獣の奏者 (Kemono no Souja) Home Thread

Japanese Language Reading
#21

8 pages per day sounds like pretty good to me, but I don’t know any of the three books, so I cannot compare…

If I were in your position, I would actually sit down one day and try to read the first few pages of the two books. This way you can find out (a) how you get along with them in terms of difficulty (I have abandoned books after 2 pages because I just couldn’t make sense of anything) and (b) how your reading speed compares to what you‘re used now. That should give you solid data to base your decision on.

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#22

That’s really good advice. I’ll just time my page speed. Since I already have 'em both already I might as well give em a 2-3 page session and check the weekly # of pages we’d read for each book, it can’t hurt.
…right? (;^_^) ｱｾｱｾ･･･

Thanks for the sound advice.

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#23

I’d really love to try to read this book with the club. But my vocabulary seems to be really limiting here… According to Floflo and myself I think it would be doable to learn all +5freq before the beginning.

I genuinely wonder if it would be enough?

Anyway I’ll try learning the vocab and see how it goes. Worst case scenario I’d have learnt a lot of new vocabulary and will wait a bit more before reading this book.

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#24

Love the idea of reading this book but haven’t reached Level 60 yet and don’t feel like looking up a bazillion kanji readings as you go? I just discovered there is an Aotori Bunka 総ルビ version. (See https://bookwalker.jp/de74420b7d-48d4-4149-b06c-9feea7ddacf3/?adpcnt=7qM_FM2 for a 試し読み).

(Be aware that the AB version splits the original Book 1 into two books)

As a time-poor person who feels no shame reading fully-furigana’d books, I think I’m going to take this option. Based on my previous experiences, there may be some minor variation in content as well as presentation, but if it means I can keep up with the story line then it will be worth it!

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#25

I can also chime in that it’s the version I read back in the days. It was my first Japanese book ever! The furigana did help a lot.
It was still painful at the time

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#26

I have started reading a little bit and I can confirm that quite a bunch of the weirder Kanji come with Furigana even in my version. (Plus, as I’m reading the ebook, Kanji are really the smallest of my problems :joy_cat:) But if you can find a copy of that other book and you don’t mind the Furi, then that’s even easier!

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#27

Be aware of apparent differences between the two versions. So far I see kanji changes and footnotes. For example, page 14 in the preview (18 in the regular version). I’ve put the differences in bold.

Aotori Bunka version says (furigana for all kanji obviously):

まぶたが膠 （獣の骨や皮や腸からつくられる接着剤） でくっついてしまっているようで、目をあけることもできないのだ。

Regular version says (furigana where I put it)

瞼が膠にかわでくっついてしまっているようで、目をあけることもできないのだ。

Granted, that footnote was pretty helpful, and would have been perfect if I had known/remembered the meaning of 接着剤. But it’s important to know that these differences exist.

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#28

I think you just confirmed why I should buy this version :joy:

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#29

By the way, isn’t it そうしゃ, and not そうじゃ?

Pretty sure I’ve used both before because I was never sure, but I just looked it up. (Again. I’ll probably look it up again when I actually start reading. :sweat_drops: )

#30

Haha, I had the exact same discussion yesterday with Myria :slight_smile: そうしゃ is the current reading, but そうじゃ seems to be a reading from the Edo period or so? If you follow the Wikipedia link given for 奏者番 it mentions both readings.

My book title has Furigana that clarify it‘s そうじゃ.

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#31

Ugh. I hate when they just change the pronunciation like that. How dare Japanese be a living language?!

What I hate even more is when the dictionary I use only gives me one of them though.

Anyway, thanks for clearing that up! If they put そうじゃ for the furigana that’s pretty official. ^^

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#32

I’m sure they’ll use the furigana once and expect you to remember it forever. Just like 闘蛇, which seems to only show furigana on the subtitle for the book on page 8. It’s not even included on page 13, which is the first page of chapter 1.

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#33

There are also furi for that one in the explanations of the characters iirc (which I did not read, only kinda glossed over). But yeah, that is the word I learned first from this book :wink:

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#34

And by word you mean “word”? Since it’s not a real word. :stuck_out_tongue:

#35

Ah, well, my native language is German which is very creative in that respect, so whatever you write down is a word :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I mean, there are words like 闘犬 and 闘鶏 so 闘蛇 makes perfect sense as a word to me. Do you think it was invented by this author?

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#36

I’m pretty sure it’s a made up species in the series, so yeah.

#37

Oh, I did not take it to be the name of a species, rather I thought it’s the general term “fighting snake” or something, just like “fighting dog” or “fighting cock” do not describe a species either. But yeah, as a species name, that of course is not an existing word since there is no such species.

#38

To be fair, I still remember that reading almost 5 years later :stuck_out_tongue:

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#39

I mean, 闘蛇 and 王獣 are basically the most important words in the book, so I guess you wouldn’t forget them. But it is true that the normal edition usually only uses furigana once and some advanced words are entirely without furigana.

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#40

Some people don’t care about readings if they understand the meaning of words. For example, when reading コンビニ人間, at least one person read nearly the entire book without knowing that the main character’s name was pronounced けいこ.

Personally, I subvocalize when reading, so not knowing the pronunciation of a word drives me insane.

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