よつばと! Vol 4 Discussion Thread (Yotsuba&! Reading Club)

Page 41

4th panel: みうらてェ出せエサやるよ

No problems here, but I’ve never seen that little ェ before. I guess it stands in for a little っ, but what is it doing here? Any ideas anyone?

It’s the indefinite pronoun の + particle は + sentence-ender な. And yeah, that took me about three goes through before I worked it out. Mostly because “the flowers of aquaculture” makes little sense. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s standing in for a little ぇ. He’s drawing out the 手 a bit, for reasons I don’t entirely know. His accent, maybe?

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Thank you again @Belthazar! Much appreciated!

Page 42

According to Jisho, ブドウ虫 is ぶどうねあぶらむし, or 葡萄根油虫!! Which translates as phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae)… also known as “grape phylloxera” - so whoever did the vocab list is spot on! Genius! Grape bug!!

(Although, having just read that the insects are a pest that attack grapvines, I’d be surprised if they are actually used as fish bait, but you never know!)

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Whoa. How did that even come up in the search results?

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Discussion of Chapter 24 starts here.

A big thank you to everyone who’s been keeping the vocabulary list up-to-date!

Chapter 24 Vocab

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This is seriously a chapter in which nothing happens. They go shopping, they make dinner. So why on earth is it so much fun? :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m quite amused that the third panel on page 72 and the second panel on page 76 have exactly the same speech bubble, only in the latter case with more feminine language and with ハンバーグ in place of カレー.

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I often find the most mundane stories to be the most fun. And I loved that joke too where the mother and son had the exact same conversation!

Added a couple final vocab words for the last couple pages - I didn’t find anything I didn’t understand in the chapter although I learned some new words!

Also, I noticed between chapter 24 and 25 there is a small 4コマ mini-chapter. Do we want to discuss this week or next week?

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I’d say it counts as this week’s.

If we do add it to this week’s, that gives us two forty-page slabs in a row…

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. AFAIK, this only happens once. I created a new section in the list for it.

The section isn’t long enough to span a whole week, so I think we should do it alongside another chapter. Since this week’s was long, let’s do it next week with Chapter 25.

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I’m a bit behind this week. This weekend was busy with cleaning my apartment and a trip to USJ. June is looking pretty slow at work though, so I will have plenty of “study” time :slight_smile:

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On Page 73 when she says: 日本語上手いな :joy:

Here’s when it changes perspective from Yotsuba to that other kid and his adventures. :laughing:
At least make it a spin-off! :rofl:

風香 :star_struck: :heart_eyes: cough cough :sweat_smile: ハンバーグ様!:smiley:

Spinach is so good! Haven’t had curry in a while, though. :curry:

The こんにゃく屋 joke again! :joy: So good.

What’s the song supposed to be? In page 89. :eyes:

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I got no idea. I was trying to work it out. Maybe it’s the theme song to some cooking show?

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does anyone know the Kanji that 風香 says in the first panel of p.85: (__)ぶポイントとか.

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選ぶ(えらぶ)ポイント :slight_smile: As in the characteristics which should be taken into consideration when choosing.

It’s in the vocab list, in case you want to take a look at that. :wink:

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It wasn’t mentioned in the list so I thought I would…p.85:

こんにゃく問答

Noun

  1. irrelevant and incoherent dialogue; meaningless parlor debate; dialogue at cross purposes​

Idiomatic expression
Other forms
蒟蒻問答 【こんにゃくもんどう】

This is an awesome 風香 pun. Basically,

風香: Yotsuba, your dad used to be a こんにゃく seller right? (one makes stupid/incoherent arguments)
etc.

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What you wrote is interesting, but I don’t necessarily think that’s the joke here. (EDIT: Or rather, if so, there is at least a second joke)

Fuuka probably got bad intel from Yotsuba. Koiwai does translations 翻訳(ほんやく). If you remember from the Elephant chapter, that’s when Koiwai reveals he’s a translator because he pretends to translate what the elephant is saying.

Volume 3 Chapter 19 pg 128

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It happens explicitly on the chapter where Fuuka helps Yotsuba with the laundry because her dad is busy.

She asks Yotsuba what he does, and she says こんにゃくや, which makes Fuuka think he is a konjac seller/maker.

While interesting, I also don’t think that’s Fuuka’s intention. She is good at puns, though.

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Chapter 7, to be precise. He tells her 翻訳家, but she tells Fuuka こんにゃく屋. I’d forgotten about that when I first read this chapter, so at first I didn’t get the jokes - judging from the positions of my bookmarks, I’d gotten as far as chapter 6.

In the ADV English translation they’ve gone with “translator” → “trainspotter”, so Fuuka bringing up Yotsuba’s mention that he makes konjac is a little bit out of the blue in the English version of this chapter.

I’m… pretty sure it’s a running joke that she’s not. :stuck_out_tongue:

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