Sometimes, tail length matters. (The longer the tail, the farther it is from the speaker.)
But not always, so… Good luck out there.
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Page 15 - ま普段通りでいいよ。死にゃしないし。
It’s not so much the sentence itself but I’m unsure who is speaking here? Is it Ruri or her Mum? Ruri makes sense and the bubble looks like it’s pointing more to her but if it’s her mother as I’m starting to think, I’m really bamboozled as to what 死にゃしないし could mean. I thought it might be something like “Don’t Die” but I don’t think it is.
Really confused.
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It’s her mom. 
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Here the second bubble (えっ) helps too. That one is pointing through mom to Ruri (and fits Ruri’s expression), and is very likely to be a reaction to something that was happened previously - which means that the previous bubble is likely her mom’s.
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So the word “たの” in the vocab list is not actually the one used here, right?
Also, could you explain the term “assertive の” or link an explanation? Perhaps I already know this, just not the term you used…
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The た there is actually the past tense of いる from the ている construction, but for that the い is commonly dropped in speech.
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別称じゃなくて
Can you explain why ルリ uses the て form in this phrase?
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Correct! The た is just the normal past tense inflection of the verb.
Particularly
It can also be used without a rise in pitch to indicate a statement - often as a way of emphasizing the fact, or even stating it in a somewhat passive-aggressive way.
Of course the pitch is not written, but the dialogue is written very naturally and “as if it were spoken” in manga like this one, so you’ll see a lot of these kinds of things. It’s good to know it exists, at any rate.
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One of the uses of the て-form is to connect sentence fragments. I think there’s a second part of the sentence that is implied/left open. What exactly is left out is anyone’s guess, but probably something to the effect of “…, but what do you mean by ‘dragon’”?
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Okay, it’s just the usual meaning then. The sentence being open ended startled me. Thanks.
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You’ll see this a lot in manga with natural speech. You often see the て form at the end of sentences that trail off. There’s a sort of implied continuation to sentences like these, which takes some getting used to, but because the form used is meant to connect to something else and there’s no direct continuation, you’ll know there’s something for you to infer.
Just as a quick note, it’s probably a good idea to not worry too much about the specifics of what might follow, it’s very easy to get bogged down in that without it adding anything to your overall comprehension of the dialogue.
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Apologies if this sentence has been asked about and I missed it. I’m having trouble with this - 言おう言おうとは思ってたんだけどね on page 14 I think it is. I’ve never seen the おう after the 言 before ever. And I can’t break it down besides (maybe) “say say” and knowing something. Yikes. Any help?
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Page 14 answer
It’s the volitional:
Here’s how you can easily find out if someone has asked this question before:
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This is really helpful and in accordance to what I have learned, however I remember learning that if, say, person A is explaining something and person B asks a follow up question with ~んですか, Person B is indicating that he wants to know more and is expecting Person A to explain further in detail, or something like that. This surely can be used in informal speach with just の at the end of the sentence. Is that true or am I mixing something up here?
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Yes, that’s right. の as a question marker is more or less the casual version of のですか. There might be some differences in nuance, but other than formality I don’t really know of any myself.
This link might help
https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/question-markers/
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I have a technical question: When I was learning with some other materials two years ago, I created a rather long excel spreadsheet much like this one with kanji | kana | vocab. Are you aware of a way to turn such a file into an anki deck, besides entering words manually? (After all, there are context sentences and even pictures here that can be used.) I could imagine that a “script” or something like that is already available online. Or would you suggest a different route if I wanted to keep practicing the new vocab I learned here?
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You can try exporting that spreadsheet as a csv file and importing that from anki
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I’ve never tried that myself, but I’d look for ways to import CSV files (a common spreadsheet export format; a pure-text file with lines separated by e.g. comma or semicolon) into Anki, like: export - Can I create an Anki deck from a .CSV file? - Super User
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Thanks, that’s exactly what I was searching for!
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You know, I expected this to be harder. In the end most questions could be answered by “Yeah it’s this expression / form that you already know, except you remove about 50% of the kanas in spoken japanese”.
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