コンビニ人間: Week 1 Discussion

Also, native messing up their own language? Who’d a thunk it?

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Does this joke even count since English isn’t your native language? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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You got it, so I’d say yes :rofl:

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Just to follow up on this and summarize, it’s the male customer doing all this (touching, looking, stopping). Now that I have started reading the book and see the line, with the context of the images from @elynchbell , it makes sense to me.

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What’s the relationship between the 移った and the 見て though? Maybe I’m just not thinking of the right definition for 移る.

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She sees (を見て) him transferring (移った) his gaze to the fast food. It’s probably what you thought already. Only を見て is done by the woman in this sentence yeah. The change of subject is jarring, but in this context I guess it works just fine.

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Sorry to crash the party, but that’s not possible :see_no_evil:
て is a connective form, so the next verb has to be connected to 見て, in this case because the subject is the same. So she stopped her fingers. Technically, the ながら can apply to either her or him, but considering the last part, it makes sense that it was her.
She was putting his order in, saw him check the hot food and decided to stop just in case he adds something to his order.

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Wow I kinda thought of that too for a fleeting moment, that she stopped her hands. But I couldn’t think of anything referring to her moving her hands to begin with, on the contrary the scene begins with him having to touch the screen. That she stopped putting his order in, that makes much more sense, but it’s not clear from reading.

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Ah, I haven’t read yet, so I might miss some context. I would assume that she was about to validate the order, then, which would require him to touch his panel. Also, from experience, it would be a pain for her to add something to the order after validating (I did exactly what he seems to be doing in the past, the staff person asked me if it was okay to make it as two separate orders, then)

It does make sense. I was thinking this part was still about the age check, so I just assumed it must have been the customer who is touching (his) screen. But it works out fine (especially grammatically) if it’s about her putting in the order on her screen.

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The very previous sentence is: 「年齢確認のタッチをお願いします」
Directly after that: 画面をタッチしながら (so that must be talking about him).
It’s her asking him to touch the screen to confirm his age. As you can see, this is the source of confusion :sweat_smile: There’s no mention whatsoever of her doing anything other than talking.

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I just read that part and checked with my local native speaker.

  1. he was about to touch the screen but gazed to the food then
  2. she saw that and stopped her fingers (we have no idea what she was doing exactly). The next sentence explains that when she sees a customer hesitating, she stops and wait.
    Also, I misremembered, the age confirmation happens when the item is put in, not at the end (so just after he ordered cigarettes here.
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So you can have two different subjects with 〜ながら? I wasn’t aware of that.

No you can’t use it with different subjects.

If we assume the woman is touching the screen first (which is weird considering she just asked the man to touch it himself):
The actions of ながら here are “画面をタッチしながら” (the woman touching the screen) and “を見て、指の動きを止める” (the woman noticing the man shifting his gaze). Both are by the woman.

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Well, it’s just that it’s a subordinate close of either him looking at the food or her seeing him. Both are grammatically correct, but since subjects are different, it depends on how you parse the sentence :stuck_out_tongue:

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OH. So she sees that (while he is touching the screen he is shifting his gaze). That makes sense! Thanks :slight_smile:

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Exactly what I had in mind too, there’s 2 different interpretations but both don’t violate the same subject rule.

This book is relatively very easy, but even here something like this can throw you off. :sweat_smile:

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Also, completely different story, but I’m so happy I had no problem reading the name 菅原. Thank you for teaching me 菅, WK, it’s satisfying!

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Ohh concerning the names, I can see lots of variations to each one in my names dictionary. For example, 菅原 can be read as かんばら・すかわら・すがはら… Well I read it as すがはら because of WK too, but I feel like we’re supposed to know the most common name for those and just go with it…? I can’t understand why furigana isn’t used the first time for the names here.

Also, how did you read the woman’s name (恵子)? I read it as あやこ because it’s the first entry, hm.

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I read it as えこ since I know someone with that reading, but looking it up it has indeed multiple possible readings. Same for 菅原.
That makes me think the author did that on purpose, same with the unclear sentence we were discussing. I might be reading too much into it, but it might be an effort to make things vague/fuzzy.

Just finished this week’s reading, and I have to say I love the MC already!

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