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Discussion Guidelines
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Spoiler Courtesy
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For the Bookwalker version of this manga, the page numbers in the panels and the page number in the UI are always 2 apart. If you subtract 2 from the UI page number, this will give you the accurate page number!
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
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There’s an interesting use of 業者 in the first few pages of this chapter.
p74
うちの仔すばらっしこすぎて業者さんに匙投げられて
I first completely misread this sentence as - our cat is so nimble that the delivery man threw a spoon at it…
After realising that 匙を投げる is a set phrase meaning - to give up (something as hopeless) or to throw in the towel - the sentence actually means:
Our cat is too nimble so the other people we asked gave up (trying to catch it)
業者 usually means trader/delivery person/business person, although can also mean “fellow trader”, or “people in the same trade”. So I think here it’s carrying a sense of “the other professionals we approached”, or “your fellow professionals”.
It comes again used similar further down the page by the guy with the spiders.
Short sentences in manga can be hard! Did you get that 元も子もない is a set phrase - losing everything, suffering a total loss, coming to nothing, having lost the interest and the principal. I think your interpretation is correct.
On page 79, our “tasty fellow” (not ) says:
それだけ食えりゃ大丈夫だろ。
I’m still not very used to the contractions you see in manga, so it took me a little while to understand what was going on.
It seems like 食えりゃ is a contraction of 食えれば (“if you can eat”). So the line would mean something like, “If you can eat that much, you’re probably fine,” said in a rather rough or casual tone.
The past two weeks, I realized from posting here that I understand a bit less of the Japanese than I thought I did. Whatever; it’s still a fun read and a nice community. But I make enough mistakes that I have to stop adding to the spreadsheet. I apologize if I steered anyone wrong.
One of the less obvious challenges for me has been the many variations of speech bubbles. I’m still not quite sure what it means if I see a rectangular speech box like at the start of page 79.
I’d been wondering for a while whether other people can see Nemu, but on p81, I see あんたら (you (pl.)), which I think was the first time it clicked that yes, Nemu can be seen by everyone.
And thank you for the Q&A about contractions in manga! I’ve been struggling with word endings, and am looking forward to reading through the notes and understanding things better.
I think one of the key things in reading Japanese native content is being able to accept that you won’t understand it all, living with some ambiguity, and being prepared to gloss over some parts that you don’t quite get but aren’t vital for the story.
I’m also not 100% sure what’s going on with the dragon’s visibility! I thought it was intrinsically visible, but made itself visible only to Eve when they first entered town. But not completely sure how it’s behaved since then.
In one of my textbooks, there was some advice about reading native material: instead of constantly looking things up, you should try to keep reading and guess the meaning from context as best you can.
I do think this approach requires a certain level of grammatical understanding, as well as a solid base of vocabulary that matches the difficulty of the text.
This manga is probably a bit too difficult for me in terms of the amount of new vocabulary. Still, I really enjoy reading it, so I’m going to continue.
I keep my own private vocabulary sheet, where I don’t worry too much about finding the exact perfect meaning for each word. My plan is to use Anki to learn the vocabulary and then reread the manga later. Hopefully, that will make it easier to infer meanings from context and allow me to read more smoothly.
I’m also a bit unsure about the dragon’s visibility to other people. Some of the villagers mentioned that “that girl is talking to herself”, which made me think they can’t see Nemu. But maybe the shrewd landlord is different? I’m not entirely sure how that works yet.
The rectangular one is Nemu’s thoughts not spoken out loud.
I’m wondering about Nemu’s double lined bubble that started when leaving the forest around p41 (but not when reincarnating as a bone/ghost dragon a bit earlier). Is it just for convenience to distinguish who is speaking, is it a tone of voice, or something else.
I like reading things more intensively too. If I’m enjoying the book, I’m quite happy to go back and re-read parts of it two or three times to pick up as much vocab as seems practical.
What’s nice about using Anki and working from manga is you have a lot of freedom in tuning SRS difficulty by including more or less context on the card front. For example, if I don’t know 蔓延る at all (I actually don’t), I think it’s more productive to make an easier card for はびこる first and worry about kanji 蔓 and this ateji spelling next year.
The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter Book Club!
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