ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 2

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Basically, but not really as in wondering if she should go at all, more as in “do I need to leave yet”

Yup, exactly that

Note the ~ている form. 来てる doesn’t mean “coming”, it means she’s already there.

More of a mostly meaningless thing people say. You can find it in Jisho and the like as よし

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間に合う means “to be on time”. She’s saying she’s gonna make it (as in, be on time for the bus, as you’ll see later).

It’s short for やっぱり, and it’s connected to the rest of the sentence. I find やっぱり a bit tricky to translate, but it’s sort of like “when all is said and done” or “after all”, or in this case more akin to “as you’d expect”.

~かな has a few uses beyond “I wonder” - see also this article. It’s a bit of a “softener” for her statement, it feels a bit similar to ね to me but less assertive. She knows they stand out, as also indicated by やっぱ earlier. She’s saying something like “As I thought, they really stand out huh”

This whole box is a single sentence まあ、生えてしまったもンはしょうがないしな

~てしまう is a grammatical construct indicating something sudden and/or unfortunate
もン is just もん for indicating a reason, no idea why the ん is in katakana.

“Well, they’ve grown, so there’s nothing I can do”
Note that 生える is used here (and will be used a lot later on) to emphasise these horns are actually attached to her head and are not some sort of accessory she can take off.

Not really, but that is what she’s referring to :smile: Like someone in an English comic saying “Lock the door, lock the door” I guess. Not something you’d see in real life but in a slice of life manga a bit of narration here and there isn’t uncommon. It’s clearer than her suddenly being back at the door, at any rate.

More like “a thing called …” - she’s not wondering about a specific dragon or anything, she’s wondering about the concept of dragons in general, hence って. It’s analogous to ということ.

There’s no double negative here. It’s the same as how you can ask about a negative to confirm something in English: “aren’t they imaginary creatures?”

Yup, it’s short for そういえば (which means the same thing). Like “speaking of which, …” or “now that you mention it, …”

Yes, but that’s not the meaning it has here. She’s saying her mom said 龍 at first, and not ドラゴン, and wondering if there’s a difference between the two.

Here it’s more akin to “If I’m not mistaken” or “If I remember correctly”. She’s not sure at all.

Just a contraction - 考えるの can become 考えんの in casual speech (and the same thing can happen for other verbs). She’s also dropping the particle after it. In more “textbook” Japanese it’d be something like 考えるのはやめよう - “I’ll stop thinking about it”

This is part of the full sentence again, the ellipsis is just because she’s out of breath.

ギリギリ信号全部青でよかった - good thing almost all the traffic lights were green

There’s a historic reason for it that has to do with the distinction between blue and green in Japanese :slight_smile: 青 can kind of mean both, and when referring to a green traffic light 青 is used

Aoi (青い) vs Midori (緑): Is It Blue or Green? | Coto Japanese Academy

Just to connect it to よかった. It’s essentially the て form of だ.

Yes, it is

In this case just “getting up in the morning”. 朝 is just an indication of time like any other.

It’s a conditional form attached to 起きる, but it’s also used to indicate when something happened. So in this case 朝起きたら means “when I woke up this morning”.

It’s just the て form of the ~ている form of なる. Another “hanging sentence” if you will. 成っている being the state resulting from something becoming a certain way.

She’s saying something like “It was like this when I woke up” (as in “it had become like this when I woke up”).

Yes, that’s exactly it

It’s short for 生えてるの but that’s not a volitional. It’s just 生えてる with の attached as a question marker.

It’s “uh-huh” as a noise of agreement here

As opposed to ううん which would be a noise of disagreement

Japanese do be like that :joy:

I’d say it’s closer to “Seems I’m somehow not human”

なんか can also mean something like “somehow” or “in some way”, and that’s the meaning it has here.

That’s right

This is いや as in “no”. She’s sort of thining out loud. “Ah, no… uh-huh. That’s right.”

Mind the furigana here - it’s not はなしてる as in the ている form of 話す, it’s はなししてる as in the ている form of 話する. ツノ is connected to 話 via の. “Are you maybe talking about those horns?”

This is once again once sentence. 絶対嘘だとおもうよね - you think it’s all a lie, don’t you?

There’s an omitted particle between ルリ and ドラゴン here. “What… are you a dragon?”

Note that in Japanese it’s more common to refer to your conversation partner by their name than via a second-person pronoun.

It’s an interjection along the lines of “well”

It’s one complete sentence with the following again. “いや、わたしというか父親がどらごんらしくてさ”.

“Well, it seems like I’m - or I should say my father is - a dragon”

さ only means -ness when used with い adjectives (like 長さ meaning length). Here it’s just a colloquial assertive sentence ender, similar to よ.

Not ironic, just kinda done :smile:

Same contraction you’ve seen before. なんでそんなさわるの - why are you touching them like that

I took this more as “it’s a bit late for that now” - as in “we’re already at school, you’ve got fricking horns on your head, of course everyone is staring at you, you knew this would happen”

ば is a conditional, not a volitional

休む means taking a day off in this context

So she’s saying “it would’ve been better to just take the day off”

It’s referring to Yuka’s statement that she should’ve stayed home. “I thought about it”

This is 目立ませんように

You’ve got the general idea but it’s not a past tense. She’s hoping she won’t stand out too much in class.

Yes, she’s 青木ルリ

生えてる is stative, the horns are already there

“Hey, Aoki’s got horns on her head!”

This is referring to the other guy saying Ruri has horns - something like “oh you’re right!”

More like “hey you, what’s with the horns”

She’s telling the guy not to address her as お前 (which is a bit of a rude way to refer to her). (literally “don’t say お前”)

Take note of this, it’ll come back a few times and becomes sort of a running gag with a callback later on :slight_smile:

やる is basically a casual way of saying する - so this is like “how are you gonna do that?”

Probably a lot of overlap with what others have said. Feel free to ask any questions or discuss things of course :slight_smile:

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Expanding on this, ん has a ton of uses when contracting, there’s an article about this on Tae Kim’s site here. It even starts off with the ら column contraction that’s happening here.

Tbh, in actual speech it’s much more obvious, prolly because うん has a falling tone while ううん has a rising tone.

Not sure if I’m right, but I see a heavy play on blue there, with 瑠璃るり also meaning lapis lazuli. Not sure if this goes beyond “yep, she has blue hair”.

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Sounds plausible to me. It’s pretty common for names in manga to be some kind of wordplay, there’s a reference to blue in 青木 already, and her hair colour (on the cover, at least) is pretty close to the colour of lapis lazuli anyway.

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Me: trying to read manga
Pixel, my cat: MOTHER IT IS TEN MINUTES TO LUNCH I NEED FOOD NOW AND ALSO ATTENTION!!!

Well. Once my husband is awake, maybe I’ll actually get a chance to read….

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Just play with it for 10 minutes at which point it should decide that you are actually an enemy of the state and should be dealt with swiftly. At which point leaving it alone for a bit should be fine. At least that’s how my cat works.

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Lol. Pixel loves human attention, and if you sit down then you run the risk of having a cat on your lap wanting pets and cuddles.

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I don’t see where your issue is, that is a proper fluffball. They can get all the pets and cuddles they ask for.

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It seems as if everyone on WaniKani has cats.

Here is mine. He also likes to go on my lap but I can also do other things while he chills on my lap.

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Things have been hectic for me this past week since I moved. I’m catching up on all my book clubs today, and I just started reading without checking what the readings actually were :joy:

Me reading the first chapter:
Oh, this chapter’s pretty long!

Me after reading the first chapter and reading 2 pages of the second:
Wait, I should check where the readings end. Chapter 1 was long, so it may have been split up into 2 weeks.

Me after seeing I read all the way through week 5:
Welp, I guess I’m taking a break from this book for a while!

Once I saw in the schedule how many pages it actually was, I wondered why I didn’t catch on sooner that chapter 1 is way too much to even fit into 2 weeks, especially for the Absolute Beginner club.

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I do that every time, but thankfully I caught myself before I reached the end… then I read some more. I’m like a third of the way through the manga.

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I’ll chip in with my own, he likes to bite your elbow when you accidentally forget to consider him as a part of the family dinner

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This has truly become the ルリネコ thread

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I see no problem with this

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Realized today that I had this artwork hanging above my main reading chair. It was fate for these two horned girls to meet! Though hopefully ルリ will keep hers attached…

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Hi hi! I’m going to post my attempts at translating here, just for my own practice’s sake. So far it’s really fun, I love Ruri’s not-impressed faces. I am also going back and reading other’s posts afterwards since I know a lot of you will have addressed these points already lol.

p18

学校行くかあ: “I guess I’ll go to school…?”
やばやば: “Dang it!” - I feel like I often see やばい in the context of character going “oh no!” as they’re running late, but otherwise I don’t have a good sense for when it applies!
ユカもう来てるかな: “I wonder if Yuka has already come”

p19

よっし 間に合う: “Oookay, it’s time!”
やっぱ目立つかなあ: “I will definitely stand out”

p20

まあ生えてしまったもんはしょうがないしな
Okay, this one confused me a bit. “Well, since they’ve grown in already, it can’t be helped”. I parsed this one fine but I’m not familiar with しな . Note to self: search in thread later…

“Aren’t dragons, like, flying fantasy animals or something like that?”
“If my dad’s a dragon, then…whoa, what am I?”

p21

“Mom said “龍” first…what’s the difference (between that and ドラゴン)?”
“Maybe…Japanese dragons…like fish?” (I’m honestly not sure if these are related phrases, but I assume she’s wondering about e.g. if Japanese dragons are specifically the scaly serpentlike ones without wings)

“Ugh, stop thinking about it!”
“Heyyyy, Yuka!”

p22

ギリギリ。。。
信号全部青でよかった
“Phew…barely made it…thank goodness all the lights were green”

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A good rule of thumb, wherever you would put “oh sh*t” in english, やばい can apply.

間に合う means that she’s in time for something, so she’s not late. So more like “Alright, I can make it” or similar.

That’s two particles actually. し for giving a reason, and な, a sort of alternative to ね.

I assume the whoa is 一体? In that case it’s closer to “what the heck am I?”

たしか is “if I remember correctly”. So something like “If I remember correctly, Japanese dragons are… koi”

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For those that come across the koi dragon thing and don't have a clue what's going on

There’s this Chinese legend, the waterfall legend, that can be read here.

Tl;dr for those that are too busy: There was a school of golden koi, and a waterfall that the demons made unclimbably tall. Most fish failed and gave up, but a hundred years later one koi, that persevered, got up it, and the gods as a reward, turned it into a golden dragon. Sorta like this:

So as a result, koi in some sense are dragons (or dragons are koi?), and ルリ isn’t stoked about the idea of being half-fish.

Damn, I forgot my usualy “Here be dragons” joke, and it would’ve been the perfect time to use it :angry:

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Wanted to start my proper reading yesterday. But didn’t have time.

(I mean come on, the six nations is on !)

Hopefully I can do that today. This week seems a fair bit harder than the last one.

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Ha! Okay, thanks. That’s easy enough.

Oh! That makes sense. Thank you!

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Ok so I finished my initial read. Once again, the main difficulty is not grammar, it’s mostly working one’s way through all the the colloquialisms.

I wanted to maybe do a full translation this time to really see the grammar at play, but maybe I should do that on another book. I have that Totoro book that looks perfect for it.

I also realized that it’s usually not that hard to understand what’s being said, thanks to the context, once you get only the main words and the final particle / tone. Although I suppose that also means missing some more subtle meanings.

Once again most questions were already covered by @TeaDrinker3000 and the answers to their message.

I have a few questions remaining.

Page 21

Is this いってたな in the first panel actually a いって いた な (with the ending particle な ?)

Page 20

On page 20, for the しまったもん sentence. I understand the しまった meaning “to do by accident”, but what about the もん ? I don’t see what it is. Or is it actually two particles ?

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