I’ve never heard あんまし before, although あんまり and あまり are interchangeable.
It seems that あんまし has the same meaning after all.
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“Y’know” also works as a word that performs a similar function in English. “It’s not very, y’know… it looks like mud.”
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OK, on page 65 when the mum (whose name I still don’t know) comes in and says on panel two
ケーキ 買ってきなさい
Which I’ve read as “Cake - buy” followed by a bunch of stuff after the て which I have presumed means “who wants to” - so “Who wants to buy some cake”.
I can’t figure out what the きなさい means. It seems -なさい attached to a verb stem is another way of making a request.
Is いく being shortened to just き because it’s coming after a て, making the sentence
cake - buy & go - do it? or “Go and buy some cake?”
It’s くる. Buy a cake and come back.
～なさい is the ます-form imperative ending - basically giving an order “Go buy a cake!” in the way that only mothers do.
Noone knows. It still hasn’t been revealed by volume 13.
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Thanks, I still struggle with all these verb conjugations :-/
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Page 65
ケーキ買ってきなさい
I’m terrible with these conjugations, and @Belthazar has already answered your question, but just to compare, as far as I understand, if you were to turn the mum’s order into a request, it would look like this: ケーキを買って来てください. I think that’s right!
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Looks good to me.
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Page 76
Yotusba is talking to Ena and says: よつばがケーキもってやろうか？
Which I know, only from the cheet sheet, is “shall I carry the cakes for you?”
All of the grammar here is much too difficult for me, and I know this is a particularly tricky area, but I was wondering why Yotsuba uses が instead of は.
Any ideas?
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Best I can do is point you here.
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Ouch!
Thank you so much for the link! I’ve read it and made notes on it, and perhaps I’ve taken a tiny step in the direction of understanding it! Thank you so much!
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I’m not very good at this but I’m going to have a try…
I’m going to put spaces in so I can understand the grammar better myself.
EDIT OK spaces don’t seem to come across on the formatted text, I’m using hyphens instead
よつば - が - ケーキ - もって- やろう - か
Yotsuba - が - cake - carry (て form) - give (can’t quite tell why it isn’t やる instead of やろう) - か
My best translation is “Should I carry the cakes for you?”.
If the が was changed to は…
“As for me… carry the cakes for you?”
But I presume both would work…?
(I have no idea what I’m doing)
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Believe me, I understand how overwhelming it can be. After reading a handful of explanations, I think I finally have a general grasp over it. But I think it might be virtually impossible to understand it fully without a lot of immersion.
To your specific question here, the key is that は is for establishing or clarifying existing context, while が is for introducing new information. Since nobody has brought up or suggested carrying the cakes, Yotsuba asking if she should carry it is new information. I don’t think using は here would make much sense, at least not since it’s a question.
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Okay, I’ve got it.
It’s the verb 遣る - やる - to do
And it’s in the volitional (“let’s/shall”) form, which is made up of the stem やり with the final sound switching to /o/ and then う.
Phew!
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Page 84
While I was looking up the difference between あんた and あなた I learnt a new word I might even try out at work some time - したっぱ.
Looking forward to starting chapter 11 soon!
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They’re saying you shouldn’t use it. 
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Yes, I could only refer to myself as したっぱ!
(But, as the rest of my Japanese is so awful, when I do try to speak Japanese at work, no one notices anyway!)
Im not sure where we are but I’ve read ahead and I don’t like みうら at all! Why is she so mean?!
Because she honestly has no idea how to deal with kids. Her worst chapter is yet to come for most of us here, but she does get better after that.
@Pluckabee: We’ll be starting Chapter 11 tomorrow. I don’t like Miura much either, but I think she’s important to have around. The rest of the cast is very lenient to Yotsuba, so it’s nice to have someone mean to her for a change.
How about some writing practice?
よつばとのキャラの中で誰が一番好きですか？ どうしてそう思うんですか？
Out of the Yotsuba&'s characters, who is the one you like most? Why do you think so?
私なら、ジャンボだ。 すごく情熱な男けど、いつも頼もしいキャラ。 悪い意志が全然いない。
For me, it’s Jumbo. He’s a super-passionate guy, but he’s trustworthy and reliable. He’s someone with no ill intent at all.
Stilted, but I’m way unpracticed in production, so I tried to only use structures I know at least a little.
Really not sure I got the conjugations right, but gotta start somewhere, I guess. Yay, writing practice!
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