三ツ星カラーズ — Week 1 Discussion (ABBC)

Japanese Language Reading
#42

I was just about to type that out before I saw your edit. :stuck_out_tongue:

It can be a tough thing in manga to differentiate who is speaking sometimes, but you’ll start to get a feel for the speech patterns of each character as you read, as authors usually give individual characters different styles of speaking (such as different levels of politeness, or certain verbal tics, or something along those lines).

It’s also a little tough since this one introduced 3 characters immediately, which means you only have a 33% chance of guessing correctly. :stuck_out_tongue: At least in my first manga (Takagi-san), it was a 50/50 shot, and they had very clearly different speech patterns. That still didn’t prevent me from messing up all the time and having to re-read to clarify I knew what was happening.

But! If you stick it out, you’ll see progress, and there’s always wonderful people here in the club who are willing to answer any and all questions. Like I mentioned in the home thread, no such thing as silly questions in this kind of environment. We’re all here to learn and have fun. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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#43

Quality factors:

  • When the original print release came out.
  • Publisher who creates the digital copy (if scanning is required).
  • Year digital release came out.
Bad quality example from 2012

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Average quality example from 2013

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Really bad quality example of 2015

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Good quality example from 2018

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Really good quality example from 2019

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We’re getting closer and closer to the Golden Age of readable kanji and furigana in digital manga.

When we get to the end of the week, don’t hesitate to ask for a summary of specific pages, or even a quick summation of the week’s total material, to ensure you’ve got a better idea of what took place. It does get faster and easier over time, but it can be slow going to get there, so it’s sort of a matter of faith here, you know?

For my first read manga, I was spending up to two hours across four panels each day.

i-012x

Feel free to ask for clarification on who’s speaking at any point. I actually figured someone would ask about it by Sunday night!

What helps for this panel is that the first dialogue mentions さっちゃん, so it’s not her talking. The second dialogue mentions ゆい, so it’s not her talking. But at at earlier point in learning Japanese, there’s so much going on there that it can be difficult to keep track of everything at a first run through.

Edit: Don’t forget, the first post in this thread lists all characters for this week, with pictures and names!

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#44
Slightly Off-Topic, but first manga I tried to read on my own before deciding to join the book club...

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Liked to pull that kind of thing with furigana. The furigana is not always the actual kanji reading, it’s words that are more modern versions or less dramatic versions of the kanji that’s actually there, and you’ll likely notice that in the bottom left speech bubble, some of the furigana is just…more kanji. :stuck_out_tongue:

It was that point where I decided I jumped in too far and decided to start somewhere easier. Even now, coming back to it, I still have a while to go before I can read that one, I think.

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#45

Looking at the shared page, I know I certainly wouldn’t be ready for it, even after over two years of reading manga. But I’ve also only completed WaniKani through level 30, so there’s still a whole bunch of common kanji I haven’t even learned yet.

I do hope a lot of first-time readers have a manga (or other native material) somewhere that they’re not ready for yet, but they hope to be able to read one day, that they can use as a barometer for their progress. (For me, it was Sailormoon, which I finally started last year and completed this year! I just wish it didn’t take me over 20 years to be able to start reading it…)

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#46

Out of curiosity, how do you recommend I work with the manga? Completely translate it and understand each word and sentence or aim for understanding the story and not getting too stuck on details? Because I “read” the first two chapters, I know the story and all, and now I am working through it all in detail but I am not sure if that’s the way to go…?

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#47

Personally, when I first started reading manga, my approach was just to get the general understanding of the story, looking up (or asking about) what it took to make sure I understood, but not doing a deep-dive on anything until I saw any given grammar point repeated at least three times within the manga.

It’s not a scientific approach, or anything, but it helped me indulge both the part of my brain that tells me I have to absolutely learn everything, and the part of my brain that felt like I was going too slow and failing to see the forest for the trees. It did this by giving me the opportunity to dive into things when it became clear that it was something that would come up often, but also allowing me to just enjoy the ride, so to speak, accepting that some things are just going to be ambiguous, and understanding will come with experience.

All that is to say, do what works best for you. If you have the time to do a faster read through and then come back and do a deeper dive on the text, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I often read the chapters several times each week (if only because I also go back and re-read sections every time I go to answer a question to make sure I haven’t forgotten any context), but if you find yourself not keeping up with the reading pace of the book club as we go on, I personally think it’s best to accept some ambiguity, move on, and then come back to it later when you have more time, and presumably more experience under your belt.

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#48

I think both approaches can work fine and the important thing is that you find an approach that doesn’t burn you out - the biggest improvements will come from you continuing to read.

For my first manga (からかい上手の高木さん with the ABBC) I did hand write out every non trivial line and do a full breakdown, and I got so much value from that.

But it was a lot of work, and at times too much.

I think it was valuable to me because I normally struggle to study grammar, and if I just skimmed sentences I was missing out on the opportunity to learn grammar in a way that I can actually enjoy.

For my second & third manga I tried this but reduced halfway as it was slowing me down a lot.

For my fourth manga (Demon Slayer) I’m being much more flexible and hybrid. I’ll try infer things and be okay with missing some details, I’ll add little sticky notes (or digital notes) reminding myself to come back to parts that I think might be interesting to break down.
Some times ill sit down with a grammar dictionary and work though every piece, other days I’ll be reading in a cafe just with a small electronic dictionary.

TL;DR
So first priority is finding an approach which won’t burn you out, secondly is being flexible in that approach as your needs and it’s demands will change, and third is trying to tweak it based on what you want to get out of it.

For me my priority with reading is still grammar, so I’ll often spend a good chunk of my time quickly looking up grammar points, but I think it’s an important step for me to not force myself to do this all the time - it has to be optional and voluntary and based on my interest and time/situation allowances.

Even though I got value from doing full breakdowns, there are plenty of others who got more value from not, so I really want to stress that (as much as it’s a non answer) it is up to you and there are no bad choices - except ones which burn you out from reading =p

Sorry for the long and abstract answer.

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#49

There is absolutely no need to be sorry, I’m confident that any question you ask will be the exact same question that someone else comes in here to ask and they can instead look at the discussion you generated.

(I’m saying this as someone who also often apologizes for asking questions in the ABBC =p)

I know that myself and others in here (e.g. @ChristopherFritz) have watched cure dolly videos which teach the dictionary form approach and try to avoid the formal language - so explanations are likely coming from the individual’s preferences.

With that in mind though, there are no rules on how we should explain things in here - often if you’re lucky you get multiple different explanations from different viewpoints - and likewise if you want to give an alternative explanation please don’t hold back!! =)

this is my limited understanding as well, that both -desu (1) and -masu are polite helper auxiliaries and are only in final position - so dictionary forms are used for modifying nouns and so forth.

Edit: (1) was phrases poorly, clarified in reply.

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#50

First time catching a book threat in week 1. The resolution was a tough one on my laptop… reading 斎藤 was near impossible (as i don’t know the kanji, and couldn’t see the furigana) until I realised it was just his name and referenced in the first post. I’ll try and pick up the hard copy book today and re-read the pages.

Some of the slang was a bit beyond me, but context made it mostly understandable.

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#51

Thanks for answering foxabell’s question - I could understand this part, but there was another I had to go and look up - leading a sentence with つか. While I couldn’t find it in my regular dictionary, JMDict lists it as a colloquial conjunction leading into an explanation (“or perhaps I should say,”). This HiNative answer gives a plausible explanation for why, and a derivation from と言うか.

Bookwalker, regular and 300%.

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Something I looked up for myself was the use of べき in 「こんな化け物ブッ殺すべき」which for some reason I haven’t run into in quite a while (unlike はず or ほうがいい which are constantly underfoot).

An Intermediate Dictionary of Japanese Grammar lists it (+だ) as “an auxiliary which expresses the speaker’s judgment that someone or something should do something or should be in some state”, ie. in this case, this kind of monster ought to be beaten to death. I assume that ことは is just dropping the だ here.

There are a lot of notes included on how to use this - probably the only two I’m likely to remember is that you shouldn’t use it with a superior and that it’s generally not used with i-adjectives.

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#52

In very casual dialogue, I find だ at the end of a noun sentence gets left off often.

We see this on page 4, for example, with だ not appearing after メガネ or 猫(ねこ).

Thus, I concur that there “should” be a だ after Kotoha’s べき, but it’s simply dropped here.

As for べき itself, it’s one of those things that once I learned it, it seriously shows up a whole lot more than I even would have expected it to. (Although I don’t think we’ll see it again in 三ツ星カラーズ.)

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#53

Oops I realised this reads that -desu is only a polite auxiliary, which isn’t quite right afaik, so I thought I’d try clarify.

My limited understanding of desu and masu

My understanding is that -masu is a polite/formal auxiliary attached to the stem of verbs, another auxiliary like this would be -tai used to express “want to X”.

食べる to eat (dictionary)
食べます to eat (formal)
食べたい want to eat

As for -desu it’s the polite/formal version of the copula “to be” verb -da
A は B だ / です

But we also often see desu used in sentences where it’s not grammatically required, in which case it’s there to jazz up the sentence to be more formal

An example of this would be
このリンゴが赤い
This apple is red
Since I-adjs have their own built in “is” verb, we don’t need a copula here, but in formal situations we might add です onto the end to jazz it up.
このリンゴが赤いです

I don’t know if desu here is necessarily an auxiliary, but I think of them in similar ways.

Now back to our regular programming.

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#54

Thank you for hosting this book club. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m taking a break from WaniKani to work on grammar so the timing is perfect for me. So far, reading the first few pages, it’s a big adjustment from reading textbook sentences to these more colloquial phrases. It’s intimidating, but I’m excited to try. Thanks again.

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#55

Well, I feel like I’m coming late to the party.

Alrighty, here we go. Real-world locations. (Vaguely considered a manga-anime correlation comment too, but it’s been too long since I watched the anime…) But oof, page numbers - thanks for the guide, @ChristopherFritz

In any case, as previously mentioned, pretty much the entire manga takes place in either Ueno Park, or the adjacent Ameyoko.

From the top, the panda-shaped mailbox on the front cover is here. The very first panel of the chapter appears to be somewhere around here.

I’m not sure the カラーズ secret base is real, though if anyone else thinks they can find it…

Page 7, the police box is here, and let me tell you, it is an absolute tragedy that this chapter doesn’t show the building in its full glory.

Is anyone else as slightly weirded out as I am by the elementary school girl wearing a top that reads “Kiss & Hug”?

(Well, that was a short reading…)

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#56

Hi, everyone! Thanks so much for the discussion!!! It’s all been so helpful, and I’m learning soo much already. I actually have a question about the book cover, here:

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  1. First a process question: I tried to find the very first word by typing all the pronunciations for “life” that I could remember. I knew what iki was, but I couldn’t find the first kanji in the dictionary. I finally got out Google Translate and it said that this translated as “cheeky” or “fresh” and then I realized that it was the pronunciation of “fresh” or “nama”. That’s how I finally found the word in Jisho. Anyone have a better process / tool that doesn’t involve Google Translate to find words where you don’t recognize the kanji or know the pronunciation?

  2. So the first two lines: I think this translates as something like “They’re cheeky and (sarcastically) darling, how cute!”. Is that close? I think the first de is a connector. Is that right? And then the にくいらしくて … is that turning it into an adverb??. What am I missing?

  3. Okay and then the last line has me pretty perplexed. Here’s my stab; please correct me!

平和なの - I think this is peace but then made into an adverb by the な and then made possessive by the の. So this would read something like “Peace’s”.

平和を - I think this is peace again and the を makes it the direct object of the sentence’s verb.

守る - I think this is the veb “to protect” in its dictionary form, so non-past (thanks, Cure Dolly!) – “does protect” or “will protect”.

のは - I know the は makes this a topic sentence, so everything before this is being presented for comment. Something like, “As for protecting peace’s peace…” But why the の here before the は?

我らが - My jisho tells me that われ is “I” or “me”. I’m curious why this isn’t 私 or 僕は – what’s the meaning difference with this word choice? And then I think that the ら is making it plural, but if that’s right how come it’s not たち? So if I’m right, that would be “our”. And then the が is making this the subject of the sentence.

カラーズ - And then this is Colors, but I don’t understand what this is doing here. I think it’s just an exclamation.

So putting it all together, this would mean something like, “As for protecting peace’s peace, it is ours – Colors!” And in trying to put that into something somewhat English-like, my stab is “It is our [job], the Colors, to protect the peacefulness.”

Appreciate any and all thoughts and corrections. You all are awesome!

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#57

i think you’re missing the 上野 (ueno district) in your sentence, so the sentence would sound something like: protecting the peace in peaceful ueno, we are colors!
which sounds kinda tongue in cheek.

as for the 我ら, it sounds a bit edgy or “chuuni” when kids use it, atleast that’s what i think when hearing characters like megumin and her family from konosuba use it, like they take themselves unecessarily serious.
i might be misremebering and conflating this with 我が though.
somebody correct me if i’m wrong.

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#58

I was a little freaked out by the splash art on page before the contents page, for what it’s worth.

Just so I’m on the same page, we’re talking about 生, right? Well, there are actually quite a few different methods you can use, so hopefully one of these works for you.

One of them is looking them up the traditional way, using radicals. Jisho.org has a button to show radicals in the search bar, and they’re organised by the number of strokes they have. But to use this, you sort of need to know the radicals already - I know some of them, but there are a lot I have trouble with.

Another is to try drawing them. Jisho supports this as well:

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This works best if you can follow the normal Japanese stroke order - just try to get the right number of strokes, and the rough direction correct. It’s not so fussy about scale and proportion, as you can see above.

Another method I have used is something called a SKIP code, which is something Jack Halpern came up with. If you’ve ever worked with search trees, it’s kind of like that. You pick one of four basic Kanji shapes, which are nearly all dividing it into two pieces. Then you count the strokes in each piece. This can be nice because some programs let you say things like “I think it has 4 strokes… plus or minus one” if you can’t quite make it out (e.g. this skip search tool here at the sci.lang.japan page). (Jisho supports SKIP too, but I think it’s a secret.)

Finally, sometimes I know some kanji in a word but not others - in this case I sometimes use a wildcard search. You mentioned that in your case, you knew the 意気 part already. This search, “?意気 #words” will match any one character + 意気 (小粋 is included as it has a variant form, 小意気), and “*意気 #words” will get you any number of characters + 意気 (e.g. 小生意気). You can keep building from there - e.g. “??気” is “any two characters followed by 気”. Hope this helps.

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#59

Just to append to this, in cases where I know the kanji, but maybe not the reading that’s being used in the word, I will type the kanji in a reading I DO know, and then just delete any other kanji around it that don’t fit.

To use the example of 生意気, if I didn’t know the なま reading, I would type in something like, 学生 (がくせい), and then just delete the 学 kanji, and fill in whatever parts of the kanji I do know (in this case, you knew 意気, and could just fill that in afterwards), in Jisho’s search bar, and that will net you the reading and definition. Of course, this only works if you know at least ONE reading of that kanji, and you have a Japanese keyboard installed on your phone, or an IME on your computer. In cases where you don’t know any readings or don’t have a way to type Japanese, search by radical with Jisho is usually your best bet. (Drawing is also an option, but usually not a great one. If you don’t know the stroke order, you will almost never get the correct result, and I find it discriminates against small handwriting like mine, even if the stroke order is correct, so I have to go out of my way to write the kanji about three sizes larger than I usually would in my normal writing)

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#60

This の is a “nominalizer”. That means it is turning the whole phrase that comes before it into a noun. It’s an important concept in Japanese grammar. I’ll let Tofugu explain.

Colors is the name of the group the girls have formed.

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#61

So the first two lines: I think this translates as something like “They’re cheeky and (sarcastically) darling, how cute!”. Is that close? I think the first de is a connector. Is that right? And then the にくいらしくて … is that turning it into an adverb??. What am I missing?

it’s basically the same for にくいらしくて how you explained it for the first word, it’s the て-form, which allows you to connect clauses.
for nouns like you said, it’s で, for a suffix/i-adjective like らしい it works by removing the い, and adding く and て.

pretty sure you nailed the meaning.

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