一週間フレンズ | Week 1 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#47

This is why I like reading maggiesensei.com; a lot of colloquial Japanese is covered there.

According to “A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar”, 「ように言う」 is defined as expressing “Tell someone in such a way that he will do something.” It suggests English counterparts as “Tell ~ to ~” and “say ~ in such a way”.

Because of that, I take this to mean “say ~ in a good (いい) way”, kind of like “can you put in a good word for me?” Or specifically to this line, Won’t you put in a good word with the teacher for me (so I won’t get in trouble for it later)? (parenthesis implied by ておく).

I could be off base here, though.

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#49

Dang I didn’t expect they would do that >_<

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#50

I am having some trouble with what Shougo says on the second row in what I think is Page 6: 「藤宮がいいとかお前ってもの好きだよね」 Does this sentence mean Fujimiya is fine, and you said you like it/her…
I’m having trouble differentiating when いい means the dictionary form = good, fine etc. and when it’s more nuanced.
And the whole ってもの好き。I assume the って to be the quoting particle… But I just feel like I am
not getting the essence of the sentence :sweat_smile:

#51

I can see they use って a lot on this panel, is it just used as a colloquial topic introducer instead of quotation marker?

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#52

It’s 物好き = having strange tastes. “Fujimiya is nice[, you say]? [new sentence] You sure have strange tastes”

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#53

Actually, yes! Good guess.
Technically って is generally short either for と or という or というのは
Going off the というのは, って is sometimes used more or less simply like は.

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一週間フレンズ | Week 2 Discussion
#54

Thank you! That makes so much more sense now

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#55

I asked a native about this panel, and they thought it meant “in a good way” as in “in a way that embellishes the reality of my having plainly forgotten my notebook”. So maybe something more in line with the so-called mutative に, “make it sound good and tell the teacher” (though it stays within the realm of the two basic meanings I gave above). I guess I got the “for whom (it is good)” part wrong—as I said it was just my humble opinion. :woman_shrugging:

PS: Regarding the analysis as an indirect imperative form, IMHO it’s just a specialised use of meaning 2 “so that”, but usually found in an actual imperative sense only with verbs as far as I know. In this case, my native contact also said they thought the meaning was close to 上手に言う so it’s not really specific to ように as a grammar point, it’s just interpretation, really.

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#56

Just getting into this today. I spent my lunch break going through the first page. Came here with questions but saw they were all answered, and it cleared up some confusion. Not sure if this is above my grammar level or not. In school I went through Genki I and II, but the whole first page took longer than I thought (and there was grammar I hadn’t seen or maybe don’t remember). I still think it’s a good practice, but page 5 looks a lot more dense so I don’t know if I can keep pace.

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#57

I think you should be fine with that level - there’s always going to be new grammar you encounter. It is a bit dense to start out, but I found it eased off around page 9/10, so your last few pages will probably be quicker. If you can make it through the first couple of weeks you’ll speed up considerably :blush: do use the vocab sheet!

@ everyone, how are people finding the reading difficulty- / pace-wise so far? There’s still a good few days left in the week!

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#58

I have to say the large amount of colloquial speech and very little context at the beginning was quite surprising, it took a little while to get used to. In a book you would have some sort of exposition and little no colloquial speech in the narration, which usually makes it easier to get oriented. But once I got what’s going on, and who the main characters were, it went much smoother, and I accidentally already read some of next week’s part.

It’s a bit inconvenient that the chapters are so long, and the ebook doesn’t have page numbers on the pages, which means I am often going back and forth for questions and trying to find where I was.

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#59

Whenever I swap from a book to a manga or vice versa I feel like I’m reading Greek or something for a bit. Well, less so now, but yeah, it can take a bit to switch gears.

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#60

That’s why you should always read both all the time. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#61

Or just read so much that it’s no longer as much of a problem

:slightly_smiling_face:

Though… I guess that could take a while, and I can’t give any guarantees it’ll work perfectly, so maybe your solution is better

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#62

This is a good example of something that I’m having trouble with. Two things going on here, first I wasn’t familiar with the specific grammar point that is linked, and second, I wasn’t aware this was an alternate form of that point. I initially translated it as はせる with a ず ending, and then when I came here, saw this explanation and realized it made a lot more sense.

How are people dealing with unfamiliar grammar patterns? The furigana simplifies the process of looking up unknown kanji, which I actually thought was going to be the big barrier. Or maybe I’m overthinking it, and this kind of struggle is just a natural part of the learning process.

#63

Well, personally, I’d default to asking questions here a lot more readily.

When you instantly recognise the vocabulary or grammar in play, it’s very easy to look up the parts you don’t know. But if you’re at the stage where you’re not even sure what to look up, or how to parse the sentence (e.g. should you be looking up はぜる or せる or what?!), someone else will likely be able to help you much faster than you could help yourself…

It also means that you can just file the sentence under ‘not sure’ and move on with your reading rather than spending lots of time trying to puzzle it out.

Obviously over time you want to get better at working out “what you don’t know”, if you see what I mean, but we’re here to help each other so don’t feel that it’s laziness on your part or anything to ask questions. I know it can feel a bit like you should have been able to work stuff out yourself when people are able to just link you a webpage in answer, but half the skill is in knowing what to look up in the first place.

I’d never come across the ず form until I encountered it reading something with this club, and asked what on earth was going on with the sentence :grin:

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#64

No problem, I have a lot of questions all the time and don’t want to inadvertently dominate discussion, but it is nice if there are people with more experience available to answer questions. My local library has all three versions of the Dictionary for Japanese Grammar available, so I had considered grabbing those and still might, but the same problem with “what to look up” exists both on the internet and in book form.

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#65

I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think you have to worry about asking too many questions. If anything, most of the time people tend to seem happy that others already have asked the questions they wanted to ask, so they don’t have to :slight_smile:

(it’s obviously also fine if you don’t have a lot of questions or just don’t want to ask for whatever reason)

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#66

Be careful what you wish for :smiley:

I do appreciate the encouragement and I’m still trying to figure out how I engage with this whole process, being my first time in a book club. I’ve also started to play Dragon Quest XI in Japanese, so if there’s a thread for me to ask grammar questions for that as well feel free to point me in the right direction!

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#67
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