Agreed, on both points! Very short (maybe a good thing to get back in the routine), and I can’t get enough of the Yotsuba cocoon.
A few questions:
Page 7
きのうキャンプから帰ってきたとこでしょ
Is とこ just a shortened version of ところ, implying that something (returning from camp) just happened/happened recently?
Page 8
ジュースのがいっか
I actually have no idea what this sentence means, apart from the word juice. Any help?
Page 8
まだ飲むんかい
So it seems かい is a softer version of か as a sentence ending particle? So this would translate to “You’re still drinking?”, with an implied “Why?” in there?.
Yep! I didn’t think too much about what it was doing there at the time (tbh I tend to gloss over certain words that don’t seem to change meaning much and that’s one of them xD) but Jisho says that it can have the meaning of “have just done; just finished doing,” so I think that’s what’s happening here.
I puzzled over this for a good while and eventually came up with it being a very slangy/abbreviated ジュースの方がいいか? (Like, do you want to drink some of this, or would juice be better?). Based on how Yotsuba responds to it.
Aside from かい being softer than か, “A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar” defines かい as “a sentence final particle which marks yes-no questions in informal male speech.” In other words, you couldn’t use かい unless the question calls for a yes or no answer.
I like what the official English translation did with the line:
I’m way, way, behind with Yotsuba and won’t be catching up any time soon, but I just noticed something…
Isn’t that page 7? Looking this up, I noticed that there is not a single page number printed in this volume! Though they do appear on the contents page! (I’m okay, I always write in page numbers when they are not there!)
Anyway, have fun with Volume 13 everyone! One day I’ll catch up! See you then!
No, pretty sure it’s 6. The title page for this chapter is page 3, and this is 3 pages after that. The lack of page numbers does make it annoying to work out though.
Is this Yotsuba insulting her dad? “You have the qualities of a sandbox”?
Page 26
ふーかにはたぶんそしつがないけども
風香にはたぶん素質がないけども
And then this is playing off the previous page, but her saying that Fuuka doesn’t have any qualities at all? But then follows that up by saying that that’s okay.
Page 39
いきてはかえさん
I feel like this translates to “Not allow them to leave” (referring to the bad people that fall in the hole), but I can’t actually figure out this grammar. Can anyone explain this to me?
No, more like that he’s a sandbox genius. You can tell from the のに that she feels that she would benefit from his presence.
Aye, you’ve hit that one on the head.
I’m guessing 生きては帰さない, though 帰す feels like the wrong half of the transitive pair, so perhaps Yotsuba’s misquoting a line from a movie. Either way, “they won’t leave (this place) alive”.
Hmm. I checked an old volume to compare, and was sure that the contents page gave the number of the page that showed the new chapter name.
Edit: Ah, I hadn’t checked a chapter that had pages before the “title page”. I see how this works now. Who ever knew page numbers could be so confusing. I’ve updated the page numbers in my posts.
I’ve updated the page numbers in my posts.