page 30, after kiki and the onesan witch go their separate ways, jiji complains about the onesan witch’s cat putting on airs. to which, kiki says you ought to have greeted the other cat if he/she didn’t greet you. and then kiki says:
「さ、あたしはあたしで、じぶんのことを考えなくちゃ」
what is she saying exactly? and how does it fit in the conversation that came before? Does she say ‘I must think of myself’? Why?
on page 40:
when osonosan wants to try flying and flaps her hands, kiki looks down and laughs a little and says she doesn’t think osono san is a witch. osono san asks how could kiki tell and kiki replies:
なんとなくなんです。
what does she mean? is she saying, ‘nothing happened.’?
finished with chapter 3! onto the next one!
one last question. if i want to say ‘if i continue like this, maybe i can catch up with you all soon!’ in japanese, would this be correct?
'こんなにつづけたら、もうすぐおいあげるようになるかもしれない！’
なんとなく roughly means “somehow”. When you add the explanatory なん, Kiki is just dryly saying that she just knows somehow.
For your Japanese, maybe おいつく would be better than おいあげる (assuming it can be used with non-physical catching up)? Otherwise it sounds fine to me but I’m not the best person to tell you if it’s right.
Hi @ekadish, sorry for the delay in replying! I’ve been AWOL recently. You’re probably miles ahead of here now, but just in case you are still wondering (or anyone else is reading this later!)
I agree, she’s advising Kiki not to be careless when choosing a place to settle down in, just because it seems to be bothersome (to make that sort of decision). 落ち着く here means “to settle down (in a location, job, etc.); to settle in”
うまくいく means “to go well”. So he says she can always come home if it doesn’t work out.
I think maybe Kiki is just making a mental break from her conversation with and about the other witch (where she lives, what she does for a living etc) and refocusing on herself - “I am me, and I have to think about my own business (not worry about someone else’s)”
thank you very much! i ought to have been miles ahead but i’m not! i was on vacation and though i took the book with me it was too hard to read, look up words and make notes on the beach
i read this one instead. its a series of young adult novels only the first volume of which is translated from japanese to english. i thought if i liked the first book perhaps i could attempt the next volume in japanese. the writer of this book also wrote the moribito series which i really like (the anime especially)!
I watched the anime adaption of that book, and it was very good. Just based on the content of the anime, I get the feeling that it would be difficult to read in Japanese. How did you like the English version?
yes, i think it’d be hard to read too. since its fantasy, there are a lot of unfamiliar terms and concepts, which added to limited vocabulary and grammar ability might make the whole experience too frustrating. however, i’m dying to know what happens next. maybe when i’ve levelled up a little i’ll try. here’s a sample if you’d like to see for yourself:
Got through the first five pages with one question:
v1 pg 27：あなたたら、あしゃれはのぐらいにしたら…ほら、にしのくうをみてごらん、
The double "たら” tripped me up.
Does it mean If you are fashionable around this place… (as I see it), you see… please look to the western sky… that doesn’t make any sene though, i know it is incorrect.
Shoutout to @mrahhal as well, found ですもの again on page 30, instantly knew what it meant thanks to you.
It’s heartening to see we still have a healthily-sized book club, according to the poll. About to start on chapter 3 tonight. Looking forward to the discussion tomorrow!
Looks like my book goes from page 26 to partway through page 38. So weird that my book has different page numbering despite looking like V1. At 11.5 pages of text (One is a full page illustration), looks like I’ll be reading about 2 pages a night again.
I think you might be confused, unless you mean we’ll be at ~40 pages by the end of this week. Chapter 3 is split into several weeks to roughly match the pace of the previous chapter. Also, 四十パージ would be 40 purges, which is absolutely terrifying. You’re thinking of ページ.
It’s not double たら, you misread some kana there:
あなたたち、おしゃれはそのぐらいにしたら…にしのそらを
My interpretation: “Well, how about you stop it there (with the dressing up/mirror checking)… look, the color of the sky (in the west) is already getting faint”
A bit of a breakdown
そのぐらいにしたら（どうですか）= how about you do it until this degree (and no further?)
Similar to how a teacher ending a lesson would say 今日はここまでにしましょう = let’s do it until here (implying “that’s it for today”)
〜したら（どうですか） is used to give advice. How about you (try to) do 〜?
The どうですか is optional, you can also simply use 〜したら？ with a rising intonation, like a question.
If anything else is unclear I can try to provide further explanations / examples
I know! It’s really annoying not having the same page numbers, it happened to me last time. What I did to reference questions was check the spreadsheet for pages. Actually it’s quite easy!
Well, I started chapter 3 and have my first question on V2 p.27, the first page of the chapter.
足もとでは黒猫のジジも負けてはいられないというように、…
Is it saying something like as if saying: you don’t need to be (feel) defeated ?
Thank you in advance!
I think the first one is “It’s better to look obediently.”
My take on the second one is “Even if it wasn’t like that, there are many people who complain about/find faults in witches”
That said, I first understood the second sentence completely different but went with it even thoough I kind of felt it was a bit off, but not as wrong as it turned out to be. I was using ichi.moe but it didn’t help me make complete sense.
I then plugged this sentence into deepl and it gave me a sentence similar to what I wrote above and it clicked as it made sense to me and I understood how the parts worked together.
My question is: (assuming it is really is the correct interpretation) Did it really click by seeing the English translation or does it just feel like I understand it now? I know using translators isn’t a good idea and I only use it for a few sentences at best, if I don’t get them at all and it felt like it helped me make sense a couple of times.
But what if a sentence is mostly incomprehensible and there’s no other way to check the rough meaning? Or when I think I understood it, but later realize I was wrong? How can I be sure that I’m actually learning from it? Or should I just move on since those sentences sadly are too high hanging fruit?
Sorry for the incomprehensible rambling. I think I’m doubting myself too much at the moment, as my bad WK retention is makes me feel frustrated. I’m a bit at a loss right now.
Anyways, two more sentence I want to check my understanding.
The first sentence I first understood as if コキリさん casted magic over the bread to make it last longer, but the second sentence made me doubt it and I got to the understanding that they can’t do that magic anymore and she’s just making キキ aware of its existence.
Here my understanding is that she thinks that it would be easy to to teach that magic and she doesn’t understand how it could have been forgotten. I’m not sure about the last sentence. “that’s how magic is” kind of thing? Or that magic is at it’s bottom? Or “I wonder if there (where?) is magic.”
(post signaling that i´m still alive and reading along just fine, but time to post is kinda scarce over here rn)
Very first page of the chapter, second sentence:
ききが旅立とうと決めた日が来たのです。
The vocab sheet says “とうと” meaning “precise”. But doesn´t it make more sense to think of 旅立とうと as volition + quoting particle? As in “旅立とうと決めた” being “I decided that i will depart”?
That’s how I read it as well basically (my understanding would be “the day that she determined to be the departure day”), thanks for spotting this! Could you maybe fix the vocab sheet? Thx!
