魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service) Discussion Thread: Chapter 2

Haha, I read it as “Oh god I’m struggling BUT I’m still here!”

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I just… I just give up… :sob:

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You know, and people laugh at me because I like to use a generator :joy_cat:

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I’m glad I did the early start…especially since I finally finished chapter 1 last night.

I did force myself to read through almost half of chapter 2 today (without looking anything up). I was able to follow it somewhat, so I look forward to going over it again with the vocabulary sheet.

Still working on building up my reading stamina. 45 pages of Sailormoon manga? No problem. 12 pages of Kiki novel? Well, I did manage almost half of that…

I expect this one to be on all future polls, in case I fall too far behind to justify a mere “haven’t reached this part yet”.

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I don’t laugh at the generator! I’ve just never had time to sit down and work it out :persevere:

It’s mostly just because the poll changes between weeks 1 and 2 - everything else that changes each week is super systematic and easy to go through.

Nobody ever picks that option anyway, so I’m just gonna leave it as it is rather than delete it yet again :disappointed_relieved: nobody is allowed to drop the book this week!

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That would be pages 11-21 :slight_smile:

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Thanks!

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i-084x

Okay, I’ll be sure to make certain I stick with it!

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I completely missed that, thank you for pointing it out! :joy::joy:

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Here we go! Keep reading everyone we had our orders! :grin:

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I read about half last night and managed to understand most of it, which I’m feeling pretty pleased with. Although if I hadn’t pre-learned the vocab, I’d be completely lost.

I found it really funny how Kiki’s mom acts all casual when she is handing Kiki the small broom, with her ちょっとだけ、飛ぶんみない? Kind of reminds me about the stereotypical “drug dealer” in PSAs that ask you if you want some candy. Don’t do it Kiki! Flying is the gateway magic to the harder stuff! Ha.

Will be back in a day or two with some questions once I do my second line-by-line read through. There are a couple of passages with conditionals especially that I was scratching my head at…

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Can someone help me understand this sentence from a few pages into the second chapter? This is when Kiki is responding to Gigi about why she is keeping flying a secret from her mom

だってさ、かあさんはひとり立ちのことになると、大げさにさわぐんですもの。それになんでも口をはさみたがるでしょ。とたんに話がややっこしくなっちゃうんだもん

I get the idea of the first sentence there but the second two I’m not understanding. Specifically, はさみたがるでしょ and ややっこしくなっちゃうんだもん.

Thanks!

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それになんでも口をはさみたがるでしょ。とたんに話がややっこしくなっちゃうんだもん

口をはさむ = 口を挟む = to interject. The はさみたがる is 挟む + たがる (a somewhat common grammar point meaning “wanting to”, it’s used when speaking about what other people want to do or show signs of doing)
ややっこしい = ややこしい

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Thank you!

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Ah, a new chapter, how exciting! And this time, we get to read two pages a day if we want a steady pace to next week. This one’s shaping up to be a much steeper challenge. I may have to cut down on my comments and questions a little bit.

By the way, for anyone struggling to understand certain pieces, I definitely recommend this method of reading a bit, then coming back the following day and rereading it before moving on. I’ve been finding that a lot of pieces fall more firmly into place when I reread sections.

  • 「いまさら、魔女になりたくない、なんていうんじゃないでしょうね」- I’m confused on the meaning of this. My understanding is “Now (after so long) you don’t want to be a witch…”, but the last section eludes me. Is the いう an 言う? Making a comment on what she’s saying?

  • 十歳になってしばらくたったころ、- I just want to be certain: This means “She’d only just turned ten for a little bit when,”. Pretty sure about this one.

  • 考えるように - What is the よう adding here? Is it just a way to allow the になった to modify かんがえる?

  • (あたしは自分のすきなものになるんだ。自分できめるんだ)- Is this the narrator putting a little aside in? If so, I suppose we have a good idea of the narrator’s gender.

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いまさら、魔女になりたくない、なんていうんじゃないでしょうね

Trying to preserve the ordering:

“This late in the game, “I don’t want to become a witch”, you won’t say something like that, right?”

I think you’ll understand the なんていう from this translation. (Think of なんて as the quotes of the previous sentence part, it’s equivalent to と or って, only with a different nuance)

十歳になってしばらくたったころ、- I just want to be certain: This means “She’d only just turned ten for a little bit when,”. Pretty sure about this one.

That’s right.

考えるように - What is the よう adding here? Is it just a way to allow the になった to modify かんがえる?

ように itself is a common construction. It has several meanings depending on the context. From what you’re asking, it seems the sentence was 考えるようになった? Then you can think of this as:
考える + よう + になった. It’s hard to translate this without a fuller sentence. But you can check ようになる in a dictionary, it’s something like “to reach the point where you can do x”.

(あたしは自分のすきなものになるんだ。自分できめるんだ)- Is this the narrator putting a little aside in? If so, I suppose we have a good idea of the narrator’s gender.

Nope, that’s not the narrator. It’s Kiki speaking. A lot of times when a parenthesis is put like this in the middle of narration, it shows the thoughts of one of the characters.
And you can tell from what she’s saying: “I will become what I like. I will decide by myself.”

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Ah, that makes perfect sense now that you explain it. I had all the grammatical pieces in my toolbox, I just needed to put them together properly.

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Not entirely sure which page this is sorry (reading the kindle edition), but it’s early on in the chapter. I had trouble understanding this sentence, especially the bolded part:

でもキキは、かあさんが魔女だからあたしも、とかんたんに考えるのはどうも気がすすまなかったのです

I have no idea what I should be putting behind spoilers, so I’ll just put my tentative breakdown in here:

と = quotation particle?
かんたんに = simply
考えるのは = thinking
どうも = somehow? in spite of herself?
気がすすまなかったのです = was not willing to do

Giving something like: “Mum is a witch so I am too”, Kiki simply thought, despite not wanting to.

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I like your method. :blush: I’ll try to do the same, not sure if I am so well organized as you seem to be though!
I like to follow your questions (and the subsequent answers), because they are easy to track.

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I don’t know if I am right, but I have translated the bold part as: she wasn’t quite inclined to think … so easily.

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