You could always do the opposite and cut it off at the end of page 18 instead. Or stick with what you already proposed and just keep it in mind for next time.
I really enjoy this bookclub! Started week 2 reading today, having some trouble understanding dialect speech but it’s going much better this week. I love the mysterious atmosphere in the story…
page 12 has been pretty difficult for me with the dialect! I’m happy to learn it, though, because I have a lot of friends in Yamagata and enjoy learning dialects…
Last week, my impression was that it wasn’t too bad , but this week’s reading changed my mind. The dialect is definitely quite challenging and confusing.
There are moments where my brain starts doing several permutations removing dakuten from the kana or using similar sounding kana, trying to figure out a word, just to realize 15 minutes later that I didn’t need to make any changes and it was actually a normal japanese word for a change =._.=
Also, from reading last week’s thread I was under the impression that this wasn’t a real dialect, but an invented one (I think @Naphthalene mentioned this?). Is that correct?
One Question (at 7%. Probably page 17 or 18)
I haven’t been able to figure out what exactly is a リヤカーつきこううん機. リヤカー seems to be a trailer towed by a bicycle, but not sure what つきこううん機 means here >.<
I had some trouble parsing some of the sentences in this section due to the dialect. But it looks like after chapter 1 the dialect might go away, at least for a bit (but hopefully a while!).
Thank you! I should have thought of trying that >.<
I hope so too! I mean, I don’t dislike dialects, they can be very interesting; but at my current japanese level, where I usually need to look up a ton of words and grammar, dialects just make things way more difficult…
Well, I don’t know for sure, since there’s a bazillion small local versions of the northern Japanese dialect. Still, I suspect the author is using that fact to make it “a place in the North the reader has never heard of”.
Yeah, I also started to find it just a bit… tiring to read this week? I had a sneak peek ahead at some of the later chapters and there were certainly substantial passages of dialogue which didn’t involve this dialect, so I’m hopeful it will at least not be every character.
I’m sure this was discussed last week, so sorry for asking again, but is there a particular nuance that the べ ender brings? For example:
Page 12
五月二日の祭りに、けんかあったったべ。
?あっていた but with the い dropped?
いっつも異常なしだべ。
Is this actually なし (without)? I initially read it as a な-adjective but なし would make about 120x more sense.
ほんとうは異常なしがいいごどだべっとも。
Again, now that I see this as なし it’s making a lot more sense… And then Nath said っとも is like けど? So いいこと, だ, generic べ, けど. “Though in truth, there being no disorder is a good thing.”
“If you were to say what the officer’s job was in this town, it’s patrolling this totally straight town.” (the implication being that that’s all he has to do)
Stiiiil page 12:
それで、どごさいきてのす？
Is actually: それで、どこに行き？です？
What’s with いきて? Is it いきたい? Is it a weird way of combing 行く with です for politeness rather than going いきます? Is it some kind of nominalisation?
Am I glad that you are asking this! I’m finding these pages really hard, so happy that other people have questions, considering how quiet it’s been.
Not exactly the same, but referring back to @Myria’s post here , there is a 〜だっぺ and a 〜だべさ endings, with standard Japanese translations as 〜だろう and 〜だろうよ, respectively.
That’s how I’m reading it too, after much deliberation.
I took the まっすぐ with a bit of literary freedom and translated the sentence as “His job is to (straightforwardly) patrol the streets of this town”, but I’m not too happy with it.
Just an idea: shall we not post full page translations here, especially since there’s a lot of dialect issues, just to make sure everyone is more or less at the same understanding?
It’s used as a na-adjective, so you can’t translate it as “straightforwardly”. You could however (potentially) translate it as “straightforward”. Searching google images for 街並み makes me think it could be a literal まっすぐ though. I’m not sure.
I’m not too keen on full text translations for a few reasons. They’re an awful lot of work to put together, and they can dampen discussion quite a bit. I also think it’s good to try to move past the need to translate everything into English / your native language wherever possible.
That said, if it would be useful perhaps we could do short summaries of each page or section, so that people can at least tell whether they’ve gone totally off-track.
Err… more questions!
Page 13
「まんず、銀山村のあだりのごどらしじゃ。」
What does まんず mean?
。。。。と、おまわりさんおは、自信のなさそうな口ぶりになって、。。。
Is 自身のなさそうな something like “didn’t seem like he believed it”?
