ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 2

Colors from a linguistic perspective is something I learned a bit about in college & found interesting (basically, different languages sometimes make different color distinctions than others), so I decided to do a bit of digging into this! I found this short article that goes into the difference between 青い and みどり + its uses from a historical perspective:
https://cotoacademy.com/japanese-color-blue-green-aoi-midori-青い-みどり/

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As for the 青 traffic light, it’s because the word みどり (green) wasn’t adopted until after WWII, and before that 青 was used for both blue and green, so the meaning stuck.

Incidentally, a lot of things we would otherwise consider “green” are still called 青 today because the word also has a connotation of being “fresh” or “young,” much in the same way we might use “green” to mean “inexperienced” in English. That’s why you’ll see it in words like 青年 (youth) or 青葉 (fresh leaves).

(edit: see above, oopsie)

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All good, you summarized the article better than I probably could have :laughing:

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Thanks! That basically explains it for me.

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Adding some grammar references I found during my lookups:

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まあ生えてしまったもんはしょうがないしな
~てしまう Grammar N4 and a Cure Dolly video on it

じゃあわたしは一体なんだ
一体 Grammar N3 / WK lvl 7

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もしかしてそのツノの話してる?
もしかして Grammar N3

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Thanks for this explaination, fits perfectly with this N2 Grammar point!

It’s also taught on Wanikani, level 14

Wow that explains a lot, thanks! Nice to know why it’s “blue”. Also they are taught on WK too, if someone wants a reference, 青年 level 5 and 青葉 level 10 (and 青春 level 17)

Also @TobiasW would it be an idea to put a link to the video in the first post? The voice acting is really funs and helps me so much with knowing who is talking and how to parse the sentences

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I’m seeing a lot of “I have finished this part already” answers (yes, I voted that too, don’t judge). Apparently all it takes is a cute dragon girl and half of wks self control is gone.

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But if it was past tense wouldn’t we say 生えてた?

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“It’s currently being in a grown state” would be it’s literal translation, but in English that’s “it’s grown”

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I’m going to print out this answer and frame it on my wall. This is the explanation I’ve been looking for. I now know why I was getting confused.

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In my defense, i read all of the chapter on the first day the club was announced because I was on the fence on joining. I also didnt know the 1st chapter would be that long, I just wanted to read the free sample on amazon but it just didnt end. Beyond that i still haven’t read any more so technically i have self control.

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FYI, I am going through the process of reading every response, I just might not be able to respond to everything today or tomorrow. Thank you for those who did respond, I promise I’m not ignoring you.

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Responses/feedback

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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