レンタルおにいちゃん - Week 9 Discussion (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

Hope everyone is still enjoying the book. Week 10 thread is up.

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Indeed! I´m becoming more and more fascinated with the story as it develops. And it has been a whirl of emotions so far, having just passed through the first half of the first volume. I will definitely continue with the next volumes!

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Hi y’all! I feel like this week’s chapter is going really great so far. Have just a few questions if I may ask you wonderful souls:

Page 106

I had an overall trouble with the last panel of this page:

けどおにいちゃんはどういう気持(きも)ちで
このレンタル関係(かんけい)(つづ)けてくれているんだろう

Here is my breakdown

(but just for completeness because I could not make sense of it)

けど:but
おにいちゃんは:(as for) rental brother
どういう:somehow/why
気持(きも)ち:feeling
で:and (conjunctive だ)

このレンタルかんけい を:this rental relationship (d.obj. marker)
(つづ)けてくれているんだろう:(let’s) continuing (ask to do for me)

Bottom line is that I could not even form a comprehensible sentence from this grammatical structure, so I’ll leave it to you experts if you can help me.

Page 109

パパとお仕事いけなくなちゃって

What is the role of this で in this sentence?

My translation for this one was: We could not go because of dad’s work, and

Page 112

この(さかな)はお掃除屋(そうじや)さんなんだよ

How does なんだよ works grammatically?

At first I thought it was Kanami asking if it was the お掃除屋(そうじや)さん fish because of the nature of なん, but it didn’t make any sense, so I just translated as: This fish is the cleaner.

自分(じぶん)より(おお)きな(さかな)(くち)(なか)(はい)って

Why is he using 自分(じぶん) (me, myself) here, when he is clearly (at least in my point of view) not referring to himself, but to the little fish he’s talking about?

Since 自分(じぶん) can also have the meaning of you, I thought that maybe he was talking to you like everyone, in general I went with: You enter the fish’s mouth that’s larger than you, and

I guess that’s it, cheers and thank you! :hugs:

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My understanding is that どういう, in this particular case, means what kind of​ (see last meaning in jisho). Building from there:

どういう => what kind of
どういう気持ち => what kind of feelings
どういう気持ちで => with what kind of feelings

つづけて => to continue
くれている => くれる certainly means “to do for one” (after the て-form of a verb), but I think there’s some confusion about the “ask” you added in your translation. In this particular case nothing is being asked; Kanami is just “receiving” the continuation of the rental relationship from her brother.

んだろう => abbreviation of のだろうか (I wonder). The の at the start of this is the explication-tone の (because she’s inherently looking for an explanation), and だろうか adds the meaning of “wonder”. (BunPro link, Wasabi link)

Putting all this together:

“I wonder with what kind of feelings does Onii-chan continues being in this rental relationship with me”

or in more natural English

“I wonder how Onii-chan feels about our continued rental relationship”.

In this case, で expresses the cause by which something happens. In that sense, using because like you did in your translation fits properly.

で is a very flexible particle that can be used to express a variety of things (the means by which some objective is accomplished; the material something is made of; the cause or reason why something happens; the place where something happens; the time some event took to happen; the cost of an item)

I agree with your translation, though the one speaking here is お兄ちゃん, I believe.

なんだよ is our good old explication-tone の. From bunpro, you can see that when you are going to link a noun with の, you need to put a な before it:

image

掃除屋 is a noun, so it gets connected with んだ with a な, creating なんだ. The よ is just the normal sentence-ending particle that denotes emphasis. So basically, Brother is just explaining that this is the cleaner fish.

自分 is one of the things I still struggle with. 自分 doesn’t mean “myself”. It means self. It can be any self. Herself, Yourself, Myself, Himself, itself. So 自分 doesn’t necessarily mean the speaker, but whatever currently is the subject of the sentence… in this case, the fish itself.

自分 じぶんよりおおきなさかな => Fishes bigger than itself.

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Indeed it does add some confusion when I put it this way. I believe I added it because てくれる implies that the person received the favor asked for it, but maybe this is just one of the meanings and does not apply every time. Because I was so lost in this sentence I added it there, since ichi.moe also puts it this way, but it just ended up even more confusing. =P

Perfect, that makes complete sense now. Thanks!

Ah! Completely forgot about this one, my bad!

Hmmmmm, tasty! Didn’t even occur to me that it could be a のだ here, I was so stuck trying to make sense how I could fit a なん here.

YES! You got it! Now it makes sense!

Thank you so much for your mindful reply kind sir/ma’am/ねこ. I think I just learned more about Japanese from this answer alone than from me going through this week’s pages by myself. :bowing_man:

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One place you’ll see this when someone thanks another person for helping them, even if that help was not requested. A couple of examples:

One Week Friends

Hase’s teacher tells him to help Fujimiya with a task. Afterwards, Fujimiya thanks Hase for his help:

My Love Story!!

Takeo (the dark-haired guy) sees a groper behind a girl on the bus. Takeo steps in of his own volition, and takes the groper to the police. The girl, Yamato, goes with. She explains to the officer what happened, stating that Takeo (この人) saved her:

You can think of くれる as giving the action direction. Since Japanese often omits who the subject is, words like くれる can sometimes help make it clear who’s who in the sentence.

It took me forever to get used to all those のだ, んだ, なのだ, なんだ… Even now, I don’t always grasp them when I see them. It takes time (at least for me).

One part that has helped me a bit is to remember that the な has to go between the noun and の, because 「noun+の」 has a different usage in grammar.

That’s what gets me almost every time! I should really know this by now…

This is why I really like WaniKani’s book clubs so much. You get all this exposure to grammar in native material, plus most questions asked get really good answers.

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Ah, I see that you have incorporated “volition” to your own English vernacular. This is what I call immersion. :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s a good way to think about it, thanks!

This book club (and WaniKani’s forum in general) has been one of the most precious and rewarding internet experiences for me, ever. I’m usually a lurker due to social anxiety (yes, even as an internet anon) but I really feel comfortable participating here, and that gives me the opportunity to interact with brilliant minds like yourselves. I’m forever grateful. :bowing_man:

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It was the perfect opportunity for it =D

Since the examples where to show てくれる was used for assistance that was not asked for, I wanted to emphasize this. (Hase helped because his teacher told him to, and Takeo helped because it was the right thing to do.)

Aside from that, I do try to use the word volition when it’s appropriate to do so, to build up my mental pattern matching between the word and the concept of its meaning.

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I’m a bit late, but you guys’ great questions and answers have helped me out a lot already. One more thing I want to confirm:

Page 109, last panel, first bubble:
…買ってきた
Am I correct that this is ~てくる as in てくる - Japanese Grammar Explained | Bunpro? I’m having a bit of hard time grasping the meaning of this ending, but I guess the sentence could be something like “I bought a sketchbook and crayons and came back” or “I’ve been out buying a sketchbook and crayons” ?

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This is right. I can’t see your grammar link but from Maggie Sensei:

• 買ってくる ( = katte kuru) to buy something and bring it to the place where speaker is.

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Page 109

…かなみが落ち込んでた時。。。

The translation must be: When Kanami felt down…

But I don’t understand the んでた. I know のです but I’m not aware of it being able to take a た at the end. Does anybody know what this form is called? And how it works?

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The verb here is ()()む, which as you have means “to feel down”.

After this verb is て, which is used to link it to another verb. Verbs that end in む + て become んで.

This brings us to ()()んで.

Next, the verb being attached is いる. This makes the verb an ongoing state. Rather than “to feel down”, we have “to be feeling down”: ()()んでいる.

From there, た is added to the end (which replaces to る) for a completed action (past tense), “was feeling down”: ()()んでいた.

And finally, when いる follows て, often the い is dropped in speech: ()()んでた.

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Oh man, I was blind. Good thing one can always count on your explanations, thanks Christopher!