レンタルおにいちゃん - Week 1 Discussion (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

で can indicate the ‘means of an action’. It describes the method by which the action is done.

私があなたと英語で話す → I speak to you using/in/by means of English.

二人で食べる → Eating (as two people, together)

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Page 11
In the panel when he says, だね。。。おにいちゃん,
what does the だね part mean?

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I read it as agreeing with what Kanami said earlier. So, Kanami comments how the brother rental is (already) over and お兄ちゃん confirms/agrees with that with 「だね・・・」. You’ll also sometimes see a simple ね used which communicates a similar sort of idea.

例えば:「このオムライスは美味しいね。」「ね!」
This omu-rice is delicious, isn’t it? Yeah, it is!

Also, I believe it is Kanami saying おにいちゃん, not お兄ちゃん himself.

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ahh okay, I see now. That makes much more sense.
Thanks!

Page 11

For the だ, here’s my understanding. This isn’t something I’ve read somewhere, but rather what I’ve put together myself over time, so I could be wrong about some grammar details.

Typically, you will see だ at the end of a “NounA is NounB” sentence. The だ is similar to saying “(it) is” in English.

We’ve also seen in this chapter that you can take a whole sentence, turn it into a noun by adding の to it, and then add だ. In this case, it comes off as if the sentence is a reason or explanation being given. “It is that (sentence).”

In the case of Big Brother’s line here, Kanami has just said that “the rental time has ended.” Big Brother’s だ is essentially adding だ to Kanami’s statement.

The particle ね at the end of a sentence has a sense of seeking confirmation.

In English, combining “it is” with seeking confirmation gives you “isn’t it?”

Consider the following in English:

  • “It’s really hot today.”
  • “It is, isn’t it?”

That response is similar to だね. Notice how in the response, the first “it” is referring to the prior statement.

To add to this, you can barely see a tail from the word balloon, pointing toward Kanami:

0821_rental_1280_01_013x

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Thanks! :ok_hand:

I know this is unrelated but I love you profile pic

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So, I think the sound effect is actually ブー as there are only two vertical lines after the フ. Jisho has an entry for this Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary

beep; honk (car horn); buzz (buzzer); boo (wrong answer, like buzzer on quiz shows)​Onomatopoeic or mimetic word

Other forms

ブーッ

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Yes looking at it again I think you’re right. In fact it might be ブー on the first page, and then on the second page ブッ - with the small ツ showing that the sound suddenly cuts off as he stops the alarm.

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Yes, this is exactly right. You use だ very similar to how you would use です as a declarative.

I will add though, that because a lot of things in Japanese don’t need to be explicitly declared the use of だ sounds more forceful (and thus more masculine/is used more by men).

ペンだ

And

ペン

Both imply the pen exists.

So you may see a “less forceful” ですよね used in the same manner; “it is [CONCEPT] isn’t it?”

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I have one more absolute beginner’s question:
Why is Kanami’s name written with exactly these two kanji? Does the name have a meaning?
First kanji = leaf
Second kanji = fruit

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From what I can tell the Kanji of her name is:叶実
It’s clearly a name rather than being a distinct word.
However, my dictionary reads the kanji as;

叶 - grant/answer
実 - truth

So I read it as more “truthful answer” than “fruit leaf.” But I could be very wrong.

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Thank you, that list is very helpful even if you don’t use bunpro. I saved it for further grammar study.

Oh I should have recognized the kanji for truth!
My error was also that I didn’t tell the dictionary that I meant Japanese, so I got a translation for simplified Chinese !

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Finished the week 1 pages. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the thread this week. A lot for me to take on board. I’ve definitely been spinning off on tangents reading about particular grammar points as I’m still at very early stages on that road, so it’s probably taken me a bit longer than I thought.

But also really cool to have people pointing out a lot of nuance in the text and artwork that I might not have picked up.

Just got my physical copy of the book in the post today. I’m happy about that as it was hard to read the furigana in the free sample! I really wanted a physical copy for the first one I tried reading - it looks really nice. :blush:

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Finished week 1
First time reading Japanese and I started to learn grammar a couple of weeks ago when I decided to join this book club.
It is a little slow going, but with this forum it is possible and fun.
So thank you all for the information, vocab list and grammar explanations! Big thank to @ChristopherFritz for organizing the book club and the detailed replies!

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I also found the verb 叶う which means „to come true“.

Cheers! Where did you buy your physical copy from? I thought it was only available online

Week 2 reading thread is up! Click here to go there.

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Page 6

Does anyone know the “ふゆ…” in the cell where Kanami says “なんでも…” is suppose to indicate?

ふゆ means winter, but I don’t understand the context. Is the idea of “Anything” making here freeze, like winter would? Did something happen last winter? Is she wanting something that will happen in winter?

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