よつばと! Vol 6 Discussion Thread (Yotsuba&! Reading Club)

Haha! This never gets old. :joy:

O^O

image

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I know! When I gave the chapter a quick read-through yesterday I was rolling about in laughter on page 188, panel 6, the way Yotsuba teases him with her burger! Absolutely brilliant!

:o I got spoiled. :joy:

Ooops! Sorry!

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Hahah! It’s so funny. :laughing: I could go for some burgers or ramen right about now. :drooling_face:

I also need another 本棚. :weary:

Well, volume 6 finished in time. :innocent:

I also drank too much milk. :face_vomiting:
They didn’t seem to have this problem after drinking two glasses, is it only me?

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Page 6

So, the weekly live reading starts volume 6 this week and so I thought I’d give it a read through… didn’t take long before I hit a problem!

でなー おしろつくったんだー

でなー - I guess this is just an opening phrase, to get people’s attention
おしろ - no idea
つくった - made
ん - explanation particle
だー - copula

"So, I made a _____ "

たまものったちゃんとしたやつだ!

たま - ball
も - also
のった - rode
ちゃんと - properly
した - down
やつ - thing / person (referring to dad?)
だ! - copula

“dad also rode the ball down well”

As you can see, I am totally lost! Thank you for any help you can offer!

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Page 13

My face during most of the weekly readings

actually most of my time studying Japanese…

(I won’t ask for a grammar breakdown of Ena’s explanation here, it’d be wasted on me!!)

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I’m not certain the meaning, but I take the で to be like in では and essentially meaning “and then”, followed by な (although I’m not certain what the latter brings). The official English translation begins this word balloon with “And then”. I get the feeling of a kid saying “Then you know” as they proceed to say something you don’t know about.

There’s no particle here, but I would expect おしろ to be the object of つかった.

「おしろつくった」

Looked at this way, I expect おしろ to be a noun, and something a person can つかう (make). When a word begins with お, I consider it’s probably an honorific prefix, and the word can be read without it. In this case, it would be しろ.

Looking at the last chapter of volume 5, I see the girls were at the beach (Ena and Yotsuba, but not Miura, thus Yotsuba relating the events to the homework-laden Miura). So rather than having built a magnificent castle like shown in the screenshot above, this would be a sand castle.

See panel above =D

That would be 乗る, but I think Yotsuba is saying 載る. Let us never underestimate the power of kanji. (And looking back on the prior chapter, as I’d otherwise be lost.)

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Truly, @ChristopherFritz, you are marvellous! Thank you so much! (And yes, it doesn’t help that I had a Nihongo meltdown a couple of weeks ago and missed the last couple of chapters!). Thank you so much again!

I’m purposefully selectively quoting here.

Simplifying the Sentence

「使わなくなったものを使って使えるものにするの」

I like to simplify complex sentences to get an idea of what’s going on.

  • The て form of a verb can be used to join multiple verbs/actions, so I’ll split the sentence into two parts. This is only to make it easier for me to digest the two parts.

「使わなくなったものを使う。使えるものにするの。」

  • 使わなくなった is modifying もの. Let’s remove the modifier for now.
  • 使える is modifying a second もの. We’ll remove this modifier as well.
  • The の at the end is the “explanatory の”. I’ll drop that off to simplify.
  • Since there are two もの, I’ll mark them as もの❶ and もの❷.

The core of this sentence is:

「もの❶を使う。もの❷にする。」

First Clause: もの❶を使う

In this clause, the action is 使う (to make use of). In order to make use something, you have to have something you’re making use of. When a verb is using a noun, that noun is marked with the を particle.

In the “first sentence”, the verb 使う (to make use of) is being done to もの❶. “Make use of もの❶.”

Second clause: もの❷にする

In this second clause, something is turned into もの❷. Since this clause doesn’t state what is being turned into もの❷, we can use the pronoun “it” and say “Turn it into もの❷.”

Looking at the modifiers

At this point, we know もの❶ is made into もの❷. What is being made into what?

The word もの is like the word “thing” in English. If your spouse tells you to “Stop by the store and buy the thing” on your way home from work, you’re not going to have any idea what they are asking for.

For clarification, they need to modify “thing”. “Thing” can be anything, and modifiers limit what it can be. They specify what it is. Consider if instead your spouse tells you to “Stop by the store and buy the thing you place onto a birthday cake, to represent one’s age, and put fire onto to be blown out.”

Now that "thing" has been modified, it's undeniably clear what kind of thing you need to buy.

The in-law’s birthday is sure to be a real blast!

Modifying もの❶

「使わなくなったもの」

This breaks down to:

  • 使う to use
  • ない not
  • なった became (completed form of なる)
  • もの thing

= thing that became not used

Something that previously was used, but became no longer used. (Based on the prior page, this thing is Ena’s old clothes that she’s outgrown.)

Modifying もの❷

「使えるもの」

This breaks down to:

  • 使える to be usable (potential form of 使う)
  • もの thing

= thing that is able to be of use

Something that can be used. (Based on the panels, this is the stuffed doll.)

Repopulating the modifiers

「もの❶を使う。」 => 「使わなくなったものを使う」
“Make use of thing.” => “Make use of became-not-used thing.”

「もの❷にする。」 => 「使えるものにするの」
“Turn it into thing.” => “Turn it into can-be-used thing.”

Re-joining the clauses

Time to put them back together:

「もの❶を使ってもの❷にする。」
“Make use of もの❶ and turn (it) into もの❷.”

「使わなくなったものを使って使えるものにするの」

“Make use of became-not-used thing, and turn it into can-be-used thing.”

Said less literally, “Take something no longer used and make it into something usable.”

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No, no, seriously, I can’t express how amazing your post is! Right now it looks like something from a secret code laboratory, but later today, when I get out my pencil stub and notebook and get to work on cracking it, it will all make sense!

Thank you so much!

My thoughts, as I wrote it:

  1. I’ll make this very simple.
  2. I’m doing a great job of making this simple.
  3. Hm, how can I explain に+する in a simple way? Should I contrast it with に+なる, even if that complicates things?
  4. Let’s add some examples for the particles. No, now it’s complicated. Let’s remove those.
  5. Ah, I missed there being a て form of a verb here. Well. That changes half of what I wrote…
  6. Why has this become so complicated?
  7. All right, I’ve sufficiently made it all simple. Simplish. Kind of simple. It’s still complicated, isn’t it?

Maybe my next posts on my personal Japanese-learning-notes web site will be on に+する and に+なる. I understand the latter (managed to learn it watching some not-subtitled anime in Japanese many years ago!), but the former I still have to look up every time I encounter it.

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I didn’t read it all, but great job! :sweat_smile:

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No! You’ve given such an incredible explanation! I’ve just finished working through it all and making notes (pages 27 and 28 are nice and empty, the perfect place for getting all this down) and I can’t thank you enough! Wow, you really ought to be teaching this stuff professionally! Thank you!

sweats in Japanese teacher

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Yeah, I’d be sweating too if I was stuck with someone like me as a Japanese language teacher! :wink:

I’d love to reach a point where I could visit my high school Japanese teacher and show her I’ve made a lot of progress, but by the time I reach such a point, she probably won’t be alive anymore =( Please live a long life, Hasegawa-sensei!

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I usually forget grammar points pretty much a second or two after I learn them… but in this case it got almost instant re-enforcement on page 22 when Yotsuba says:

たべおわったらポケットになる

Which I understood right away thanks to your post!

“When I finish eating, it (the bag of crisps) becomes a pocket”

Thank you again Christopher!

And to think, I was this close to deleting that section because the dialogue didn’t contain に+なる, and I was afraid it might distract and confuse.

I wish I had your longevity of memory =O

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I’m glad you didn’t delete it because…

… knock me down with a feather if にする doesn’t then appear in the next panel!

でも けーたいでんわにした!

Amazing!

So, if I understand correctly, in the second panel on page 22, the crisp packet turns into a pocket by itself as it were, while in the third panel on page 22, the remote control is turned into a phone (by Yotsuba). Got it! Thank you again!

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Sounds like that’s a good chapter for those two.

I looked through a volume of a comic to look for instances of に+する and に+なる to add to my Japanese notes web site (for personal reference), and I didn’t find a single one in the whole volume I looked through =(

That is my understanding, 100%.

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