Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Pages are physical page numbers (they are printed on some pages). Ebook reader pages might be off by a bit.
Grammar Sheet
Discussion Guidelines
Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: text here (that’s: [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]).
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
Join the conversation — it’s fun!
The page numbers for ebook readers might be off by one or two. Some pages have physical page numbers on them, and you can use that to find out much off it is for you!
Participation Poll
I’m reading along
I had already finished this part before the thread was posted
Finished this week’s reading, and that takes us to the end of the first chapter. Not too sure how I feel about the story yet. The stage has been set, and I’m at least interesting to see how it develops.
Yay, first chapter done! I’ve been enjoying how Tamamo is drawn, especially with her fox ears and tail, so cute!
More as a note for my future self: The only part that I struggled with this time is the last panel on page 32. (“尽くし甲斐があるのう”) I first read it as “(it’s good because) I put a lot of effort into it,” but after re-reading I realize she more says “It was entirely worth it to make (the food)!” That’s what I get for reading while half asleep, I guess XD
My instinct with the second panel is that もうすぐご飯にするから何が食べたい? Translates to “Have to decide on dinner shortly, what do you want to eat?”. Is that correct? Everywhere seems to translate it as “We’re having dinner shortly, what would you like to eat?”.. I guess I don’t really understand how ～にする is being used.
Edit：Ugh, sorry! I swear I posted this in the week 2 thread. ><
Very pleasant reading so far
Thanks again to everyone who put vocabulary in the spreadsheet, very helpful!
My questions for this week:
Page 23
First panel: “あたたかいうちにどうぞなのじゃ” I understand it means “please enjoy while it’s hot”, but I’m not sure I understand the うちに part. Maybe it’s a grammar point I haven’t encountered before?
Page 24
First panel: “片付けはわらわにまかせれおけ” I understand the sentence but I don’t understand the meaning of the last particle(?) おけ. I would have just said 片付けはわらわにまかせれ, what’s the distinction?
Page 24
Last panel: “こういうの久々だな” Again I understand the idea but I’m not sure what こういう means exactly?
That’s the imperative of おく. ～ておく has a lot of meanings, but I think here it’s 〜させておく For Letting Someone Continue To Do…. Even if it’s not causative here, 任せる has a similar meaning to verbs in causative, so I think it might still fit.
More generally, from the Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns:
ておく has the meaning of “taking an action and maintaining the situation which has come about as a result of such action”.
So I think it’s essentially, “Leave it to me (and then keep it like that).”
なんかこういうの久々だな．．．
こういう is “this sort of”. The の after it makes it a noun: “This sort of thing”.
So together, we have rather literally “Somehow, this sort of thing has been a long time ago, hasn’t it”, or better: “Somehow (it feels like) it’s been a long time since this sort of thing has happened, huh…”
She tells him, " ゆっくり休んでおれ" in the fourth panel. What is the meaning of おれ at the end? I’m only familiar with 俺 when referring to yourself but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. As a sidenote, DeepL is translating it as “Rest easy, son” while I took it to mean something to the effect of, “Take your time to rest.”
I didn’t have much of a clue, but since nobody else is answering I did some research™ and I think I found at least some answers.
Page 24 (some answers, some speculations)
おる / いる
おれ is the imperative of おる. おる is usually the humble form of いる, but that doesn’t make much sense here - she’s talking about the actions of someone she probably considers of higher standing, not humbly about herself.
I couldn’t find a ton about it, but I did find this, which fits her speech quirks well:
おる is sometimes used like いる, especially in western speech. It’s also used in stereotypical old people’s speech or “arrogant nobles” speech.
Why continuative form?
So why is she using continuative form (ている… or I guess more specifically ておる here)? I think the nuance might be something like what is described here (the ～てて here is the short form of ～ていてください):
From that, I think it could have the meaning of “Take a break/relax while I’m doing this” here.
Why imperative / command form?
This is where I can only speculate. Just like it’s name, it’s quite commanding and it’s usually used “by people in a position of authority to their subordinates.” (see here) - so not something that I feel like our gentle and polite kitsune maid would use here.
So, why then? I don’t know for sure, but I like to imagine that Tamamo is still being very polite here and it’s another old-timey sounding thing.
I can’t find a source for it, but I feel like the only important thing to know here is that this is not its usual usage and that you should not use it with your peers (or worse, your clients like here ).
Side note on the DeepL answer: I think it might just be as confused as ChatGPT by the おれ:
(To be clear, おれ “I/me, masculine” and おる “to be/stay, humble, not restricted by gender” have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and ChatGPT is just making stuff up by mixing both here.)
As a beginner, the speculation and potential answers do provide a lot of insight even if it’s not definitive. When I tried to search around for it I found nearly nothing, so I greatly appreciate the effort! I may try to dig deeper at some point during the book (without chatGPT on this one ).
I agree! I wouldn’t know where to start looking for, because I know there’s lots of things I still don’t know
Thank you for taking the time to do all this research!
I’m not surprised you didn’t find much on this, it was really hard to search for. Discovering the post that said that ておる can be stereotypical old people’s speech was pure luck on my side, and at first I couldn’t anything about “request with continuative form” either. In fact, I was already beginning to write how I can only speculate on that, but then I remembered that I actually knew an example of this in the form of ちょっとまってて.
Another advantage I had was that I already knew what the parts of the sentence were, just not why they were there. What can help you do the same with many sentences is ichi.moe.
Hi! I’m new at this “book club” thing so i’m trying my best to catch up
Page 23
On this page you can read “尽くし甲斐があるの”, which google translates to “is it worth the effort?”. Is this translation correct? I’m a bit confused because the words 尽くし and 甲斐 have a different meaning on their own
Good luck catching up. You’re halfway there already!
Page 23
Not quite - we see from context that she’s not saying it as a question (it could be a casual question, and Google Translate had no way of telling), but apart from that, yeah that fits.
I don’t know if 尽くし甲斐がある is an expression (when googling I can find lots of people using it on Japanese pages, but no page that defines it), but to this is how I’d read it:
尽くし is a conjugated 尽くす: to devote oneself (to); to do one’s utmost (for); to serve; to work (for a cause) / to do to exhaustion
).
).
