獣の奏者 prologue, part 1 discussion

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Prologue, Part 1: 母の指笛、闘蛇の弔い笛

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Start Date: January 25th
Next Week: Prologue, Part 2

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number. If you are reading the ebook version mention the percentage.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle:

Read Aloud

We will be reading on Sundays at 10:30PM Japan time (reading the previous week’s content). Here is the time in your local time zone:

2020-02-02T13:30:00Z

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5 Likes

I’ve read the first two pages. Taking it slow since I’m trying to grab some words to SRS. The paragraph on page 14 starting with 母は、闘蛇のなかでも is kicking my butt. I feel like I’m completely misunderstanding it. I’ll read it again tomorrow and post specific questions after I give it another shot.

For those interested (@elisac), here are the words I’ve added to Kitsun so far to learn:

  • 時刻
  • 絶え間なく
  • 漂う (this is in WaniKani, but with a different meaning)
  • 雷雲 (just to learn the on’yomi of 雲)
  • 吐息

P.S. 雷雲 gives some pretty cool images on google search.

Summary

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6 Likes

Finished and enjoyed the first chapter! I was a bit scared by the character list etc but then the chapter itself was not quite as overwhelming as I was expecting (though I did definitely still feel that beginning a new book disoriented swimming for dear life sort of feeling). Adding flashcards to my deck from this book is already interesting. I think I’ll add some of the made-up words with a ‘temporary’ tag so that later (after finishing the series, should I read it all) I can delete them. I really want to know how to pronounce things, and I don’t know if I just missed the initial furigana or if it is such an obvious thing that it was never given, but when I googled for one such made-up word pronunciation I found this site, which I anticipate using a great deal. Now I have the word with pronunciation safely in my deck and will learn it ASAP because I think it’s going to come up about a thousand more times before this book club is through. Because I’m bad with names (particularly ones in katakana…) I might also print out the book’s character list for easy reference, but maybe I’ll be okay without that.

When I started finding a groove with this chapter I found myself really getting into it, so I’m now very excited about this book. <3

6 Likes

If you’re referring to 闘蛇, it’s read とうだ (for those who haven’t figured it out yet), and strangely it only shows up with furigana in the title of the book since it’s 闘蛇編. It never shows up with furigana in the actual story as far as I can see.

The one that sent me googling was 岩房, but I added 闘蛇 to my deck as well! With how often it’s repeated I probably don’t need the reinforcement, but it doesn’t hurt.

1 Like

Ah, yes. That one did have furigana the first time it showed up. It wasn’t clear to me what that was, though hopefully it’ll become clearer as I keep reading.

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It feels kinda strange to not make these threads. :laughing: I will try to not read in advance for this book. I already have too much advance in Re Zero so it should be good.

People are talking about kitsun card, is there a kitsun deck for Kemon no souja vocab?

I didn’t follow the discussions so I don’t know if this was talked about already, but:

It appears chapter count reset after each 章, so wouldn’t it be better to start referring to chapters (for example in the title) by including the 章? Otherwise, looking at thread titles will become disastrous (So for this thread it would actually be “序 Chapter 1”, and starting from the next 章, it would be “一章 Chapter 1”, etc)

2 Likes

Oh I think I understand what you’re referring to. Taking the whole sentence:
母は、闘蛇のなかでも、常に先陣を駆け、敵陣を食い破る役目を担う最強の闘蛇――〈牙〉たちのお世話を任されている。

This means something like:
Amongst the 闘蛇, the mother was entrusted to take care of the strongest of them, the 牙, who were always in the vanguard, tasked with breaking through the enemy lines.

8 Likes

I read like a page and was really confused about was was going on and which words were made up and what they meant. Going over it a few times and taking into account what was said here I think I’m starting to get it.
It’s always difficult starting a book because you have no context, but when it comes to fantasy it’s even worse because things that would usually be absurd can be happening and you don’t know how the world works yet.

This first chapter is going to be hard but hopefully I can understand it little by little.
Maybe we could have a list of made-up words? (Only if there aren’t too many I guess)
I still don’t know what 岩房 is supposed to be…

I’m going to keep reading+rereading and hopefully the :boom:power of context :boom: will help me soon. Otherwise I’ll just have to ask a bunch of questions :stuck_out_tongue:

5 Likes

I assumed it was the name of a place. Probably the a mountain-like region. Just my guess though.

Btw does anyone understood what they were doing with the egg? p.16 they talked about egg and scale but no sure what they do with them.

Thanks

1 Like

Pretty sure it’s the place where the 闘蛇s are being kept, it’s where they sleep. Some kind of a rock-made chamber.

2 Likes
Summary

In the season when the 闘蛇s start laying eggs, they go in their nest and secretly snatch one or two. After that, they wait for them to hatch, and then the mother (Erin’s mother) breaks a piece of the scale covering the 闘蛇’s ear so that they can’t cover their ears anymore (this is so that they can use the whistle to control them later when they grow up).

Later, they’re talking about how soldiers who ride the 闘蛇s cover the 闘蛇’s ears after they climb on top of them so that the enemy can’t control them in battle.


P.S Anyone knows how to add a made up word like 闘蛇 so that it comes up when I type とうだ? It hurts having to copy paste it every time. I’m talking about windows 10 (google’s IME), but if anyone also knows how to do that on mobile too… That would help a lot.

EDIT: Found it

Check this. You open the IME properties by right clicking on this:

And selecting “Properties”. You can edit the user dictionary from the “Dictionary” tab.

2 Likes

They are supposed to be the good guys when they are mutilating animal then controling them? Just kidding

2 Likes

I don’t know if there are other ways but I was also curious about this and I found out if you right click on the IME options (shows up as an icon with あ to the right of the taskbar for me and I have windows 10 too) you can choose ‘Add word’ and manually input the kanji and reading. It works, look: 闘蛇 (now you have to trust I didn’t copy it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:).

Not that useful if there are a lot of made up words buuut it’s something.

2 Likes

Woah I missed the “Add Word” menu item for some reason. Thanks, this is a great shortcut (check my edit too, I found the more advanced properties window where it has much more options).

1 Like

You just made me realize there’s a similar add function on iOS! マジ神!

3 Likes

Now, all we need is a tool that can somehow sync the user dictionary across all devices… (I hate this kind of thing ;-; )

4 Likes

Where?? I found it on Windows, but not on iOS.

Thanks so much. I kept trying to insert the mother into earlier parts of this sentence, which I knew made no sense. (As in, she was part of the vanguard, which I knew was wrong since she’s the doctor or whatever.) Now I see that I need to treat it at:

母は、(闘蛇のなかでも、常に先陣を駆け、敵陣を食い破る役目を担う最強の闘蛇――〈牙〉たちのお世話)を任されている。

That’s one hell of a noun phrase. :sweat_smile:

I did not realize that. I’ll be sure to rework the schedule table and thread titles soon to make sure that’s never ambiguous.

3 Likes

I’d like to understand the nuance of the words 時刻 and 吐息 better.

時刻

Jisho simply says:
“instant; time; moment”

Goo says:
時の流れにおける、ある瞬間。連続する時間の中のある一点。

So to me it seems like “a moment in time” or “a point in time” or something like that.

Taking the specific sentence from the book:
夜が明けるにはまだ間がある時刻で…音が…響いている。

This is saying that during the time before dawn breaks, the sound (of rain) is reverberating. What I want to know is, is this talking about any arbitrary period before dawn breaks or basically the moment right before dawn breaks.

Hopefully this question makes sense, since I kind of started rambling.

吐息

What is the difference between 吐息 and 溜息? I get the impression that 吐息 here is a sigh of relief, but is it always a sigh of relief? The definition on Goo seems to indicate that it can also be from being discouraged. The line is right after the mother says that the thunder is far away.

エリンは吐息をもらし,目を閉じた。

This is what I found, and the table at the end is particularly interesting:
https://99bako.com/2174.html

Based on that, it looks like it has to be 吐息 here since it’s a sigh of relief.


EDIT:

Continuing from the sentence I originally had trouble with…

友達のサジュの父や、チョクの父だって、〈牙〉たちがいる岩房は任せてもらえない。闘蛇の世話役である闘蛇衆が、母の獣ノ医術の腕をそれほどに高く買っているのだと思う。

I’m a little surprised that it’s もらえない. I guess the 闘蛇 mediator people think highly of the mother’s medicine skills, but what about Erin’s friends’ fathers?

I also find it interesting that 獣ノ医術 uses ノ instead of の.


Page 15.
笛を口にあてて息を吹き込み…

吹き込む is transitive in this case (apparently it can be either), and the thing being blown into is clearly the 笛. So what is 息 doing marked with を as well?