三ツ星カラーズ — Week 2 Discussion (ABBC)

Japanese Language Reading
#42

I’ve got a few small questions about the verb in the last panel of page 10. First, I can’t tell if it’s 踏んでろ or 踏んでる. The last kana has a little curl but it’s not closed… it’s ろ or る?

verb

Assuming it’s 踏んでる, I think it’s a te-iru form (Kotoba is stepping on her), but why it’s not 踏んでいる? The places where I looked for the te-iru conjugation didn’t mention rules about dropping the い.

If the verb is 踏んでろ, I have the additional question of… why ろ? I only know いろ as the imperative form of いる, but she’s not saying “don’t step on me!”, my translation was “You’re stepping on me!” so the imperative doesn’t seem to fit.

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#43

It’s る. With enough exposure to comics, you get used to the various fonts that get used. Some of them are really crazy, and some are a bit difficult to read.

Examples from other manga:

i_0085x i-102ｘ

The い in て＋いる gets dropped often in speech. It’s really common, sort of like how in English we typically say “can’t” rather than “cannot”, and “won’t” rather than “will not”.

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#44

If the little curl is there, it’s always る, regardless of whether it’s closed or not.

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#45

Wonderful discussion, thanks again for all of the questions asked here as I had many of the same when I read through it earlier this week. Also realizing that this time things that weren’t clear were more often because of implicit meaning by things not explicitly said or me misreading a few particles (particularly に vs. は) so it’s feeling like progress!

I have a few smaller questions that I think are answered yet.

  1. Page 10, 4th panel: This was already asked by @basoomie but I don’t think it was answered: Why is there a な in これはなこうやって猫の目線になることで?

  2. Page 11 first two panels are しってる and だろうな which translate to me to “I’m knowing” and “right”. Why are we using the て form in the first panel, and is だろう being said by Kotoha or by Sacchan?

  3. Page 12 3rd panel: おやじもしかしてそのメガネ. I’ve translated this as below, but I feel like I’m missing some context.

  • おやじ: Old man
  • もしかして: Maybe
  • そのメガネ: These glasses
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#46
Pg. 10, 4th Panel

I’ll quote past me to answer the first question.

Pg. 11, First Two Panels

知ってる is in て form because that’s the correct way to say you know something; you haven’t stopped knowing it, so it’s not in the past, and it’s not something you are going to learn because you actively know it. So, て form to indicate currently being aware of something.

だろう is being said by Sacchan. I would say that the meaning is closer to the, “I thought you’d say that!” meaning than the “Right?” meaning. It’s a bit sarcastic. In English, the exchange might sound more natural if worded this way,

Sacchan: “Kotoha-chan, you’re stepping on me!”

Kotoha-chan: “I know I am.”

Sacchan: “I bet you do!” (with a vitriolic/sarcastic tone)

At least, that’s my take. Somebody else might disagree.

Pg. 12, 3rd Panel

You have the translation exactly right, but I think the context you’re missing is that you haven’t tied it into the next part of the speech bubble. It might help if you inserted a は topic marker after the bit you translated:

おやじもしかしてそのメガネ (は) パンダみたいな猫盗まれなかったか？

“Pops, weren’t these glasses stolen by a panda-like cat?”

It’s just that in casual speech, particles like は often get dropped, so because of that, Kotoha didn’t use it in her speech.

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#47

@MrGeneric already did the heavy lifting here, so I’ll see what I can add to that.

One of the visual clues here is the shapes of the word balloons.

Kotoha’s word balloons across the rest of the page, even when she’s speaking with a raised voice, all use the regular rounded shape.

In the middle panel, we can see Sacchan’s word balloons have straighter lines, and sharper edges. This matches her dialogue in the top and bottom panels, where it’s otherwise not clear who’s speaking due to lack of a tail on the balloon. The shape of the balloon signifies that Sacchan’s not speaking normally, but may be crying out or struggling/straining.

(Yui’s word balloon does as well, but other elements make it clear that it’s Yui talking in the final panel on the page.)

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#48

Yeah, it’s basically a thinking noise. Pretty much exactly how you’d use “y’know” in casual English - as a pause while you compose the rest of the sentence in your head. “Well this is, y’know, like, getting a cat’s-eye view.”

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#49

This was way harder to read for me than the previous week. Maybe because I was slacking recently ._. Big thanks to you people who answered and asked questions.

Btw, did they just use the same illustration two times in a row? Not that I have anything against it though

изображение
изображение876×434 83.7 KB

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#50

What? That’s crazy talk. No manga-ka worth their salt would re-use the same image more than once. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#51

It’s like a spot-the-differences image:

  • Mouth location is different.

  • The line below the button of her shirt gets an extra line at the bottom.

Thankfully it’s only being re-used once!

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#52

Huh. Intriguing.

v01-15
v01-15670×954 121 KB

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#53

wait… what? :o
@ChristopherFritz could actually see this little difference in mouth location!? :o
Before seeing this “overlay” I would’ve sworn it was the same :scream: :sweat_smile: :see_no_evil:

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#54

I suspect he did the overlay himself, just didn’t post it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#55

Yup, I had done the overlay myself, with the top layer at 50% opacity. After seeing the obvious difference, I went back to 100% and toggled the top layer off and on repeatedly to check for any others.

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#56

I just noticed this thread listed the end page as 17, but it should have read 14. (This is corrected now.) If anyone over-read into the first page of chapter two because of this…you got a head start on week three!

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#57

…and because I don’t have enough consecutive posts in this thread, week three’s thread is up:

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#58

While I am still very beginner at reading Japanese, I highly recommend Jay Rubin’s Making Sense of Japanese. It talks about how much of translating Japanese into English is interpreting what the author is trying to say and rewriting it. He is best known for translating much of Murakami’s work into English. I actually think it was recommended to me somewhere in these forums, but I cannot remember how I found out about it for sure.

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#59

Thanks for the recommendation, I found Tofugu’s book review of the same. That say’s its in the intermediate+ kinda range, just wondering if you thought its worth it for a beginner. Also in that review it looks like there’s American cultural references that I wouldn’t get (as a Brit)… finally, is the romanji off-putting?

#60

My tutor said がっはっは is just a laughing sound. I think the answer to that question got missed.

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#61

Hmm, I don’t remember any deeply American references, but as an American, I probably just wouldn’t notice them. I think even for a beginner you will appreciate some of the topics. I found it fascinating because I love Murakami’s books, and one of the reasons I want to learn Japanese to be able to read them in their native language. The first chapter is about は vs が (I think it is the first chapter - forgive me if it isn’t - I don’t have the book with me), and honestly, that is a huge struggle for most non-native Japanese speakers regardless of level. For me it is the sort of thing that I wish I had read earlier in my learning.

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