極主夫道 | Week 2 Discussion

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Chapter 3 and 4

Start Date: 11 December
Last Week: Here
Next Week: Here

image
image384×521 89.4 KB

極主夫道 ・The Way of the Househusband Home Thread

Vocabulary List

Please read the editing guidelines before contributing!

Useful resources

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur out major events in the current week’s pages, and any content from later in the book/series, like this: texthere
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).
  • To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this point yet
  • I’m dropping this book

0 voters

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

9 Likes
2

Chapter 3 was mostly ok, though dealing with the Kansai-ben is definitely an interesting challenge. One thing I’m glad for is シマ being defined later on in the chapter with the furigana thing after it was used near the beginning of the chapter with no additional explanation. Did end up with one question if anyone can help on it

Page 42

「何が暴力では大切なもんは守れへんや‼」
So I think if I understood what Tatsu said, he was saying “You can’t protect important things with violence”, but I’m having trouble parsing the response. I get broadly that he’s questioning the statement (and following up by asking if Tatsu has become a “peace idiot” (fun term)) but need some help understanding what the 何が at the start and や at the end is adding here

Likewise chapter 4 went alright, with quite a bit of referencing to the Kansai-ben grammar index for some of those conjugations

5 Likes
3

I think the only confusing thing here is that he’s quoting tatsu

if you replace the phrase he’s quoting with some random noun/adjective (lets say ペン), and switch the や for standard japanese, then you get

何がペンだ!! → what is (a/the) pen!!?

does that make it easier to understand?

7 Likes
4

Page 33
肩身が狭なった

I found 肩身が狭い (to be ashamed), but with the lack of く before なった, I’m wondering if this is slightly different?

Page 35
あこぎな商売しとりまんな
I only have a rough guess on this one, help welcome:

あこぎ greed
商売 business
しとりまんな
Maybe an abbreviation forしておりまへんな?
That would be 関西弁 for していませんね。

Which would mean he’s saying “you’re not running a greedy shop, are you?” The shop lady responds はい?
So maybe this is his way of initiating a conversation about the overpriced cabbage? (Which he never seems to finish…)

Page 51
時間くっている場合ちゃう

I'm interpreting this rather creatively as

時間
食っている
場合
ちゃう

It’s not like I found 時間(を)食う in a dictionary or list of idioms, I’m just translating the English idiom “to eat up time.”

ちゃうis a Kansai abbreviation for 違う, and it’s used at the end of sentences to replace じゃない. At least, when I lived in Kyoto 20 years ago, it was pretty common*
But, I mostly heard it with ん preceding it: んちゃう。

I realize this is a pretty odd breakdown, but it’s the only one that made sense to me: This is going to eat up my time, isn’t it.

If anyone has a less convoluted breakdown, I’m all ears.

*My homestay sister taught me the tongue twister:
あの犬のチャウチャウはちゃうんちゃう？
(That dog’s bark is weird(different), isn’t it?)

Page 56
指し金
Anyone know what this means?

9 Likes
5

なにが
Is roughly “What do you mean by,” and then he quotes 龍。

3 Likes
6

In my edition it’s 差し金, and according to my dictionary, that means “carpenter’s square” (no idea what that is, so I ignored it) or instigation, suggestion.

7 Likes
7

I think it’s just his accent

していますね

given your analysis, “this is not the time to be wasting time” would be more natural, right?

he’s asking who’s instigating tatsu to attack them. see meaning two on jisho. the J-J definition makes it clearer 「かげでさしずをして、人を動かすこと。」

4 Likes
8

Ah. You’re so right, without the ん、that’s exactly what it would mean.

4 Likes
9

That’s why I couldn’t find it, I was choosing the wrong kanji! The perils of being able to read but not write.

6 Likes
10

The end of chapter 4 was heartwarming. :smiley:

I think this should be correct.

7th definition here, 食う also means “to consume time and-or resources​”

I was also confused with this sentence. Your interpretation makes sense, but I still couldn’t find what まん refers to in Kansai dialect.

6 Likes
11

I just got stuck at this sentences as well, I found that まんねん apparently means something like のです, which is probably what’s going on here with まんなぁ. I would never have guessed that one on my own :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
12

It seems we all had our own interpretation! My best guess was that it was a slurred version of ものだ but I’ll believe whatever you guys say :smiley:

Edit: note that @theghostofdenzo also posted a link to a Hinative post saying that it’s a slurred version of ますね, which makes more sense, I guess, because he is using polite(-ish) language with the shop clerk.

5 Likes
13

Lovely, I think you all covered everything I would have needed to ask (especially the shopkeeper interaction kind of stumped me). I’m being totally handheld by everything in the vocab sheet, but with it, it’s smooth enough sailing, heh.

The mitten takedown was just incredible.

3 Likes
14

did some more googling and people variously say it’s something like のです or ます. everyone seems to be agreed that it’s not something you’ll hear much outside of some old people or people trying to put on an accent. apparently it’s a not commonly used anymore…

grammatically I think the conjugation of the おり means ます makes more sense but I don’t think there’s enough difference between the two for it to matter, really.

5 Likes
15

Masa got what he deserved for wasting those amazing looking croquettes.

11 Likes
16

Aw, that ending of chapter 4 <3

I love how Tatsu seems to have so much charisma that people just seem to go along with whatever situation he puts them into. In chapter 2 we had the salesman enjoying his food, in chapter 3 Masa clapping along with the others when Tatsu presented his croquettes, and in chapter 4 we have the Yakuza members accepting Tatsu’s scolding about their lack of bargain shopping skills.. And I also love it when they inevitably have that moment of “wait, what am I doing here” :joy:

8 Likes
17

bruh, everyone’s terrified of him :rofl:

9 Likes
18

Well, that’s still a form of charisma :joy:

13 Likes
19

I have to admit, the way they slide into doing contradictory stuff like this, given that I’m still fumbling my way through this language, was the cause of a lot of second guessing myself in this week, going back to re-read a little and make sure I was actually getting the motivations and relationships right. It’s one of those perils of reading something new. I think I’m prepared for it now, though.

7 Likes
20

I’ve read through Chapter 3 and will likely finish up Chapter 4 tomorrow or later this evening if I get time. I’m really enjoying it so far!

I do have a couple things I’m not totally sure about with Chapter 3, however:

Pg. 34 and 35

I honestly can’t tell if Tatsu is upset about the cabbage prices or happy about the cabbage prices, and my confusion hinges on the sentence:

買い占めたらぁ！！

The confusion for me lies primarily with the use of たら.

I know there are two たら (probably more, but I know of two): the one that expresses a conditional which follows a verb, and the one that expresses exasperation. My understanding was that the one that expresses exasperation could only follow a noun (usually follows names). This is the one that’s listed in the vocabulary sheet, but the vocabulary sheet also lists 買い占める as a verb.

Can the exasperated たら follow a verb (if so, boy that’s confusing for conditionals…)? And if it can do so, when following the verb 買い占める, why does the る part get dropped and replaced? That makes it read explicitly as the conditional たら to me, or does it follow the same rule and replace the る in the verb when it’s being used as exasperation?

This (creative) interpretation I would roughly say, “I’ll buy it, I guess.”

Or is it the 買い占める where we’re going wrong, and we should actually be looking at the noun: 買い占め, followed by exasperated たら. “Buying up of goods; cornering (market)” and “Panic Buying” are the two nouns it says there, which would make me think that he is griping that the shop is cornering the market on cabbages.

For this one: “(This shop) has the market cornered, dammit.” (Again, creative interpretation)

Other option I have is:

He is actually happy about the price, and he is saying, “Gotta buy ‘em up.”

And when he addresses the shopkeeper, saying that they run a “shady” business, it’s his roundabout way of a compliment (maybe a “shady” business is a good thing to former Yakuza?) because it’s Tatsu and everything he says has to be able to be misconstrued.

The only thing there is, I don’t know if the たら conditional can be used to mean “should” or “must” in the same way as なければ or not, since that’s part of a whole phrase, not just the ば conditional on its own. Can the たら conditional be used that way?

Pg. 40

何をクロッケ揚げてお～言うて。おばはんか!!

“Why are we frying croquettes?! Huh!? What are you saying?! Are you a middle-aged woman!?”

I’m just looking for feedback, because I don’t really understand what the お～ is doing for these sentences. I put it in as the interjective “huh!?”, but I’m not 100% on that.

Comment

image
image529×559 54.9 KB

I loved this little artwork of them cleaning up their mess. It gave me a good laugh. :laughing:

11 Likes