The fact that there won’t be a possibility for an offshoot club for quite a while will be a new kind of depression present among most of the readers it seems. at least we’re getting a wolf girl right after
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Another fun section! I’m still enjoying starting off the week by going through the whole section on my own first and then going through after with the help of the vocab sheet and this thread. It’s motivational to see the things that I can understand on my own first. With this being my first real Japanese manga experience, I can see how having all the pictures helps in compensating for some lack of understanding and helps fill in those gaps. Definitely more enjoyable right now than facing a wall of text! 
Page 20
しょうがない
If this means “it can’t be helped” then how does it differ from 仕方がない? Is it mainly a difference in formality, with しょうがない being a more conversational version? I just recently learned 仕方がない in my Wanikani lessons, so this was fresh in my mind.
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Pretty much, most of the time, the phrase that’s longer to say is the more formal one. So here 仕方がない is more of a written form, while しょうがない is more of a spoken form.
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Hey guys. Something’s come up so I don’t think I’m going to be as active this time around. Just know that I will take the time to read everyone’s responses to me, it just might not be this week. @HaseebYousfani , @MrGeneric , @MaraVos and @yamitenshi , thank you so much for your hard work. I don’t want y’all to feel I’m just liking your post and then dipping, just with the amount of work I’ll be putting into this on top of WK itself, I may not to be as active as I’d genuinely like to be each week x
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Real life comes first! Don’t worry, you have no obligations. I help because I want to, not because I want you to owe me a response 
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Okay, so… sorry this took so long, but let’s get to the topic of having a grammar sheet and/or a summary post.
Since it’s been forever, here are the main points from the last thread about it:
As far as I can tell a grammer sheet has never been used successfully, but then again it is quite a new idea, and I can see how it might be useful:
- You can use it to have an overview over important grammar points - maybe even before you start reading the chapter, just like some people like to pre-learn vocabulary, and then being able to recognize the grammar points when they come up.
- Maybe sometimes people don’t need a full-on answer (that they have to search for first), but a simple “page 24, volitional, here’s a link” is enough for them to figure it out by themselves.
Maybe there’s even other points that I’m missing?
Going from there, here’s what I think a grammar sheet should (not) be:
- It’s not a replacement for asking questions. (That would make it too complicated.)
- It’s not a single person’s responsibility. (That would be overwhelming.)
- It’s easy to fill in. (So people actually do it.)
Going from there, my suggestion would be:
- A single Google Sheets table for all chapters.
- Three columns:
- Page
- A short representation of the grammar point (e.g. “volitional” or “から”)
- One or more links for the grammar point (e.g. Bunpro, Maggie Sensei, YouTube videos).
- Nothing gets repeated.
- Crowd-sourced, like vocab sheets are usually done.
- It’s only done ahead of time if people are willing to do it ahead of time.
For anything more complicated, I think questions in the thread are the tool of choice.
A grammar sheet like that sounds good to me. Low effort, possibly useful, and if nothing else a nice experiment for future book clubs.
Now, a summary wiki/document has a completely different function in my opinion: It’s tries to provide an easier experience navigating the thread. While I agree with the underlying sentiment, I can’t see how it would work well:
- What’s in it?
- If it’s just links to parts of the thread:
- Not a ton of work.
- …but still work, so parts will be missing.
- Essentially just a replacement for the already existing search function.
- If it’s fully copied answered:
- A lot of work.
- …will definitely be missing parts of the discussion that people forgot to add.
- Essentially just a replacement for the already existing thread.
- If it’s summaries:
- Useful, but the most work.
- People filling it in will have to decide which answers are the most important.
- People reading it will be missing out on the discussion.
- If it’s just links to parts of the thread:
- Whose responsibility is it?
- If it’s one person: It’ll lag behind the thread, and that person will likely burn out soon.
- If it’s each person who answers: It feels unreasonable for me to get people who are already spending a lot of time answering questions to also require them to do more busywork. If it was required, it might even make people think twice about answering at all.
- If it’s crowd-sourced: It will probably be pretty incomplete since it’s harder to check what is missing (you’ll have to compare posts in the thread with the wiki all the time).
It feels to me like it’s better to use the search function and just read the actual answers/discussions in the thread.
Maybe I’m seeing this to negatively though. If people really want it, we can discuss what will go into it and make such a wiki!
If you mean “first post after the opening post”: Yeah, if we’re gonna have a wiki, I also think that’s the way to do it.
(I wouldn’t want to put it in the opening post though.)
Does anybody have opinions on either of these topics? Do you think my opinions/ideas sound good, do you have suggestions, are there things you disagree with or that would you do differently?
I’d suggest talking a bit about it to get a feel about what people think, then maybe make a poll, and then implement either/both/none of those.
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That’s exactly how I feel! I like it better than the wiki idea.
I think it’s easier to also have the context sentence and not just the short representation, so everything is in one place, and makes lookups easier too.
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My thoughts
It sounds good to me, as well. With the exception of putting everything in a single sheet instead of divided by chapter, it is what the intent behind the previous sheets were intended to be. The issue, I think, still just lies in that grammar does take more work to properly look up and ensure you have the right thing.
From a beginner standpoint, I think a vocab sheet is easier to contribute to. I did it a lot even when I was first starting out. You find a word, you look it up on Jisho, you add it. Done. Grammar, I don’t think I would have contributed. Most grammar points are pretty versatile, and for a beginner, sometimes it isn’t easy to tell which is intended, and I would have been too worried about putting wrong info in to contribute.
If enough veterans contribute, the sheet could be good, though. It is just a bit more tedious than a vocabulary sheet, since you want to double-check context, narrow it down for those points which have multiple meanings (even simple ones like から beg questions. Is it from or because, do we list から separately for the instances or do we include both definitions in one line and people have to ask to clarify, do we consider だから the same thing or give it its own line, even though it’s just the copula + から but it looks different and can be used in specific ways, etc), determine where you want to link to as a source (some sites are better at breaking down some points, and there is never just one site that covers every grammar point well), so I think that’s sorta been the death knell. Even if it’s community-sourced, a lot of people (myself included) look at the time commitment and backburner it. (By the way, I’m not opposed to the sheet, I’m just playing a little devil’s advocate here. I think it’s worth trying, despite the issues I’m listing.)
I think it’s pointless because the search function is better.
This is what I did for the previous thread (well, at least for my answers, because it was lazy and easy when I actually remembered to do it). I don’t view it as a replacement for the existing thread, since it just compiles answers in a single post and leaves out the deeper discussion that the search function would allow someone to find. It’s no worse than the already existing summarize thread option that Discourse already provides on longer threads, but that’s another thing… There already exists a summarize thread button, so it feels a bit silly to me. 
I still think the search function is better, because I agree that things get missed, and now we’re polluting the search option with the same thing twice, actively making it somewhat worse.
Agreed, that’s a lot of work, and since I already spend a lot of time answering things, I would be a bit opposed to also writing a summary of that answer afterwards. 
Never mind the fact that I’m already not great at being succinct, and I already have to spend a lot of time paring down what I’m trying to explain when I write out answers in the first place. There’s a reason I’m usually typing for 30+ minutes when I give answers.
And again, I still feel as if the search function would do a better job at pointing you to the specific discussion of what you need help with. I wrote up the Search Function how to because I genuinely think it’s the best tool for this type of thing.
As far as responsibility, crowd-sourced would be the only way to go. It’s just too much work for one person alone, and I similarly wouldn’t want to discourage people from answering if they also felt obligated to have to write up a summary on a wiki post.
This one, I again come to: If people genuinely think the wiki idea would help them and have suggestions for a format, I encourage it to happen and think facilitating it would be good, but I fully believe the search function, or Discourse’s summarize thread option, would be better ways to try and keep from having to read hundreds of posts while still getting the info needed.
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I love this idea! It’s simple enough to both contribute to and use. I would definitely find it very helpful, especially for recurring grammar points that sometimes don’t stick the first time and then I have go back to search for answers again and again. With this I could just find it on the spreadsheet and save lots of time.
I do think that for grammar points that are known by “technical grammar words” (volitional, present progressive, conditional, etc etc.) it could also be useful to put an example word or the tense ending.
For example the entry could say
Present progressive (~ている form)
or
Present progressive (eg. 行って いる)
That way people can actually see what the grammar point looks like and recognize it easier. And it can also help clear up confusion for grammar points that go by multiple names (eg. dictionary form/plain form, for one, but there are many others I’m sure).
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I do agree, the only people able to fill it out might only be the ones who are just participating to help. If you want to avoid burnout, maybe there should be a coordinated effort, first figure out who is actually willing to fill it out. For example, let’s say 3 people volunteer to fill out week 3, they can split up the pages into 3 to lighten the load.
A set goal of “I only have to fill out x pages” might make things easier mentally, than a person thinking they should fill out an unspecified amount of pages.
When answering questions we already spend a good chunk of time drafting up responses, it might be comparable to that, so I think it’s doable if coordinated.
Though unfortunately, I won’t be able to help out on the grammar side of things, though I’m willing to continue filling out the vocab sheet.
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I feel like the best approach here is the same as in all other parts: Whoever wants to add to it does as much as they want, without any sort of coordination that adds pressure on a few people, discussion overhead, or an “other people are responsible for this, so I won’t add anything” feeling. Just like with the vocab sheets and answering questions.
If that means it won’t get filled out… well, that’s fine too, I think. All other clubs have done without a grammar sheet, and everyone here is doing this in their free time, so no need to force something that doesn’t work.
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While I see value in that, I’m not sure, since any column that is added makes adding a new row more effort (and therefore less likely that anyone adds the row at all). It would only be the first instance of the grammar in the manga too, so I’m not sure how good the grammar sheet is for sentence lookups anyway.
Agreed.
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I mean if I’m a beginner reader, and I’m having trouble parsing a sentence because looking up the exact words doesn’t give me results, for example “しな” at the end of a sentence, if I open the grammar sheet and see a list of grammar points, where one of them is “し”, it won’t help me at all
So I think the easiest for the beginner readers who need help, and the more experienced readers who fill out the info would be:
Grammar point / name / resources / examples
し / giving list of reasons / bunpro-link / まああんた半分人間じゃないしな (p.11)
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How come we use the の particle to indicate that we’re talking about something, as opposed to に or を? Is it essentially turning the verb ‘to talk’ into ‘to horn-talk’? In other words, ‘to talk about these horns’ is being treated as a verb unto itself, with する attached at the end?
But why is it in the て form, らしくて?
So もう means ‘although’ here?
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Because 話 is a noun, as all する verbs are. You could see it as “to do talking of horns” if you want to translate it into overly literal stunted English.
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Ah, so it’s being used ‘statively’ here. So, how do we say “is coming” then? Is it still 来ている, but it just depends on context? Or, is there a difference between 来てる and 来ている?
Brilliant! No one mentioned this before, ありがとう!
Again, this is a mistake that no one pointed out. Thank you!
Would you mind explaining what もう and のに are doing in this sentence?
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My favourite kind of English
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I’ve now gone through the corrections you guys have given me, and it’s bittersweet. I’ve learned so much from the responses, but given the time that I’d need to allocate to go through each one, and with me doing as much WK as possible, I’m going to have to skip reading Komi Can’t Communicate by the looks of it. It’s just too much, unfortunately, and I really want to take the dive into trickier material, but that would mean having to choose between Komi and Ruri, and I don’t want to give up Ruri at all. But I will pop my head in to Komi once and a while at least, if I can. Suffice it to say that once Ruri ends I’ll be at Beginners Book Club all the time 
On the plus side, in the last 28 days I’ve learned 512 new items through WaniKani! (ie. 5.6% of the entire course in February alone), jumping me all the way up to Level 15 in a short amount of time. I’m trying to have all lessons and reviews down to 0 at least once a day. In a couple more levels the daily review rate will be around 200, so if reading the 2 books at once was an option I totally would I swear
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もう is just a bit of an interjection to add some emotion to the statement, it doesn’t really mean anything that translates directly (I think - I’m not 100% sure of this)
のに functions a bit like けど at the end of a sentence, with a hint of “the current situation is unfortunate”. So the whole statement including the previous is something like “it’s a bit late to worry about your horns standing out now… it would’ve been better to just take the day off though” - the “though” at the end being analogous to のに, expressing that it’s unfortunate that Ruri didn’t take the day off.
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I think because that sentence was supposed to be the “trailing off” type. So it’s a connective て with nothing to connect to.
Kinda like adding, “so…” at the end of a sentence in English, without going further, letting your conversation partner fill in the gap how they like.
Yami covered the rest of your questions exactly as I would have. 
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