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.
4 Likes
Thank you! That makes so much more sense now
1 Like
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. 
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.
5 Likes
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.
4 Likes
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 
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!
5 Likes
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.
1 Like
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.
9 Likes
That’s why you should always read both all the time. 
8 Likes
Or just read so much that it’s no longer as much of a problem
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
2 Likes
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.
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 
12 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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 
(it’s obviously also fine if you don’t have a lot of questions or just don’t want to ask for whatever reason)
9 Likes
Be careful what you wish for 
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!
3 Likes
3 Likes
Aside from asking questions here, which is totally fine, if I don’t know something and can’t break it down, I just google the whole thing.
Here I would have googled “ろうとはせず grammar,” and the results are usually pretty helpful.
If they don’t tell you what’s going on exactly, they’ll usually give you an idea of what to search next and what to look up in your grammar resources of choice like the DoBJG
(This is something that didn’t work very well 10 years ago so yay for studying today)
6 Likes
In many cases, you can drop the sentence into ichi.moe and get a very informative parsing.
From there, you have a foothold on what to look up. Check out which parts you don’t know, so you know what caused an issue, and look that up. Maybe the とは didn’t register as a particle, so you can read up on uses of とは. Likewise, you may read up on what the と and は mean separately and what putting them together means.
As @Radish8 mentioned, you can always ask here, even if it’s “I have no idea what is going on in this sentence!” I understand wanting to figure it out for yourself (and that gets easier as you learn more so you know what to zero in on, and as you get experience looking things up). But I also know there comes a point, be it a lack of understand enough of the sentence, or because you’ve spent too long trying to find an answer, where you just have to ask.
Other people may have the same questions and may shy away from asking for similar reasons. And you may ask a question that someone else will respond to, and a third person may realize their own understanding was wrong and learn because of it.
(I realize I’m reiterating what @Radish8 and @Ditto20 said, but that just means all the more that anyone with a question should not hesitate to ask =D )
8 Likes
Just decided to invest in the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, thought about it before since I really like in depth explanations of grammar, so it was a long time coming. And totally not because I got frustrated parsing out a sentence and it turns out it was because I forgot a piece of grammar I knew before >.>
3 Likes
That site looks really useful! Thanks.
Done with this first week of reading. This felt so much lighter and shorter compared with all the intermediate club stuff I’ve been reading lately 
(so probably a good choice), but there were still some things I didn’t get or wasn’t sure about and the questions/answers helped as always.
Even if they are not as dense as a book and supposed to be easier, I feel there is always something difficult about reading manga. All the colloquial dialogues and short sentences without much context can get really frustrating.
Sometimes I go back to reading manga after reading a supposedly much harder book, thinking I will be a walk in the park, and nope, still a bunch of stuff I don’t get.
Oh, and now I realized someone said basically the same thing a few posts back 
13 Likes