It’s not actually the keys she’s mentioning I don’t think, rather the lock. The two are interchangeable in Japanese (which is always fun)
More like “what’s the difference?”
There’s no period there, it actually connects to the next sentence, so ironically there should be ellipses at the end for the English translation
I would translate this as “What’s up with those?”
何それ is often used as a sort of “You’re kidding” or “What the heck” sort of inflection
We talked about this a bit earlier. 生える appears to be a stative verb, meaning 生えてる actually means “to be in a state of grown”. Therefore this is more like “They’ve grown”. And especially in these cases, it’s there to differentiate just something she put on her head vs actual grown horns.
There is an easy solution to this - youtube has a setting (under the gear icon) to change how fast the video is playing. Play with the options and hopefully that’ll help a bit with comprehension!
Just a thought @all, but if someone writes down a whole translation, and there are all necessary yet reasonably few corrections made below, it would kinda make sense to link (or copy) it to the top post so people can compare later. The way it is now, the “whole translation” almost gets lost within the thread… For me it’s fine either way because I’ve read the whole thing anyway, I’m only wondering what would be best for those who barely find the time to read the actual book.
Using “Search” with “in this thread” selected to find specific sentences/pages is a good way to spend less time looking through the thread - and the best part is that unlike manually linking/copying stuff it will find everything, not just the things that someone spent time on copying to the first post. (It would be a ton of work to make sure nothing relevant is missing - we talked about that before starting here.)
I still have to catch up with Week 2 today and tomorrow and browse through the topic after that as I didn’t have time to read it until now I hope I can make it back to the reading cycle rather sooner than later … and not falling even further behind before it even started
I did it I did it I did it. This week was just a little easier? I guess I knew some vocab to make it through, but I did suffer with grammar. I want to change the way I do this from next week. I end up reading the manga, looking up stuff, and I get here for translations and corrections given by some really cool people but that makes me so lazy
I feel like I need to make my process of learning more active. Not sure how I’m going to do that yet, but we’ll see. Thanks again to everyone asking questions and sharing feedback. Ya’ll are so amazing!
I feel exactly the same. Having these weekly threads is super helpful and I probably wouldn’t be motivated to read in Japanese at all otherwise, however all the people asking questions make me lazy to look everything up myself. Like… I procrastinate reading further than each weeks chapter because I’m too lazy to do all the work myself. So don’t worry, at least you actually look some stuff up, there are worse people out here, me for example
Really want to change the way I go for this whole book club too, because the way I do it now isn’t efficient at all.
One problem for me is that I’m a bit afraid to ask questions
Because every week starts right of the bat with people posting the translation for the whole chapter and every page is discussed before I even start reading. So I assume everything has been answered already and I don’t want to bother people with repeating things. But also reading a page, then looking everything up in the thread, reading the next page, and scroll around again to see if the topics were discussed already, is a bit tiresome. And when I finished the week, I forgot the problems I had with the first pages. But that’s probably just me, so carry on I am still very thankful for the effort people put into helping others!
I’d say just use the search function to see if you can easily find what you don’t get (most people include a transcription of the Japanese sentence), and if you don’t find it you’re more than welcome to ask away.
Well, you’re more than welcome to ask away either way really, but the search function is faster than asking and might not play into your anxiety so much
Honestly the translations are not helping me as much as the questions, unless there’s a breakdown of the sentence, I don’t feel like I’m learning much from JP → EN. On the other hands the questions are a big help, I’m more a beginner than an absolute beginner now, and trying to answer forces me to lot to look at how the structure is or how can things be shortened and I learn a lot from all the replies / corrections
Yeah, I can see that. I think it’s different for me cause I am definitely an absolute beginner and need translations for most sentences to even understand what’s going on. So currently I’m learning something with every sentence basically. But this will probably wane of when I’m a bit better at parsing the sentences.
I understand why you feel that way, but I can assure you: Reading Japanese in the beginning is a ton of work by itself, so you’re not lazy, and you are learning!
Sure, if you want to do more and find the energy to do it, that might make it even more “efficent”, but just by reading the manga and letting the thread explain things, you are definitely getting better. The only way you’re not gonna learn anything is if you neither read the manga nor the thread, and drop the book club. (Which, by the way, 34% of readers of the first thread have already done by the second thread, so “Well done!” to you for continuing!)
So, if you want to learn even more, go for it, but just by continuing what you are doing you are already doing and learning a lot. The only way you’ll stop learning is by giving up.
It is indeed tiresome to look up things in the thread while reading. Here’s what I recommend:
While reading, don’t open the thread at all, just Jisho/Vocab Sheet/Google/whatever else you like to look up things.
If you cannot figure out a sentence, either take a picture/screenshot it, or write it down for later.
After you’re done with a few pages (or the reading for the week), look at those sentences:
If you want to, you can put in more energy and try to figure them out yourself.
Look in the thread if somebody has already asked what you are wondering about. If yes, find the answer (or wait for it).
If somebody has posted a translation…
…but nobody has corrected that sentence (you can usually see “x replies” below a post), look at the translation. Does it sound good to you? (It’s made by a learner asking for help - it might be completely wrong!) Do you understand the sentence now? Are you satisfied? If not… ask a question!
…and somebody has corrected that sentence, see if the correction helps. Do you understand the sentence now? Are you satisfied? If not… ask a question!
If you can’t find it anywhere, ask a question!
So, tl;dr: Separate “reading” and “figuring things out with the thread”, but make notes of what you would like to understand better while reading.
Also, feel free to skip the whole “If somebody has posted a translation…” step if it’s still too tiresome. If it’s too tiresome for you, it’s probably too tiresome for other people too, and I’d rather have you sometimes ask duplicate questions by accident than not asking questions at all.
(If anybody complains, tell them @TobiasW asked you to do to it! )
- sincerly, @TobiasW, who wishes the thread had more question posts about specific sentences too, because going through translation posts is too overwhelming for him.
(Thanks to those posting and those correcting/answering those translation posts though! It’s so much work!)
I was exactly the same when I started participating more in the forums, I would read what I had written a tousand times and then post it, was nervous all the time… Now it’s much better. I don’t know if you’re new to the forums/book clubs, but if you’re new, I’d say just give it some time and do not worry too much! We’re all here to learn, you can only help others by asking questions! And I’m sure nobody will kill you if you ask a question that has already been answered!
What you’re doing is essentially not reading, you’re studying. I don’t know how you study, every person works differently obviously, but I don’t even bother looking up things while I read. I just read and if I don’t understand something, I just leave it to come back to it when I’ve got the time. Usually I read the weeks chapter all in one go and look at the questions in the forum. If there’s something I didn’t understand that hasn’t been asked already, I just ask. There are a lot of flaws with this approach I guess, mostly because I don’t read every day, but that is that…
Well, what I wanted to say with this, don’t try to understand everything at once. When you read a lot, your brain will eventually pick up the patterns through repeated exposure.
Thanks a lot for this, it’s nice to hear! I’m definitly learning, just wish I could motivate myself to actually read every day. I’ll do my best!
My recommendation at this level of learning is to ensure you are reading the discussions of the grammar involved and ask about any you’re uncertain of or would like clarification on.
Aside from that, just exposing yourself to the manga is slowly building up pattern recognition that will cause you to recognize things later on down the line subconsciously.
The best way to build up confidence in asking questions is to ask questions.
This may not help you start asking questions, but know that once you do, it gets easier.
And if it has been asked before, don’t fret if someone replies, “That’s been answered here” with a link to the post it was answered in. Someone else may have had the same question and missed the answer but didn’t post asking about it, giving them another chance to see the answer.
It’s also an opportunity to figure out how you missed finding the question/answer before and to improve your thread-searching abilities, which is another benefit.
I hope I can make it back to the reading cycle rather sooner than later … and not falling even further behind before it even started 
I am still very thankful for the effort people put into helping others!
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