Ah, whoops. I saw the announcement for this week’s chapter starting, but forgot to come back and actually read it.
I would have expected Yotsuba’s and Ena’s paper chains to differ noticeably in quality…
Today I learnt that Japanese has a word meaning “level of comfort” specifically for things that you sit on. It’s 座り心地.
We used to have a pencil sharpener exactly like that one. It’s probably still around, actually…
Pretty long chapter this week. Forty pages.
あと = and also
あやとり = cat’s cradle
Thank you so much Belthazar, and good point about the paper chains!
Small nuance:
[Verb]てもあう is used when the person receiving initiates the action. This means Yotsuba is initiating Grandma doing origami for Yotsuba. “When Grandma comes, I’ll have her do origami for me!”
[Verb]てくれる is used when the person performing initiates the action. This means Grandma is initiating Grandma doing origami for Yotsuba. “When Grandma comes, she’ll do origami for me!”
Wow, thank you so much! Making notes now! 
Page 79
Final panel - does anyone know what きゃりーばむばむの! Might mean? Something about being carried?
Page 80
まえでんわでいいこにしてたらおみやげもっていくっていってた
前電話でいい子にしてたらお土産持っていくっていってた
“Before, on the phone, [granny] said that if I was a good kid, [she] would bring me a present”
Page 81
Okay, so dad says too much going on about presents is too cheeky and gran might not be so happy about that. Then Yotsuba says:
じゃあいわない - well then, I won’t say [anything]
よつばはいいこなので - I am a good kid
My question is about the なので at the end. Is this the explanation particle, with a な because it is necessary between a noun and a の? And what is the で doing here?
Any help much appreciated!
Good chance you’ve seen her somewhere, on a commercial or an advertisement. I’ve seen her on a Nintendo commercial or two on YouTube.
He’s telling Yotsuba not to run. はしる + な = don’t run.
More reading about this use of な at Maggie Sensei:
http://maggiesensei.com/2015/12/07/how-to-use-the-suffix-〜な-na-なあ-naa/
As you’ve parsed out, this follows いい子 (good kid), a noun.
Imagine the following sentence:
「よつばはいい子だ」
“Yotsuba is a good kid.”
Now we want to say “because Yotsuba is a good kid”.
Let’s consider that ので conveys “because”.
「よつばはいいこだ + ので」
In this case, the だ becomes な.
「よつばはいいこな + ので」
As for why ので meaning because…I think there was a Cure Dolly video explaining it that I’d have to rewatch.
Wow, that is more help that I could ever have expected! Thank you so much again @ChristopherFritz! That’s my study material for the rest of the day! Much appreciated! Thank you!
Lesson plan:
Funny! I’m literally laughing out loud here! I’d already started with the きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ videos on Yutube and was just moving onto the third one when I noticed a notification here! The grammar study might get a look-in sometime tonight! lol!
I had to say きゃりーばむばむ aloud about six times in six different ways before I figured out what it was meant to be. 
I’m doing a separate comment for this due to not knowing how long or short it’d turn out. (Turns it, it’s long!)
Ultimately, I wrote this for myself to better understand ので, so I won’t be offended if no one else reads it! (But if you do read it and find issues, please let me know!)
One thing common in Japanese is placing a word before a noun to modify that noun.
| Word | English | Parts of Speech |
|---|---|---|
| シャツ | shirt | noun |
| red shirt | adjective + noun | |
| bought shirt | verb + noun | |
| clean shirt | noun + な + noun | |
| ウールのシャツ | wool shirt | noun + の + noun |
You can see here the word shirt is being modified in various ways.
By the way, these can also string together
I don’t know if there are any issues with the grammar of this example (any small nuances I don’t know).
Let’s say you ask someone to hand you a shirt. They ask, “Which one?”
You might answer:
Notice how the word “one” is a stand-in for “shirt”? Said another way, “one” is standing in for a noun. What is the noun? Well, we only know from context. But we do have a description of this known-by-context noun. It’s a red noun. Or a clean noun. Or a bought noun. Or a wool noun.
If I say, “put the empty one in the blue one”, you won’t know what these generic nouns are that “one” refer to. (In context, you’d know I’m clearly saying to place the empty soda bottle into the blue bin.)
In Japanese, this “one” which stands in for a noun is もの (thing). So, in Japanese, these answers might be:
(Note that some of these examples may not be 100% correct grammar in Japanese. I hope I’ve got them close enough!)
We can compress that もの into の:
(Again, some of these examples may be incorrect grammar. The first three all come up on Weblio, so that’s a good sign.)
If I say
In my prior comment, I mentioned where だ became な:
「よつばはいいこ だ + ので」 => 「よつばはいいこなので」
The で seen here is also a form of だ. It’s the て form, which is the “continuous use” form.
As a refresher on the て form, it’s like saying:
Here, you have two actions, one happening and then the next happening. The word “and” in English doesn’t really whether the actions happened at the same time, or one after another (“and then”), but I’ve read that the て form in Japanese typically suggests sequential order.
So, ので is just the て form of のだ. This is the same のだ that’s often spoken as んだ, and is called the “explanatory の” followed by だ.
When I replaced
If you ask me why I’m wearing the shirt I’m wearing, I might say
If you ask me, “why are you wearing that shirt”, what you’re really asking is, “what is the reason you are wearing that shirt?”
When I respond, “it’s red” or “because it’s red”, what I’m really saying is "The reason I’m wearing this shirt is because it’s red.
The reason I’m wearing this shirt becomes の
And the is after it is our だ.
の is standing in for the reason. The noun it’s standing in for is “the reason why I’m wearing this shirt”.
「
“The reason I’m wearing this shirt is because it’s red.”
“Because it’s red.”
のだ = because = explanation
ので = the て (continuous use) form of のだ
When I say「
This doesn’t make sense in English, because English is not Japanese. But just as we can, in English, refer to a shirt as a “red shirt” or a “clean shirt” or a “wool shirt” as ways to narrow down which shirt of many, in Japanese you can modify の with another noun to tell which reason you’re referring to. There may be a million reasons I could be wearing this shirt, but the reason I’m wearing it is the red reason, the reason being that the shirt is red.
よつば：「じゃあ、いわない。」
“Then, I won’t say it.”
There may be a million reasons why Yotsuba wouldn’t keep talking about getting a gift.
Which reason, out of all those possible reasons, is the reason? We can modify our generic の, which is the noun standing in for the reason, by putting something in front of it. My examples above were putting a single noun or adjective or verb, but you can actually put a whole clause in there.
よつば：「よつばはいいこなので。」
“Because Yotsuba is a good girl.”
Yotsuba isn’t simply saying “I’m a good girl.”
She’s saying, “The reason I won’t say it is because I’m a good girl.”
“the reason (I won’t say)” becomes の
“is” becomes だ
As for why のだ is in the て form, ので, I don’t know. But I can guess.
I think it’s because she essentially said the second half of a sentence, and then the first half:
「よつばはいいこなのでいわない。」
“I’m a good girl is the reason I won’t say it.”
“Because I’m a good girl, I won’t say it.”
Seen this way, のだ becomes ので because the sentence continues.
If you say the latter part first, and then give the reason second, perhaps you keep the ので form?
Yeah, you need to use the て-form to string adjectives together. Also, I’m not completely sure where the modifying verb needs to go in that construction. きれい is a な-adjective rather than a noun.
No, it’s just の. もの isn’t involved in this construction.
Ah, right. I was focused on the rest of what I was writing, and wasn’t paying close attention there.
This is where I get a little lost. Some English sources refer to this an “adjectival noun”. Does that mean it’s a noun that acts like an adjective? Or it is really an adjective that acts like a noun?
I’ve read that の may have originated from もの, but it wasn’t stated as a definite, so it was probably conjecture.
I probably could have worded it much better. But I do feel for me that thinking of の similarly to もの was helpful on getting a grasp of this use of の. I hope it isn’t something that does more harm than good in the long run.
They largely conjugate similarly to nouns - they form past tense the same way, they interact with the copula the same way, they both need な before んだ, and so forth. However, they can’t function as nouns in every respect - for example, using one as a direct object is verboten (like, what would きれいを勉強します even mean?) - and with the exception of 好き and 嫌い, their English translations are pretty much invariably adjectives. They also have an adverbial form (まじめに勉強します), same as adjectives in English, and unlike nouns in both English and Japanese. With all that in mind, it’s generally better to think of them as a type of adjective rather than as a type of noun.
As always, though, there are differing schools of thought.
Yeah, that caught me off guard a bit. Took a lot longer than I was planning for.
I eagerly await your future essay on きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ. 
Page 78
とうちゃんのかんがえでつけないで
父ちゃんの考えでつ付けないで
I kept trying to read this as “Stick it up without thinking”, but it’s more accurately “Don’t stick it up according to your (Dad’s) thoughts”, right? (“Stick it up how えな said.”)
Page 84
こうちゃかでんのミルクティがおいしいよ
紅茶花伝のミルクティが美味しいよ
「かでん」here confused me for a long time, but it become pretty clear once I just Googled it:
Aye, precisely.
Page 83
よつば今 頭突きで 突撃しようとしたやろ
よつば - Yotsuba
今 - now
頭突きで - with a headbutt
突撃 - charge, attack
しよう - let’s
とした - past of とする, to try to, to be about to
やろ - it seems
I seems that now Yotsuba [thinks] “let’s attack with a headbutt”!
Is that correct?
Page 90
松ぼっくりはなー たき火のたき付けにいいんよ
松ぼっくりはなー - pinecone + topic marker + sentence ending particle
たき火 - campfire
の - possessive
たき付けに - make a fire (is that right? Yotsuba also asks about this in the next speech bubble!)
いい - good
んよ - explanation particle + よ particle
Okay, so gran is clearly saying that pinecones are good for making a campfire, but the grammar is throwing me off here. That の links “fire” to “make a fire” and it all looks very odd. Any ideas?
Plus, of course, reading this I felt like I was back in chapter one of Laid Back Camp!
Page 93
Yotsuba: ばーちゃんおみ
Gran: …おみ?
Yotsuba: …ちがった… お味噌汁についてどう思う?
No questions, just thought it was brilliant! So funny!
Not quite. ～ようとする means “try to (verb)”
たき付け = kindling, fire starter (a noun)
に = for the purpose of (i.e. たき付けにいい = good for the purpose of (being) a fire-starter)
Remember, の links nouns to nouns (most of the time), so if it seems to be joining a noun to a verb, you might want to re-evaluate your impression of the “verb”. You can only use V-stem+に before a movement verb - there’s no movement verb (or indeed any verb) in this sentence.
Heh, that was my first thought too. I really can’t picture one catching fire with just a single match, though.
Aye, they managed to retain the pun for this one in the English version too, because “souvenir” and “soup” both start with “sou”.
Thank you so much @Belthazar!
This is good stuff! Thank you! Yes, I saw 付けに and jumped to wrong conclusions! Thank you so much for setting me straight on this and everything else! Much appreciated! Thank you!
Page 95
そのけんはいいたくない
とーちゃんよけいなことやめて
その - that
けん - item
は - topic particle
いいたくない - I feel like I should know this…. “Don’t want to be” “don’t want to say”???
とーちゃん - dad
よけいな - too many (??)
こと - things
やめて - please stop
I don’t want to talk about that thing.
Please dad stop [going on about] too many things.
Any help here much appreciated!
