It’s an amazing feeling, eh? Congrats!
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I’m gonna be 日本語上手 in no time! 
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If there’s anything I learnt about Japanese is that we are all 上手 and always have been 
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Hiya team,
I just started reading it and noticed right away that kore seems like it’s being swapped between katakana and hiragana… Is there any particular reason why or are they just interchangeable?
On page 7 it has kore in katakana:
Page 7
あ。。。？何コレ
but then on page 9 it’s in hiragana
Page 9
ねえ 見てこれ
Thanks in advance for the help!
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Whether something is in katakana, hiragana, or kanji is really quite often just a matter of the author’s whim.
A lot of times, it’s done to differentiate between which characters are speaking. Other times, it’s just what the author felt like using.
Sometimes, it’s to act as emphasis, sorta like we use italics in English.
In this case, I feel like the katakana is somewhat intended as emphasis. The 何コレ is used as an initial response to the horns, and a similar response comes from the mom on Pg. 9 also: 何だソレ, so it’s consistent in that sense.
Overall, though, it’s difficult to determine why an author uses katakana in some places, and hiragana/kanji in others, because the answer varies wildly, and can even just be that the author thought it looked cool. 
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Aww, okedokies.
The katakana there does look cool 
Thanks for the quick reply!
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that’s interesting. I did assume that the choice of katakana for ツノ even as furigana is a stylistical choice as the katakana looks a bit like horns. Seeing this more creative side of Japanese writing is a bit intimidating but at the same time it makes me feel like it’s ok if I don’t obsess too much with rules.
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Finished my pages for this week! Really enjoyed having this thread to go to when something got me stuck. The answers are very clear and helped me massively. I’m loving the humor in the story so far.
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I hadn’t noticed that they look like horns, but you are right!! That’s hilarious.
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I’ve transcribed and translated as far as page 40 now. I’m absolutely loving this manga. Working on material that I’m genuinely looking forward to reading more of is such a great motivator.
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Going to ask a question here as it’s not a spolier, and others are going to see it too along the ways. I’m seeing exclamations characters make such as え and わ with dakuten attach. Is this just for emphasis? Do they change the pronunciation?
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It doesn’t mean any sort of fixed pronunciation, but it is meant to show, that the way the character says it is somehow changed, for example it might just be louder, or more pronounced, just some way that shows more of the emotion. For example the one on page 30 is some kind of shakiness in my opinion.
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分かった。ありがとう！
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(first, thank you @TeaDrinker3000 for you full transcript. Very usefull not to have to retype everything ^^)
I saw several usages of “けど” at the end of sentences. For instance “念のため休んどいてもいいけど”
Apparently it somehow softens the tone, making the sentence less assertive ? Is it because it leaves an implicit “counter point”, as if it said “but yeah… / but whatever… / but anyway…” ?
Is it the same usage as が when asking for something like “なにかをたべたいのですが” ? with “but”/ が / けど removing the assertive tone the sentence, turning “I want to eat something” into “I’d like to eat something” ?
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That’s a very good question, one that I never considered until now!
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There’s actually a great tofugu article on this: けど: Why Are Japanese Speakers Always Ending Their Sentences with "But"?
Here I’m pretty sure it’s the first option in that article, a sort of “though”. “You can take the day off though”.
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Very interesting, thank you !
That article does address the example I provided, and states that it also applies to が
It’s more complex than just “soften the tone” though.
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Read page 5 to 13 today and will do the rest in a couple of days. Thanks to @TeaDrinker3000 's heavy lifting, I think all of my questions have been answered by @yamitenshi @HaseebYousfani and @anon99047008 . 
Really appreciate everyone’s answers and I’m excited to read more. I’m also really amazed by ichi.moe. Great resource!
Just a couple of comments so far:
Oof! Seems crazy to me that they don’t use punctuations or any kind of sign to separate lines… 
I know you said it’s something you get used to over time, but is it also just knowing what phrases, contractions, etc. are usually found at the end of sentences? Or maybe Japanese sentences can just end any time with a noun, a verb, contraction, etc.? Now i’m just scaring myself. 
Well that was confusing! 
That bubble is pointing towards both their directions and closer to Ruri’s mom… Makes sense given the context/translation, but I could have easily mistaken it to be said by Ruri’s mom if I didn’t get the context/translation right. Guessing I should expect more of those just like the line breaks?
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Yes to all the above, plus context. You’ll also get faster parsing sentences and figuring out if it even makes sense for them being together/apart. It’ll get easier!
It happens sometimes, although definitely not as bad as in some (light) novels.
In this case looking at the content of the bubbles helps: The second batch of bubbles on page 12 points only to her mom and answers a question, so this first bubble that has a question is unlikely to belong to her too.
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Thanks for the kind words. I will be doing it each week for this book, but I think this might be my last Absolute Beginner’s Book Club. I’ve been loving the process so much, and am already approaching material outside the book club with more confidence, so, once we get to April, I’m going to take the plunge and begin my first Beginner’s Book Club read-along
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