銭天堂 | Week 4 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#1

Week 4 Discussion | Pages 34 - 42

Chapter 2: 猛獣ビスケット

Start Date: 25th May
Last Week: Chapter 1 Part 3
Next Week: Chapter 2 Part 2

Zenitendou

銭天堂 Home Thread

Last sentence of page 42 for eBook readers:
「これは、きっと猛獣使いだな」

Part of the Beginner Book Club!

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銭天堂 ・ Zenitendou, The Mysterious Sweet Shop! (Beginner Book Club)
銭天堂 ・ Zenitendou, The Mysterious Sweet Shop! (Beginner Book Club)
銭天堂 | Week 3 Discussion
#2

I know this is a bit late to the game, but does the name Zenitendou have any particular meaning besides just being a name?

1 Like
#3

I took it to mean something like what you would nowadays probably call „100-yen-shop“ :wink:

zeni = small coin https://jisho.org/search/銭
tendou = heaven https://jisho.org/search/天堂

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#4

信也 definitely deserves whatever is going to happen to him a lot more than 真由美 did, that’s for sure. 恵美 looks so precious, and he makes her cry all the time :frowning:

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#5

Vote for it too! Was quite happy with a comment regarding the boy at the end of the chapter :sweat_smile:

#6

Meow~ I have some trouble with the following:

At 23%
「猫目アメ」？ あはは、まんまだな。
Haven’t been able to find what まんま means. Only definition seems to be “cooked rice”, but doesn’t seem to fit there.

At 24%
絵のとおりなら、すごいな。
Not sure what meaning of とおり goes here…

びんの中に入っているところがいいや。
That いいや throws me off here… not sure what it is

At 25%
またここに来ることもできましょうよ
I think I understand what she’s saying, but I’m not sure why she’s using the volitional form, considering it wouldn’t be an action she’d take, but Shinya by himself…

それが身のためでござんすよ
None of the meaning for 身 that I’ve found seem to make sense in this sentence given the context of what’s happening…

Any help is appreciated!

#7

the same as. “If it’s just like the picture, wow!”

I think it’s just your regular いい and the や is maybe a colloquial form of だ。

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#8

That makes sense!

:open_mouth:

image

I had never noticed や used like that before.

Thanks for the help!

#9

Usual disclaimer: I read this out of context.

まんま is まま “as is”, but it’s hard to say what it does without context (or sometimes even in context :D). まんまだ is something like “just like that”, so here I’d say the meaning is probably “it [looks] just like that / just like the real thing”… but I think it could also mean something akin to そのとおりだ “you’re right / that’s right / it’s as you said / etc.” In a lot of cases, the ambiguity isn’t crippling as the sense stays roughly the same.

What @Kyasurin said is true, in that や is indeed a Western copula, which possibly comes from either a reduction of である ＞ ぢゃる ＞ ぢゃ（じゃ） ＞ や or maybe from やろう ＜ やらう ＜ やあらむ. (According to Frellesvig, History 15.2)

However, if it were indeed used as a copula, I would not normally expect it after いい, which is already an adjective in conclusive form. You’d need some nominaliser の, or something. Instead, IMHO it is just a (somewhat nonstandard) final sentence particle expressing emphasis, similar to ぞ or something.

Not sure in what context, but the -(o)u form of できる, できよう, of which できましょう is the polite form, cannot normally be the volitional “*let us be able to”, but rather the tentative “it probably can”. It’s a bit literary / formal, though. I parse the sentence as [mata koko ni kuru koto] mo deki-masyo-u yo, so literally “it might well be [probably is] that he will come here again” (but a better translation might be “he will probably be able to come here again” if you take Vこともできる as the idiomatic “be able to V”).

身のため normally means “for one’s benefit”; so here “it is for his/her/one’s benefit” or maybe “it is for oneself [rather than others]”. It’s 身 as in “one’s body / person”. Does it not make sense in context?

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#10

Ha, I finished this week’s reading a day early, can’t wait to find out what happens next…

I found this chapter more challenging than the last, especially the beginning had me wonder from which perspective it is written (still not sure).

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#11

it’s on p 37 in the book.
猫目石（ねこめいし）is a semi-precious stone.


Maybe you can call it ねこめ for short. I don’t know this, but I’m betting on it.
ねこめいし rhymes with ねこめし.
ねこめし is another way to read 猫飯（ねこまんま）, which is cat food

Since all the candy have edgy names, I’m betting this is the pun they are going for.

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#12

Is anybody up for some nice reading / listening of this week’s chapter? Let’s meet in 20 minutes in Discord!

(Or a bit later, with the second group, if you’re not yet awake ^^)

#13

I hope some folks joined you!
(I really needed to sleep in this morning - still recovering from a nasty cold :sneezing_face:)

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#14

Hi people, please kindly help? I don’t really understand this sentence:
男はにまりと笑って、今度はおまえの番だって、女の子に手をのばしたんだ。

I don’t understand the word 「にまり」there. Google translates 「男はにまりと笑って」as “A man laughs and smiles”. Ok, but is 「にまり」comes from a verb? Adverb? I can’t seem to find a translation for 「にまり」or 「まり」alone.

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#15

Probably にんまりと (jisho.org) “smile complacently”. と “quotes” mimetic adverbs, and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, if you see 〜りと it’s very likely to be a mimetic adverb. After that, you just need to guess. Here’s how I guessed, if you’re interested:

  • nimari(to) sounds a tad bit irregular because it’s 3-mora long, whereas most of those are 4-mora long, so might be missing one mora;
  • if it’s missing something, it’s probably a sound duplication/change somewhere, and it’s probably between the first and second mora (because ri is not really part of the mimetic “sound”, and I don’t expect the first mora to be deleted, but it’s just intuition);
  • so I guessed it must be a dup of m- (from ma), so nimmari, or にんまり in kana.

P.S.: Obviously, it’s not a science; if you look at my other post, you’ll see I discuss a 3-mora mimetic word, so definitely it could be にまにまと or something, so sometimes you’ll guess wrong a few times before guessing right. I just got lucky. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#16

Awesome, that’s a very interesting analysis how you got to にんまり.
勉強になりました！

#17

I just started to catch up, yay to me /o/ :33 I hope I’m asking at the right thread, at 24% there is a sentence: すごいしましまもよう。which I don’t get at aaaall:DDD

I guess すごい is just a normal adjective, but everything else is a complete mystery to me :eyes:

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#18

Meow, my understanding is that しましま means stripes, and もよう (模様) means pattern, so basically it refers to the candy’s awesome stripe patterns.

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#19

screams
Thank you so muuuch /o/ I wasn’t able to break the words in this at all:D I shouldn’t read this late too, but shhhhh

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#20

Figured I should get back to these chapters before we finish the book altogether :sweat_smile:

Page 36

いきなり、恵美が信也の手をもぎはなし、

So… I was able to rustle up that もぎ is probably 捥, and はなし is the stem of はなす, ‘to let go’. もぎ取る means ‘to wrest (away from); to wrench free’, so the meaning of this is clear. It’s just that neither もぎ nor もぎはなす appear to be ‘actual’ words in their own right, so I’m curious about the grammatical construction here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I think it appears again in chapter 5 or 6.

Page 37

先をこされて、いいものをとられてはと、信也はいそいで駄菓子屋に走った。

Not sure what meaning of とる (?) is at play here, nor what the てはと structure means.

Page 40

そちらは、おまけさんでござんすからねえ。

…What?

運がむけば、またここい来ることもできましょうよ。

I get that this means “if you’re lucky…” (if luck (turns to) face you?), but it sounds like a set phrase? Maybe she just talks fancy.

なんといわれようと、だめなものはだめでござんす。

Is this like “whatever you say”? What’s the grammatical breakdown?

I have to say, much though 信也 is a little poop, I can understand his frustration at not being allowed to buy the sweets. Imagine going into a shop and being told “no, you personally are not allowed to buy anything”!

Felt like I didn’t do such a great job with the cliffhanger break this chapter - end of page 41 would have been better :wink:

Also, I’m glad that we didn’t continue to get such long lists of sweets every single chapter. They’re pretty tedious to decipher.

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