he picked her up from. I don’t know, I’m just weirdly curious about her dad now, lol. I tried to see if I could read any text on the books in his office, but I could not :pensive:

I think one of my favorite elements of the book was the father-daughter dynamic between Yotsuba and her dad. I liked watching them tease and be goofy with each other. …My other favorite was Jumbo, aka きりんさん xD Just A+ deadpan humor from him in Chapter 4.

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I think there was a poll at some point as to whether or not to use a thread per chapter or a book. As someone coming late to the discussion, but wanting to use the thread as a helpful reference, having a thread per chapter would be really helpful. I’m sure there’s a lot of helpful stuff in here for me trying to read the first chapter, but there are hundreds of posts.

Just me 2p worth.

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I was initially opposed to having everything in one thread as well, but it’s far more logical. Having separate threads would be even more of a pain.

This is why people mention the page number of the page they’re stuck on. If you click on the search icon at the top, and click on “search by topic”, you can find posts relating to the page you’re stuck on.

If there’s nothing for the bit you’re stuck on, feel free to ask about it!

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Is there a way of grouping search terms on Discourse? If I search for “page 1” (quotes included) then two of the results are posts #10 and #15, neither of which have that string in them. :frowning:

That’s simply because no one has mentioned page 1 (since it’s the title page of the book) so it’s just going by the next closest terms, putting them in order of when they were posted. If you were to search, say, page 11, then you would get a bunch of posts of people talking specifically about page 11.

Oh, wow! That is some unexpected search behaviour. I can understand it returning posts for “page 100” if I search for “page 10”, but showing posts which just contain the word page is…not how I would implement it. :smiley: I guess it might be because fallback terms is more friendly. shrug

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Bwahahahaha, Yotsuba has finally arrived!

Now I just need to start actually reading it.

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And now that book one is over, can I say thank you to everyone too.
I’ve been really busy the past couple of weeks and not able to post much, but this whole experience has been wonderful! Like others here, this was the first Japanese book I’ve ever read! And I loved it! Thank you!
Looking forward to book 2, and any more questions or comments that may pop up in the meantime!
Thank you everyone!

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I’m a bit late the party as well. I’ve started a Google doc to keep track of what I’ve managed to translate so far, with lots of links to resources including this thread. It might be of some use. :smiley:

I actually looked it up on wikipedia because I wanted to know, and didn’t know how long it would take for it to become known!

The short answer is, we never learn. It never seems to state what language the father translates or what country he found Yotsuba in. I believe its a bit of the wonder of Yotsuba, and its for the reader to imagine where she is from.

On page 7, Yotsuba turns to her dad and says “きょとはまついか?” which I’m struggling to understand. Putting it into Google Translate (which I realise isn’t great) gives results like “Do you want to ruin yourself?” which seems an odd thing to ask!

However, Jisho offers up “待つ” as a verb meaning “to look forward to”, so is she asking her Dad if he’s excited about moving?

Had to look it up. Your transcription is completely wrong :D.
Be carfeful when reading the hiragana. The correct transcription is:
きょうはまつりか?
which means: Is there a festival today?

EDIT: Didn’t want to sound like a snuff. Just happend somehow, I’m sorry. That’s one of the great things btw when you start to read Manga. You become much more used to shapes of different hiragana and katakana (especially the “sound words” can look really funny) which helps with your recognition off all kana and handwriting a lot.

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AAaaaah! Okay, I see that now. I got my “to” the wrong way around, and that “ri” has me totally confused! It looks like katakana but the Wikipedia page shows that style as hiragana. Good thing I’ve got the user script for randomising fonts installed.

Like a “snuff”? I can’t find that in Jisho! :joy:

Neologism. Stands in for asshole in this case :smiley:

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