時をかける少女: Week 1 Discussion (Chapter 1)

I knew I only got the gist of it. I definitely plan to reread it and actually look up and analyze everything. Seems particularly important to understand the first few chapters well. :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I was reading Non Non Byori and Natsume with the group and now I’m pleasantly surprised that this is so popular in comparison, makes reading it every week and also actually understanding it so much easier.

I wish I could read like that. I don’t have the patience, nor would it stick in my head. Reading for me has always been passive learning. I look up just enough to understand what’s happening and that’s it xD But what I’ve noticed is that through reading everyone’s questions and discussions I’m actually almost doing the analysing bit after and that works quite well for me. I kind of go back through the chapter along with the questions that get asked (I guess that kind of makes me a lurker, I apologise :bowing_woman: )

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I know how you feel. Family time and homework have been taking priority, so I haven’t had time to go back and post my own questions. But at least I was able to read the chapter before the thread picked up! The analysis has been very helpful! Like @seanblue, I got the gist, but there were definitely missing details that everyone’s input have filled in for me! :blush:

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First sentence and I’ve already got a question lol.
Please be patient with me ;-;

放課後の校舎は、静かでなにかしらさむざむしい。

”The school building was quiet and somehow cold" Is what I’m guessing.
I’m confused about the “静かで” part. Could someone please explain the use for で here? It feels like it’s saying “it was somehow cold with the quiet” :sweat_smile:

Thanks!

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-な adjective + で is like the -て form of an -い adjective, I think it just means “and” in this case

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That was a lot simpler than I thought :thinking:
Thank you!

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For all the details - “after school” .

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My bad :sweat_smile:
Thank you!

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In case anybody was wondering what this piece sounds like. I certainly didn’t recognize it by name.

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The author uses both 流れ出る and こぼれる to describe the liquid in the broken test tube. Isn’t that redundant because they mean the same thing?

Whole sentence: 試験管から流れ出たらしい液体がこぼれ、かすかに、白い湯気のようなものをたてていた。

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I interpreted it as (The liquid that appears to have spilled from the test tube) spilled . So I think it’s being more specific, and possibly avoiding being factual because Kazuko is seeing it all for the first time. Just my five cents

Also, to the extent of my knowledge, こぼれる seems to be the spilling of something over the edge, e.g. water spilling from a cup because there’s too much, or it got knocked, or there’s a crack, while 流れ出る is more of a leaking because there’s nothing there to hold it in anymore. So far as I can tell, this is mirrored in monolingual dictionaries

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I agree with @xarde, I think that the nuance of こぼれる is slightly different - overflowing compared to flowing out.

I also think that Japanese is less biased against repetition than English.

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I went and asked my Japanese teacher’s assistant who’s a native speaker and she said that:

is the correct translation but also said that ような can sometimes be an emphasised version of のため. So it could (and probably based on the next few sentences) be “space that is for being able to do science experiments”.

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Kadokawa Page 11:
ついたての向こうからは、コトリという音ひとつ聞こえてこなくなり…
“From the other side of the partitioning screen the sound of a small bird was audible and then disappeared”
I have two hypotheses:

  1. A bird just winked out of existence
  2. That is not the correct translation for コトリ…

I did find "かたく軽い物が物に当たって出る音を表す語。 " in a monolingual dictionary. “The word to express the sound of a hard, light object hitting something”?. Strangely though, I found nothing resembling that in J-E dictionaries, just small birds…

Thanks for the help~

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yeah well コトリ is 小鳥 normally, which is a small bird - and it’s sound “became unhearable”.

the thing tho is that living things don’t utter 音, they utter 声. 初音 is an exception.

I’m not sure I follow. If コトリ can’t be a living thing, what is it in this case?

Wouldn’t it just be the definition you already posted?

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コトリ (especially written in katakana) is indeed a small sharp noise (like the definition you found).
So a small noise could be heard then stopped/disappeared.

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So it’s an adverbial phrase then? Is there a source that goes over how to conjugation those kinds of phrases?

It just seems like word ordering to me. :thinking:

うす暗いへやの中を和子は目を細くして見まわした。

is basically the same as

和子は目を細くしてうす暗いへやの中を見まわした。

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