チーズスイートホーム: Week 1 Discussion (Chapters 1-3)

I’ve been out of town for several weeks and it seems I have some catching up to do. Now in the first frame of Chapter 1, the bird is flying off saying “チチ” and there is a third character. Is it actually a character, or is it just scribble?

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The third character is a small ッ (so, it is チチッ). This is an onomatopoeia for chirping.

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This has been a pretty helpful post as I read chapter 1. It is good for me to make my guess at what the cat words actually are and the meaning of the words and then compare them to your translation. Thank you for posting it and integrating the feedback into it!

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Thanks for the feedback, hope you are enjoying the book!

On page 9, the cat and boy are looking at each other after they both stop crying and the cat says:
“きみもおうちわかんないんらね”
Let me break it down as best as my Duolingo, Level 4 Wanikani education will allow

  • きみ (you) + も (too) = you also
  • おうち = home
  • わかんない.has been polluted by baby cat talk
    • Comes from 分かる
    • To negate, replace the う sound with an あ sound and add ない, therefore 分からない
  • んら I can’t quite penetrate
  • ね is a particle that means your looking for confirmation like, “you know”, or “isn’t it”. Lots more about it here.

Put it all together, and with the explanatory tone, it means something like “You don’t know where my your home is either,huh”.

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Not really sure, but my best guess is:

きみも おうち わからない んだ ね

where
んだ = contraction of のだ, also known as “explanatory tone

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I read it as, “You don’t know where your home is either, huh?”
Considering he’s also crying and on the ground.

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Yeah, this was the translation I ended up with, too. Made sense to me :thinking:

Just started today, took me like half an hour to read, which is sad. Hopefully I will be able to pick up pace as I read.

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Don‘t worry, one chapter takes me around half an hour, too :sweat_smile: or did those three chapters took you only half an hour? :thinking: then you are faster then me :joy:

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Yeah, first chapter is definitely harder, especially getting used to the way チー speaks. Hang in there and don’t forget the vocab sheet which will save you looking up words, and also help with words that are difficult to look up as they have been written in baby speak.

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It took me yesterday to finish chapter 1…

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I’m super late, and I don’t know if this has been asked before in the tons of responses already(if so, apologies).
On page 14, top right, it starts with こんなに ちいさくちゃ ひとり。。。。
while I know ちいさくて means small, what significance does the ちゃ have?

Edit : Also, I finally finished Ch.2 and 3. This is much more hillarious than I thought it would be.

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It has! Ctrl+F is super useful for future reference. But yeah, in this case, ちゃ is an abbreviation of ては.

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I see. Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

Thank you for that. Okay, so ちゃ is ては, but what is ては? Is it the conjunctive te-form followed by the topic particle? I didn’t know that was possible!

Oh, and nice tip about Ctrl+F! Very nice! Thank you!

I don’t have the book here, but I assume you are talking about this??

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No, he’s talking about this. Like, from three posts ago.

oh… that’s so 4 post ago…

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And from lots of posts ago too! Plus a reply from the one and only Belthazar as well!

This is what I wrote then…

こんなに - so, like that, in this way
小さくちゃ - 小さい is “small”, the conjunctive form is 小さくて. If you add a は it turns out as ちいさくちゃ, but I don’t know if that is what is happening here.

This is how Belthazar replied…

ちゃ is an abbreviation of ては. Seems to me like this is basically the ~てはいけない construction with an extra clause in the middle.

I then said…

Thank you so much! I’ll get back and study that right now.

I did study it. I didn’t get it. I still don’t. I was too polite to mention it again. When it came up in the thread again just now I completely forgot I’d once been over this very same sentence. But I’m still lost. But, as you guys know, Japanese is tough for me. The moment I learn one thing, I forget everything else. Study one kanji, the rest are gone. Study one grammar point, it instantly becomes the only one I know! I know it must drive you nuts. It certainly drives me nuts. Sorry.

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