一週間フレンズ | Week 1 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#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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#68

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)

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#69

In many cases, you can drop the sentence into ichi.moe and get a very informative parsing.

ichimoe
ichimoe.png1036×958 93.8 KB

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 )

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#70

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 >.>

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#71

That site looks really useful! Thanks.

#72

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 :relieved:(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 :fearful:

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#73

About the sentence on page 3: 「今４時間目が終わるを告げようとしている」

My interpretation is “The teacher is telling is telling us that the fourth period is over”, but I’d like to know what the grammar 「としている」 is doing in the sentence.

#74

This is just based on the part you posted, but I think it’s と + する in te-iru form

(https://www.japanistry.com/the-connecting-particle/ and http://maggiesensei.com/2014/07/31/how-to-use-v＋ている-teiru-ています-teimasu/ ) < - random articles I found with google, so I can’t guarantee they’re good, but I also suck at explaining things myself

My feelings of insecurity demand that I add a disclaimer here saying that I am human and thus fallible, and also fairly tired at the moment

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#75

Slight correction. 終わり rather than 終わる. (Easy typo to make.)

This is correct. And it has an extra grammar point when following the volitional form.

Here’s a good link for it: How to use volitional form in Japanese: V（よ）う (maggiesensei.com)

  1. Volitional form + とする ( = to suru) /としている( = to shiteiru)

(1) about to do / about to happen

Something hasn’t happened yet but it is about to happen /It will start to happen soon.

You don’t usually use volitional form for things you can’t control.

However, even if it is something you can’t control, you sometimes use volitional form if you are somehow involved in the event.

You often use this pattern to describe some change that involves you — especially in written form or a formal announcement.

Although Yuuki has no control over when fourth period ends, fourth period ending certainly does involve him. I’m guessing this qualifies as “written form” here because it’s not Yuuki speaking or thinking, it’s narration (being in a rectangle box rather than a speech or thought balloon).

Including that として (from とする) gives the sense of “to try to …/to be about to…”, this may translate as: Right now, fourth period is about to end.

@rugoseappendage: If you feel you would benefit from a detailed explanation of としている or any other part of the sentence, don’t hesitate to ask. I know it can be difficult to take in new grammar by reading through resource material that covers a wide variety of situations. I or someone else can reiterate and simply if needed. I’d have gone into more detail here, but my time is limited this morning.

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#76

Thanks, that’s a very clear explanation.

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#77

It indeed helped me!! Thank you!

Still a few questions from my side:

page 10 (ノート運び終了)
この先話す機会があるのかどうなのか
So I found this for のか… So does this mean something like I wonder if I have the oppurtinuty to talk (to her) after this, I wonder what to do?

page 12 (ちょっと同情）
友達がさつさと一人で食べて寝てたんだ
Thanks to ichi.moe, I learned that がさつさ means rude and so I get what this sentence means. But can someone maybe please explain what function と serves here?

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