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So this manga kinda does the same thing as Horimiya, iwth random handwritten pieces of text dotted around the pages, but thankfully not in this chapter, so I’ll be taking @MrGeneric’s example, and finally learning how to read helping newcomers by transcribing it.
Great. That is one of the first questions I had. I was writing up a post to ask exactly about that. Here is what I have so far.
Some of the things in the background look like they should be katakana words, but looking them up in a 辞書 either doesn’t yield any results or don’t really make sense. Is it just for stylistic effect or perhaps I’m just reading them wrong? I think maybe some of them are supposed to be onomatopoeia.
In the bottom pane of page 3 (background text spoiler):
The characters on the right look like ボソオツ and then in the middle バア。。。, and on the left ガン.
In the top pane of page 4 (background text spoiler):
The characters appear to be ム and スッ.
In the 2nd pane from the top of page 4 (background text spoiler):
Looks like ムー.
In the 3rd pane from the top on the left of page 4 (background text spoiler):
Looks like ガッ.
In the pane on the bottom right of page 4 (background text spoiler):
Yep, onomatopoeia, same as “BANG” would be in western cartoons. I don’t personally consider them handwritten “text” though, they are a bit special.
There is a magical method to finding these in the dictionary. First of all, place a と after them. 99% of the time, these will appear like that in dictionaries. Secondly, you might need to shift around some of the elongated stuff, they are often elongated after the fact (like how BAAAAANG or CRAAAASH would be written to indicate a drawn out sound).
I mean, with Horimiya, you kinda had to choose between squinting at 3 pixels for hours or skipping handwritten text. I personally skipped it almost always…
This is super helpful. It didn’t even occur to me to treat the vowels as elongated, but it definitely makes sense when you point it out given that type of thing is super common in comics in general. Thanks!
Nice. I thought it was ブ at first, but when I couldn’t find anything I second guess myself and thought maybe the lines were just the typical lines pointing at the dialog bubble.
With your help, I found this stack exchange post about onomatopoeia for vehicle engines that claims ブオ(ー)ン or ブオオ is used when a car is going faster/increasing the speed which fits nicely with the context I think.
It also has some other variants for other situations.
んだ = のだ, contracted (very often in casual speech, you will see の – and る sounds followed by a の – contracted into an ん). のだ is essentially “explanatory” in nature, implying that the speaker is introducing new information. In English, we would usually just have a tone of voice to indicate something is an explanation, but in Japanese, they actually have a sentence ending for it. I have seen this ~のだ phrased as, “It is that ~”, so that can be a useful (if clunky) reminder of what it brings to the sentence if you struggle to remember it is explanatory.
よなぁ = Yep! It is a small ぁ, indicating it is dragging out the vowel before, and is just an extra character for that purpose. With that in mind, よな is two sentence ending particles combined into one. You’ll see the same thing happen with よね, and the meaning of the two often overlap. よ adds a bit of assertiveness, and strengthens the んだ “new information” nuance. The な is essentially a more “masculine” (or slightly more assertive) ね. It basically just adds a slight “thinking out loud” vibe in this sentence, seeking confirmation to some degree (though of course, unintentionally, since he didn’t mean to say this out loud).
In all seriousness, a lot of Japanese “grammar points” are just vocabulary that is used in specific functions regularly. とても literally just means “very; really.”
Notice that in English, you could use them interchangeably in both of your examples.
“That movie was very interesting” means the same thing as “really interesting”
Similarly you could say, “The new employee works really hard,” and it would have the same meaning as “very hard.”
You don’t need to distinguish between whether this is とても the “vocab” or とても the “grammar,” because they are one and the same!
Hello! Excited to be trying the ABBC again! Life got very busy for me last spring, however I’ve been able to resume dedicated Japanese study this fall. I wanted to clarify my understanding on page 5 & 6
Page 5-6
まったく
あんまり困らせないで
I’m reading the まったく on the earlier page as a connecting statement, resulting in something like, “You really don’t bother me at all.”
Thanks to everyone contributing to this lovely resource
まったく is very commonly said just as is. It translates roughly to “geez”, or “for f**** sake”.
困らせる to be bothered, which is put into negative imperative (because of the sentence final ないで), so it’s actually “don’t bother me”, or more affectionately, “don’t make me work so much”
So I’d translate this whole thing as
“Jeez
Don’t make me work so much”
I had the same question^^
