Alright, finally got around to reading this week’s material. My biggest takeaway in the past 3 weeks is that I really, really need to study the particles that are 2 or 3 kana characters long. Almost every sentence has at least one or two, and I struggle to put them together.
For example, it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out the meaning of 「熱いからあぶないよ！」even though I know what all those words mean. In my mind, I want to translate it as “It’s dangerous because it’s hot!”, which I’m sure is correct, but it sounds so unnatural to me that I second-guess myself. I have to understand that even though I wouldn’t speak like that in English, I’m sure it sounds natural in Japanese.
Another one that took me a while (though I do understand the core message) is 「丁度クリームスープだし少しから平気だよね」on page 18. I’d break it down like this:
Page 18 Text
丁度 - just
クリームスープ - Cream Soup
だし - ?
少し - little (a small amount)
なら - If, if that’s the case (thanks, grammar sheet)
平気 - okay
だよね - I’ve seen this before, but I’m not sure exactly what it means
Even with the missing word, I can figure out that it means something like “it’s just cream soup, so a little should be okay”. Plus, she was talking about babies drinking milk right before that, so it makes sense in context. But I’m still not sure where the meaning of なら fits in, or what だし meant, or how the sentence ending particle could affect the tone of the sentence.
Overall, I feel like I completely understand what’s going on through the art and context, but I still struggle to understand exactly what’s being said even when I know most or all of the words in a sentence. It still takes me ages to decipher them, and that generally only works if I know almost all the words. There are a handful of sentences I had to study a lot before I could begin to figure out exactly what it meant.
I feel like this manga is slightly beyond my reading level, which is not a bad thing, but it does mean it takes some work to get through.
) and Kesaran are celebrating Kesaran’s new name 