I interpreted as this as “Because it’s said (because you say?) you are a witch, I thought maybe you would have fangs growing out of your mouth or horns on your head” - and said in such a casually prejudiced way that it’s no wonder Kiki had to bite her tongue.
With the 口をまげる I thought either Kiki was forcing herself to smile (despite being annoyed that she didn’t even know what the job was yet), or just pulling a face (expecially if the seamstress was still looking at the mirror rather than at Kiki).
I did think it was funny though, that the seamstress offers to pay by shortening the skirt of her dress to a fashionable length - which is exactly what Kiki wanted her mother to do for her before she left home.
Ah, you’re right. I kept looking at it as だって following by 言う, which was throwing me off. Now that you explained it, I feel silly for not realizing it was 「魔女だ」って言う.
Based on the context then, I’d translate it as “because they say you’re a witch”, but honestly I don’t think who did the saying matters much at this point.
On page 76-77 of the blue book, I’m reading part where the stuffed animal cat falls to the ground. I’m following most of it, but there’s a few parts I’m unsure of.
So I get the general idea: Kiki is diving really fast towards the forest to try to get the stuffed animal cat. But I’m not getting the specifics.
Areas of confusion:
はるか下の盛り上がった緑の森」= “Distant rising green forest.” Though this sounds odd. The forest isn’t really rising; Kiki is diving.
I’m still struggling with ように. I generally try to see if “so that” fits and I try to see if “like/seem” fits. But I can’t really understand specifically what 「突っ込むように飛び込んでいきました」means. The idea seems to be that she’s rushing/plunging towards the forest, but what does ように do here?
For auxiliary verbs like 込む, how do you distinguish whether 飛び込む is just the verb itself, as opposed to 飛ぶ + auxiliary verb 込む? 飛び込む = “to dive” for example, but with the auxiliary verb version could just mean “to continue flying”.
「木の枝がびんびんと体に当たります」
Has anyone figured out what びんびん is? A tree branch hit Kiki in what way?
「枝の重なり合った暗いところにでも引っ掛かっていたら、探しきれるものではありません。」
What is the first part? Is is saying something like “if it got caught in a dark place with a bunch of overlapping branches”?
I was having a lot of trouble with 探しきれる for a while, but I think I got it. Is the きれる part the potential form of the auxiliary verb meaning “to finish”? If so, that would make this part something like “the search will be unable to finish”.
If both of those parts are close, the whole sentence would mean “If the stuffed animal cat got caught in a dark place with a bunch of overlapping branches, the search may never end”. Thoughts?
I read a few sentences past that, but those were fine. I feel bad for Kiki though. Took me a bit to work through all the conjugations in 泣き出したくなってしまいました, but I eventually got it haha.
I think it’s just that the trees are higher than e.g. fields.
→ The bulging green of the forest far below came rapidly closer, and
キキはそこに突っ込むように飛び込んでいきました。
One way of interpreting ように is “as if” or “like”
→ Kiki plunged towards it as if she was going to crash into it.
I think 込む typically means “to go into” so perhaps you might be more likely to see (飛び)続く to indicate continuation of action. But to answer your question, I think you just build up vocabulary over time. I don’t have any hard and fast rule.
Based on the Jisho definition I feel the branches whacked against her, in a fairly painful way.
Yes, that’s how I interpreted it. It’s not clear to me whether the issue is that it’s dark (due to all the branches, which are previously described as having lots of leaves on them), or whether the stuffed cat would get caught on the branches and not even reach the ground, but it probably doesn’t matter anyway.
Yes again. (See, you’re getting good at this!) There’s no way Kiki would be able to complete a search for the toy given the circumstances, especially not given her 4pm deadline.
I think you will enjoy the next part when Kiki comes up with a plan involving Jiji.
So this is basically saying that Jiji enters the cage in a panic/rush (and maybe flustered), and sits on the “silver zabuton that didn’t fall (out of the cage)”. But what’s the 忘れませんでした for? Is that just saying that Jiji didn’t forget to sit on the zabuton?
I also see that だけは can mean “at least…”. Is that meaning being used here? If so, it could mean “at least Jiji didn’t forget to sit on the silver zabuton (that remains in the cage)”. Does that make sense?
Side comment: Japanese sometimes feels repetitive to me. If 落ちずに actually means “without falling” here and 残った is used to indicate that the zabuton still remains in the cage, there’s really no need for both of them. It makes writing the English translation weird because it just doesn’t make sense to say both in English.
I’ve just finished the same section. Poor Kiki! I felt her panic. What a terrible thing to happen on her first real job! I learned the word 失敗 (epic fail!) in WK but never expected to actually need it… but there it was, quite applicable here.
I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m only now getting to Kiki’s plan to cover their mistake… and like Jiji, I’m rather skeptical about it. I can’t wait to see how it turns out tomorrow!
@seanblue, you’re right, Japanese often includes quite a lot more redundancy than English — in fact I’m not even sure “redundant” is a concept in Japanese. My personal theory is that this is an adaptation to having so many homonyms. The extra words that seem redundant to us help the listener in Japanese to be sure they’re picking the right interpretation. Whatever the explanation, it seems that redundancy (and sometimes outright repetition) is perfectly normal in Japanese.
Yes, this is saying that even though he’s not happy about being locked in the cage, he doesn’t forget that he really, really wanted to sit on that cushion.
Alright, only three pages left in the chapter. I have some general questions about pages 81-84 in the blue book, where the other girl is introduced, mostly about her personality.
So in her song that she’s singing to herself, she mentions that even better than the black of a cat would be the black of a witch. Also when Kiki and the girl simultaneously say 「見つかって、よかった」and then ask 「何が」the other girl says 「あたしはあなた。すてきな黒いドレスの女の子よ」. And later she says more stuff about the color black and witches, like 「…のために探してたのよ、いい黒をね。黒の中の本当の黒をね。できれば魔女の黒をね。」
Two specific questions:
What is the nuanced meaning of 「黒の中」?
Why does she have the を everywhere? Are these supposed to be the objects of 探す from the previous sentence?
Also curious for people’s thoughts on this:
Was she actually looking for Kiki because of the stuffed animal cat? Or were her 「見つかって、よかった」and「あたしはあなた。すてきな黒いドレスの女の子よ」statements just more general. Like she was looking for someone with a black dress because of her weird obsession with black?
I know there are no “right” answers at this point. I’m just curious what everyone thought about this. Presumably we’ll get to know more about this character and why she likes black so much, why she knows that witches wear black, and also why the black of a witch is better than other black.
It looks like she’ll be a fun addition to the cast.
First of all, sorry for being MIA from this thread and the chapter 3 thread. I just finished both chapters today and hopefully (if work doesn’t interfere) I can pop in to contribute to the other chapters as well.
I interpreted the nuance of 黒の中 being equivalent to saying “black black” or “jet black”.
I read that the をs are the object of 探す. The girl just continued to specify exactly what she was looking for; not necessarily the black stuffed animal, but the whole kit and caboodle: an authentic witch, complete with broom and a black cat. The girl even says afterward 「あたしね、この町にはむかしから魔女がいないっていうから、ひっこそうかって考えてたくらいなのよ。」–> “Because this town has never had a witch, I though about moving away, you know.” So from that, I would argue that she’s a witch fangirl.
Wooo! After reading nothing at all over Christmas, then feeling guilty about being behind and procrastinating even more so that I was basically an entire chapter behind, I have finally finished chapter 4 and caught up with the group
To catch up, I didn’t allow myself to use a dictionary at all and just powered through, and I was amazed by how much I could understand from my limited vocab and context. My reading speed has also increased A LOT, since I had to read ~4 pages a day.
I’m looking forward to looking over this and the chapter 3 thread to figure out bits that I couldn’t work out, and contributing to the group again
In the 3rd and 2nd to the last pages of the chapter, there are a few onomato words that were a little difficult to figure out such as ぐちゃんぐちゃん, ぎゅんと, つーんと, and ぶーっと. I know that addingと makes the word an adverb so sometimes they can be figured out by looking up the word in a dictionary without と. But why aren’t these words easily found in a dictionary or elsewhere? This book is supposed to be written for children and therefore you’d figure that they’d be common words. @Kyasurin also asked about the word ぽちんと which I couldn’t figure out either. Am I missing something here? How do kids in Japan know what these words mean?
Although it may not seem like it, there’s a rhyme and reason for onomatopoeic words in Japanese. It’s to the point that certain sounds can create a certain connotation for the listener. Just to briefly summarize from Hiroko Fukuda’s Jazz Up Your Onomatopoeia:
い sounds the most light (small or quick) of all the sounds followed by the other vowel sounds え (negative connotation)、あ (clear sound)、お (low-pitched sound)、う (not addressed). So syllables that utilize these vowel sounds already have some kind of imagery. Add into repeated sounds (きらきら）- condition/state, plurality, engaging time or space, っと - abrupt action, sudden actions、ん - echoing or rebounding (forcefully)、半濁音（はんだくおん）- sharp, light, cute, or bouncy、濁音（だくおん） - heavy, low-pitched, dull, or dirty
(this is not exhaustive this author goes in length about other forms as well).
So when coming across these you can guess based on the form and the original form, if you can extrapolate it.
ぐちゃんぐちゃん － ぐちゃぐちゃ (originally - pulpy, soppy, or sloppy) → so maybe even more so in a forceful way.
ぎゅんと － ぎゅう (tightly squeezed) → so squeezing even more firmly
つーんと is defined as pungent smell by jisho.org
ぶーっと ー ふっと (with a whiff or puff, suddenly without warning) → so maybe a longer more pronounce sound like snorting or honking, but sudden
I know that this doesn’t provide you with exact answers, but it’s a very subjective thing to describe. So hopefully that helps a little bit. Because I often have trouble with these kind of words.
@LucasDesu Thanks for the help. I’m wondering if kids in Japan are used to hearing or seeing all or parts of these words in other media like television shows, movies, advertising etc. and in popular culture so that they already know what they mean. It shouldn’t be that difficult for kids to figure this stuff out if the book is written for their age group, no?
edit: By the way, thanks for mentioning Fukuda’s book which sounds really informative. I’ll have to read it. There was a review of this book on Tofugu.
I bought the book from your recommendation but I haven’t read it yet. It’s so hard to find time when I’m already studying other things and reading Kiki.
Looking at an excerpt of Fukuda’s book on amazon, it gives some explanation as to why it may be difficult for non-Japanese speakers (or at least for me ) to figure out certain onomato words, not only because they are loosely derived from other words but some are even made up “on the spot”: (sorry if the screenshot is not clear)
“Mastering onomatopoeia is hard. Really, really hard.”–Tofugu
Figuring out the meaning and usage of onomato words may be a bigger challenge than kanji, no?
I agree. After a year in Tokyo I was reasonably competent (although far from perfect) in reading and speaking, but still had only the barest grasp on onomatopoeia, even really common things like the different types of rain.
