ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 5

I’m early!!! I’m early!!! ahh this is such a nice feeling.

Me too. I finished last week’s readings more or less within 30 mins, but this week was so hard (but also equally rewarding ig)

@Markdg’s questions and @yamitenshi’s clarifications literally saved me this week, so thank you so much for that. I still have a few (very silly) questions though:

Page 51
  • 火はくなんてくなんて知らなかったしさ。。- I understood the dialogue to be something like “I didn’t even know I could breath out fire like that…” but what’s “しさ”?
  • 隠してたつもりはないんだけど - again, translated this as “My intention was not to hide it from you” but what’s the た doing in “隠してた”? t_t
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  • はよ車出せ - Not really a questions but I have such a huge problem with 出す. I know it has several meanings, but I saw a reading set use this word for “falling in love” too. I have no idea how to grasp all the meanings for this one.

On a side note, I really love how soft Ruri and her mom are. I enjoyed their interactions this week, especially when Ruri gets embarrassed after her mom apologizes :face_holding_back_tears:.

also, one smol challenge I'm facing

I know that that I may be in the minority in facing this problem, but I really wish that furigana were included by default for all kanji in the forums. Even after reading through the manga, listening to the voice-over, and trying to translate everything - it is still quite difficult to read comments that are heavy on kanji. For now, I’m just trying to list out all the kanji and search their meanings and readings on Jisho. It’s not too difficult, but I just wanted to know if I’m the only one with this problem.

And lastly, my favourite panel:

ruri 1
ruri is stirring up feelings of CUTE AGGRESSION in me.

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よかった! I genuinely believed I was regressing with the manga lol

Omg same, I just felt that things were much more complicated this week, and not just grammar, it took a lot of time and I couldn’t find some words in the vocabulary sheet so I felt I should already know those maybe! Ughh haha!

And about your issue, don’t you have Yomichan? (it’s an addon in the browser that lets you check kanji in a dictionary and it shows you the reading by just pressing shift) it’s really useful! tofugu link to yomichan

In my case. I struggle sometimes with the furigana size in the actual manga, I read on my phone and I have to be zooming in like a blind bat all the time to read the words for ants.

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p51

I’m pretty sure し indicates that the sentence is a (slightly negative) reason, and さ is just a sentence ender that makes it a bit more assertive, forceful, however you want to put it.

It’s the past tense of ている with the い omitted. Since it’s a past continuous statement. “Why were you hiding…”

p53

You read enough and meet the possible meanings. This is one of those big issues general language learning has. Words can have a ton of possible meanings, and the only way to know those is to grow your reading legs and actually see them used that way. Just think about how many meanings for example the word “open” could have. Even if English is your native language, you probably won’t be able to list them out.

It’s most likely because you don’t have a strong grasp on kanji or vocab yet, that’s perfectly normal. Over time you will be able to mostly keep the readings in your head after you read already looked up the unknown words (mainly because the number of them will decrease). For the time being though, you can try making that process of looking up words a slight bit faster by using for example yomichan to look them up whenever you don’t know one.

I’d personally spoiler this tbh

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ikrrr, I relate so much to this hsjhsjh

Thanks for the link btw, I know yomichan but never really checked it out because I was already overwhelmed with how many websites/apps I was using. This is going to be super helpful though, thank you!

Yeah me to tbh. This week I played the youtube voice-over video along with reading the manga. The furigana was much easier to read in the video, so I watched it on mute once, read the page, and then played the video.

Yes, I’ll definitely try doing that. Thank you so much for answering my questions!

I did use the spoiler tag for the panel though? or do you mean you would spoil it because it’s so incredibly cute? Sorry I got confused :joy:

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Oh lol, I see now, it was just I had some autounspoiling script on, sorry for that :joy:

Yep, that’s what happens when you are the publisher and you have all the raws ready to use.

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Reading with Mokito from this week on, thanks to the thread describing how to set it up made by @ChristopherFritz , and wow it’s good, it even got parsed the handwritten kanjis from the texts :joy: (though not correctly oops)

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Honestly, deadpan humour and cute story aside, Ruri’s expressions are pretty much the best thing about the manga IMO :smile:

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Thanks everyone for the explanations this week, really helpful. I just have two more things I’m confused about.

Pg. 58

何って言われても
…何だろ

The first part of this seems to be saying something like “even if I said what”, but the second part confuses me. Since she follows this up by essentially saying they can talk later, it makes me think this means something along the lines of “how should I say…”, but I don’t know how the grammar works here.

Pg. 59

ノド焼けてんのに刺激物か

The word 「刺激物」is what’s getting me here. The vocab list/jisho suggests it means “stimulant” or “something exciting”, but that’s hard to fit into the sentence. My best guess is that this whole thing means something like “even though your throat is burned, [you want] somthing spicy?” (implying it might hurt to eat).

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Page 58

You mixed up a ら with a わ:
何って言われても
…何だろう

言われても is passive (probably indirect passive) + ても “even if”.

So, literally translated this is “Even if “What (is a dragon)?” is said at me. […] I wonder what it is.”

I think the first and second parts are separate sentences, and the first part has something omitted afterwards.

In my opinion, it’s probably (again a bit literally): “Even if you ask me what a dragon is, I have trouble answering. Huh…”

So, essentially she’s saying that she can’t explain it properly or easily.

言われても always trips me up a little. If anybody has a better (or more accurate) explanation, please correct me.

Page 59: I agree with your translation.

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pg 58 and 59 answer

Basically she is quoting what Ruri asked previously. So something like “Even if you ask me ‘what’ (is a dragon)”. then she goes on to say something like “What is it, I wonder…?”

Yeah you’re basically right, her throat is already kind of burnt so a stimulant would probably just irritate it.

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p. 58

言われる is passive, and って is quoting 何

Basically “even if “what” is said”. Your more natural interpretation checks out, but the grammar is a bit different - it’s not about being told what a dragon is, it’s literally about 何 being a thing that’s said (i.e. Ruri asking her what a dragon is, exactly).

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Pg. 59

I believe 刺激物 can also be translated as ‘irritant’, which I think is a better translation in this context.

Edit: I don’t see it translated that way on Jisho, so I might be incorrect. I’m mostly basing that on the combination of 刺’s possible meanings of thorn, pierce, stab, prick, sting and 激’s meanings of violent, get excited, enraged, chafe, incite

As to whether that is a valid translation or not, someone else would know better than I.

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Page 58

Yeah, I know that it’s passive. I think it’s (and I might be completely wrong here) the “indirect passive”, so if I want to be really literal, it would be “Even if ‘What is a dragon?’ is said at me, …” (which I made a tiny bit more natural by translating it as “being told”, but I have now corrected).

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p. 58

I think you’re right about the indirect passive, but I don’t think it matters much tbh, as long as you understand she’s talking about what Ruri said. Either way it’s one of those wordings that’s gonna sound really stunted in English if you translate it literally.

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By the way, if any of you want to “level up” after this book club - the Beginner Book Club is currently (only 18h left!) voting on their next manga/book!

Sadly the start date is a bit inconvient since our last week here starts on May 6th, which is also when this BBC pick will start. But apart from that, the difference between ABBC and BBC is not that big, so if you feel like you’re doing well with Ruri Dragon, this might be a great next step!

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Real nouns VS words battle: 1-1
I was proud to recognize that 吉岡 was someone’s name, and then right after that I tripped on 宮下 and couldn’t figure out why they were suddenly involving a shrine :crazy_face: (even though the ちゃん should have been a pretty huge indication :disappointed_relieved:)

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I’m a bit behind, still missing two pages for the last week, but I’m still hanging there!! I’m a bit shy on questions as everybody clearly are faster than me, but thanks you all for answering and asking in such an organize way that make my life so much easier :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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After falling completely behind at the very start of the book club (due to a lot of sad and extremely stressful life events) I’m finally caught up with to this week. Today I’ll probably go through this weeks pages in one go. Thanks to everyone who is continually asking questions about each page every week. I’ve read a decent bit of manga now, but I still like getting extra clarification on sentences and grammar. :sweat_smile:

Now I just need to catch up to the BBC too. :cold_sweat:

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I am currently trying to translate this week and just for the heck of it I asked ChatGPT for help and damn…if you put sentences in there, the AI actually explains every part of that sentence and what everything means. Works better than ichi.moe in parts.

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Be very careful with it. It tends to make up grammar points if it has no idea. You might easily learn something from it that doesn’t even exist, at least double check first.

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