You guys are fast, wow! 
I’m just starting page 2 myself… Page 1 took me nearly half an hour 
But the feeling I get everytime I manage to get a sentence is indescribable. I will continue for sure
4 Likes
if it helps, page 1 (particularly that first panel), took me aaaaages as it was so dense with new terms but later pages were (mainly!) better 
1 Like
Ok, yes, that makes me feel a tad better… I thought I was the only one that had to translate literally word for word because I felt like I wasn’t understanding anything 
Page 29
What is アリ? Jisho is telling me it’s ‘ant’ but somehow I doubt that
Page 30
Is やれる a potential or is there something else going on? I feel a potential meaning doesn’t make a whole lot of sense here.
You aren’t alone!
I’m reading word by word, and then trying to work out the overall meaning once I have the whole sentence-worth of words. It’s working out so far, but it takes ages!
2 Likes
hey thanks so much again for another awesome explanation. It totally didn’t click that they are apart of a different club so it is referring to their own 大会 and not to the current volleyball one.
Thanks so much again for the great clarity!!! 
Also I forgot し meant that in this scenario so kind of a two for one!!!
I think アリ in this context is used like a slang for 有る. So here it basically means “to be”. Here is the best explanation I could find.
I might be wrong here but I think it could be reworded to:
いやあでも有りませんかね
Which would mean:
But it wouldn’t be so bad (with girls implied), right?
As for the やれる I think in this context it is used like:
You can still practice properly even if you do not make it to the competition.
4 Likes
It’s small, but there’s actually a space between いやあ and でもアリじゃね?? This いや is a slang term and you can read examples of its usage here. The site is in Japanese, and covers many uses of いや, so here’s the portion I want to draw attention to:
驚いたとき、感嘆したとき、また、困惑したとき、落胆したときなどに発する語。いやはや。
This is basically saying that いや can be used as an interjection when feeling surprised, wonder, embarrassment, despondent, etc. Based on the situation, the speaker is likely feeling embarrassed, and adds in the interjection. (You can also find a few more examples here.)
The second sentence,「でもアリじゃね??」, follows that line of thought. Looking around on Jisho, you can see that the second definition for the second entry when you search あり is “alright, acceptable, passable”. In this case, it is NOT slang for ある. I’m having a hard time finding more sources for it, but will update if I do. Anyway, じゃね is the casual form of じゃない which is frequently used to mean “isn’t it so?” Putting that together, and along with the いやあ interjection, I’d say this is conveying something like “No~ But isn’t it fine?”
The meaning doesn’t significantly change from what @wojtaso9 said but hopefully it’s helpful to see the sentence broken down in another way.
When I first started reading this book (around 2 months ago, I was impatient), I was barely 1/5 of the way through N4 and could only read 1-2 pages at a time before I had to stop for the day because I had to decode so much. Been practicing a lot since then and things have gotten a lot easier. The first chapter is long and dense and is a real struggle, but I do think putting in the time to understand everything word by word, phrase by phrase was worth it.
6 Likes
Thank you to everyone for sharing their experiences! I am also struggling to get through these pages but I love Haikyuu so much that I knew it had to be my first book club experience. I’m aiming for 5-6 pages a day, only because that ends up being a few hours for me already. It’s very encouraging to see that a lot of us are in the same boat, and it keeps me determined 
I think after I finish this week’s section, I’ll go back again and try to review the vocab and learn the grammar that threw me off. Appreciate everyone who’s been updating the vocab sheet and answering all the questions!
2 Likes
Thanks for the more detailed breakdown, I actually thought that じゃね is a combination of じゃない with the ね particle - but it doesn’t seem to be which actually makes more sense for the question marks at the end of the sentence. I’ve added this sentence to the vocab list with links with the explanations.
@lilyoli
I think the start is the hardest as a lot of new sports/volleyball specific vocabulary/terms are introduced. I didn’t read the manga but if it follows a similar trend to the anime then there will be a lot of repetition of the same vocabulary so let’s hope it will only get easier over time as @BarelyFragile said.
I just wanted to tank everone here.
Just finished half of this weeks pages and I’m very grateful for all your insights.
I think without the vocabulary sheet I would have given up imidiatly. This mangas specific setting mean that many niche vocabulary are present. It will take still quite some time until I’ll meet those words in my regular studies.
I’m not yet at the point where I’m able to deciffer all the nuances in the grammar so my goal for this read a long is to get the gist of the sentances. Until now it seems like all the sentances where I was struggeling have been adressed already. So thank you for all the wonderful breakdowns.
If I struggle further I won’t hesistate to ask for some clarifacation.
2 Likes
On page 18, 影山 says a sentence to 翔陽 that I’m a little confused about:
バレーボールに重要なものが 身長だってわかってていってんのか？
The bolded part is where I start to get confused. I think 「だって」 in this case is supposed to be a “defining いう”, but I don’t know what the second 「て」 after 「わかって」 is supposed to be, and whether the last 「言ってんのか」 is supposed to serve some kind of grammatical function, or a kind of “I’m telling you this for your own good” kind of declaration.
『ハイキュー』 is the first thing I’ve tried to read besides the graded readers, so it’s really tough so far. I’m having to look up far more vocabulary than I thought I would have to, which is kind of frustrating. Of course, that makes those rare sentences where I can understand what they’re saying without a dictionary really satisfying!
I haven’t actually done any of the reading yet so I don’t know the context of the sentence 
but I would say the わかってて is just わかっていて. So わかって + いる which itself is then converted into te-form. The い is dropped in casual speech sometimes.
That’s how I read it. The て-form can be used to link two verbs together in an ‘and’-way, but also in a ‘but’-way. “You’re saying that, but you understand that length is the important thing in volleyball?”. Or a bit more liberally: ‘How can you say that if you know that height is important in volleyball?’.
1 Like
I am trying to understand what this is saying (p28) but having trouble! I think it starts as something like vigour caused (me) to begin, stubbornness causes (me) to continue but I’m really not sure about the second part and how it all fits together. Anyone wiser in grammar than me managed to figure this out?
I’m no pro at grammar so it would be nice if someone confirmed or corrected me if it’s wrong but this is how I understood it:
I started because of my energy and continue because of my stubborness.
At least that’s how it felt at the beginning.
I think it makes sense in the context of the next panel where Hinata describes how he tried hundreds of times only to succeed once etc.
で in this case I think is used not as a “cause” but more as a “tool” - something that was used to do something else.
1 Like
thanks very much! ah okay, that actually makes a lot more sense. I had it in my head somehow that で could only be used in that way when talking about physical tools (not sure why, I guess just because that’s the only examples I’d seen) so hadn’t thought to use it in that sense here but it does read/flow a lot better!
Starting on this now and will have to come back and read the thread, but just from the first page, did anyone else find it funny that “volleyball” is written “バレーボール” but “volley” is ”ボレー", (meaning they swapped the バ for ボ? 
3 Likes
Hi all!
Thank you so much for that excel sheet! It was really helpful, especially when I couldn’t decipher some of the furigana in the ebook…
I have a couple of questions in relation with page 18…
I understand the meaning of the sentence, but I’m not sure what purpose does that “kuseni” at the end of the first part serve, or what it is exactly…
Also, that “shi” after “ittainani” indicates purpose? As in “why the hell did you come here for?”
Thank you all in advance!
Also, that “shi” after “ittainani” indicates purpose? As in “why the hell did you come here for?”
I think it’s the masu-stem of する (this grammar point).
So more literally it’s something like what the hell did you come here to do?
2 Likes