キノの旅 Week 13 Discussion

I hope you join either of the next two intermediates!

5 Likes

I’m actually joining both! I guess at least trying is good. We’ll see how it goes :smile:

6 Likes

New vocab from this week’s reading (237):
あとがき = Preface
:thinking:

5 Likes

Unless I’m misreading what you wrote, I think that means afterword(or at least everything I’ve read in Japanese has had it at the end, and Jisho also says it means that)

(Or is that a joke/reference to something in the book I’ve forgotten about or I didn’t get? In that case, just feel free to ignore me being stupid here)

I guess the author called it preface because of his habit of reading the afterword of books first.

5 Likes

I coudn’t decide if it was a mistake or a joke, honestly

3 Likes

I would like to believe Japanese people are not that bad at English, and at least this case has a good explanation/excuse :joy:

5 Likes

In case it’s not in your copy:

4 Likes

Oh, now your comment suddenly makes a lot more sense! It’s very possible that it was there but that I just automatically skipped the English because of all the Japanese surrounding it, but that’s kind of amusing either way.

That almost has to be on purpose, doesn’t it? The english in the title of the other chapters wasn’t an exact translation either, if I recall correctly

4 Likes

As @sigolino said, it’s on purpose :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Oh! I see from the photo above that my あとがき starts differently…
Gotta love being the only person reading the other version :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

Does it explain the censoring choices? :wink:

1 Like

I wish! And the differences in the texts overall was so random. I almost wonder if they had to make a certain percentage of changes so that the Tsubasa Bunko version could have a different copyright to the other version. :woman_shrugging:

1 Like

I finished on time! :partying_face:

I have to say I probably enjoyed this more than 時をかける少女 even if half the time I was like… why is everyone like this?
It’s probably not the genre I would usually read on my own but it was fun reading it with the club and I take it as a cool incursion into unknown territory.

I’m still really a noobie at this Japanese thing and I was surprised that I could read 時をかける少女 and I thought maybe キノ was pushing it too much, this being the intermediate club and all, but even though there was a whole bunch of unknown grammar and vocab I somehow made it through, learned a lot, and now I feel like I might be able to start reading things on my own?
I honestly couldn’t have done it without the book club and I’m really excited for the upcoming books.

* Reads first sentence of Haruhi and forgets all this optimism BS *

16 Likes

You get used to it! It’s just a lot of subordinate clauses!

5 Likes

I finished the chapter (not the epilogue yet). I thought the end of the chapter was a bit odd. Like I expected something more profound to happen with Kino and the タタタ人.

Also, if this chapter was written first (someone mentioned that, right?), I speculate that it was moved since it outright describes Kino as a girl, and they wanted that to not be mentioned explicitly until after chapters 4 and 5 “revealed” it more subtly.

6 Likes

Agreed. I expected them to be about to launch a full on attack on the countries with Kino just standing by. That would have added a morale to the story without having Kino do anything.

That was me. And I also agree. there’s also the fact that Kino kills someone without thinking too much about it, which would make the minimal struggle of chapter 4 to not kill anyone quite odd.

8 Likes

I think I have found the dictionary entry for this usage of に.

All the way down in the デジタル大辞泉-section you find (it is probably in the other dictionaries as well, but that’s the one I got, so that’s the only one I tend look at)

[並助]並列・列挙・添加・取り合わせを表す。「バターにチーズに牛乳」「月にむら雲、花に嵐」「有識(いうそく)―公事(くじ)のかた、人の鏡ならんこそいみじかるべけれ」〈徒然・一〉

… so in other words when you have a set of stuff (of whatever kind) and you list the content, then you chuck in a に between the elements (?)

In fact, you find it in jisho as well if you know what to look for

I think it’s no 8.

This is the first time I have come across this usage directly, but I have heard about it before. I think Cure Dolly mentioned it in passing in a video and if I recall, she just said something like “yes に can sometimes mean ‘and’, but don’t worry about it”. So I figured it’s probably something from classical Japanese and you won’t come across it unless it’s a very formal occasion. I found it a bit amusing that one of the example usages in 大辞泉 was 「バターにチーズに牛乳」. Unless you are cooking (or out shopping) with the emperor, this doesn’t sound like a very formal occasion :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Did anyone else notice that the 采 in 喝采 (p 219 line 7) has a つめかんむり that looks like this: 爫 ?
I wanted my anki card to look exactly the same, but I can’t find a way to type it. I don’t know if it it is the old way of writing it or if it’s just the font (I sure hope it’s the same kanji at least)

Regarding に as an enumeration particle:

Not at all! It’s a standard, everyday usage. There’s nothing formal about it. It means that you are progressively increasing a list (as things come to mind, as you notice them, etc.) That nuance does not really exist in English, so I don’t really know how to explain it better. In your example, it sounds like the person is trying to conjure up everything they need to buy; first thing that came to mind was butter, then cheese, then milk. (Maybe they were trying to think of examples of dairy products instead, doesn’t really matter)
Reference: 7つの並列助詞一覧 用法の教え方 | 日本語教師のN1et

I don’t really know why Cure Dolly said “don’t worry about it”. Probably because it’s a very specific usage? I’ve never needed it myself.

5 Likes