My guess at the whole meaning wasn’t quite right, but the も there does add the meaning of “even”.
Had issues with 木という木 also. I inititailly thought, “the tree said tree” or, “a tree called tree”. x_X, thanks for the explanation on that one! @ Kyasurin your post helped alot too. I was surprised to see a N1 grammar point on the first page, thanks for your break down as well.
3 Likes
My page 2/3 thoughts (Or, I suppose, 6/7 in my red book):
2:
- くしゃみのおくすり - Sneezing medicine, huh? I guess it’s a cultural thing.
- Maybe I’m misreading it, but… It sounds like the green door is literally on a tree, and there’s a garden and bungalow inside.
- It is here, on the second page, that I realize I’m being spoken to conversationally by a narrator.
3:
- あたしだってかあさんのむすめです。- The だって throws me off. I’m assuming it overall means “I’m mother’s (your) child” in an explanatory manner, but I don’t wholly understand the だって.
- もうキキにまかせたらどうだい - The どうだい is new to me. I’m guessing he’s making a suggestion, something like “Why don’t you just trust Kiki (to decide)?”
- おわかりでしょうか - This one threw me. Does it mean “Do you understand?”
2 Likes
It sounds like the green door is literally on a tree, and there’s a garden and bungalow inside.
Nope. The 木のふだ is a “wooden tag”, the one that has that medicine message on it (if this is the sentence you’re referring to)
あたしだって
This is like “Even I”. But the whole thing’s nuance is close to “I am your daughter after all”.
どうだい
This is just どうだ？ or どうですか？
おわかりでしょうか
An extra polite form here, if it was plain it would be 分かりましたか？
This form adds お and uses the stem of the verb, so it becomes おわかり, and でしょうか is more indirect than ですか.
7 Likes
Well, だい is its own thing, but it’s basically what you said.
From weblio (def 1 is the relevant one):
だ い
（ 連語 ）
5 Likes
Just to clarify for @Sharpevil, 木 can mean either “tree” or “wooden”. I added it to the vocab spreadsheet again for this appearance cos I thought it might cause confusion…!
Ha, yes, there’s definitely a funny moment when you realise there’s an explicit narrator 
7 Likes
I’m currently going through the first chapter.
Thanks a lot for the vocab sheet, it makes the reading much more relaxing.
Also, thanks for the picture of the village map, I like to visualise this kind of stuff!
4 Likes
That is really helpful. I’m realizing that this onomatopoeic adverbs are one of my weaknesses - I just don’t have a feel for the way that they are used yet. But hopefully I’ll be better once I’ve finished the book:)
5 Likes
I know the feeling. It’s exactly the same for me. I try to remember, a single action (verb) can be perform in a variety of ways, and the adverb tells you which way that verb was done (such as: slowly walking, briskly walking, clumsily walking).
For some reason, Japanese-to-English dictionaries, giving a list of English words similar in meaning to the Japanese word, always leave me feeling underwhelmed with onomatopoeic adverbs. I don’t know why. It just is. That’s why recently I’ve taken to looking them up in a search engine (add とは to the end of a word to get Japanese dictionary entries in the results), and them parsing out the description given.
If the dictionary entry is too difficult to read (especially with kanji and vocabulary I don’t know), I copy and paste it into DeepL (which tends to be good for translating short, well-formed sentences) and ichi.moe (lets me see each word one by one, in case DeepL made a mistake).
2 Likes
I have that same feeling, and for me that’s because onomatopoeia specifically are not the type of adverbs that give you additional information (as in your example of “slowly walking” etc), they just repeat what the verb already says 
Example: キラキラとひかる (to glitter glitteringly)
Sounds redundant, but that’s how Japanese works, I’m afraid… These adverbs mainly add more vividness to the expression, like in English if you say “and the bomb went off” vs. “and - BOOM! - the bomb went off”, which does give a different feeling of vividness and directness to me.
13 Likes
To add onto this, if you watch the scene of the Ghibli movie where Kiki leaves her home you’ll notice that she hits multiple trees with bells on top of them. Really liked that small detail they added there!
4 Likes
You can’t rely on the Ghibli adaption much though, because it’s very different from the book.
3 Likes
Ah, your version has pictures? うらやましい
From listening to anime and Japanese TV shows, だいsend to be a kind, soft, gentle way of ending a sentence. But I am not an expert
Can anyone explain the construction “一つでも多く” (or一人でも多く) found on page 10 if the blue book?
This is so inspiring. Thank you!
1 Like
ChristopherFritz posted pictures (under Hide Details triangles) about a day ago, if you want to see them.
Apart from the bells in the village picture, if you look carefully you can also find Kiki. 
3 Likes
My understanding of this is it means “more and more” by adding at least one thing (一つでも）to a larger number
一つでも多くの町 - even one more town
一人でも多くの人に - to even one more person
1 Like
I believe it’s actually in the sense of “even from one of many towns and villages” and “even from one of many people”. That “from” part comes from the に, since the verb of the sentence is 知ってもらう. In other words, the narrator is saying that for the sake of getting to properly know more about living, even from one of many towns/villages and even from one of many people, was even (one more でも at the end lol) a good method (of raising witches). That’s how I had worked through that sentence, but I could be looking too much into it I guess?
Here’s the sentence for context: ひとつでも多くの町や村に、そしてひとりでも多くの人に、魔女がまだちゃんといることを知ってもらうためには、いい方法でもあったのです。
1 Like
Here's my understanding of the overall meaning of that sentence
Because witchcraft has become less powerful and witches have declined in number, in order for witches to continue to play a role in society, it’s important that people know that they still really exist and are not just stuff of legend. (I’m extrapolating slightly from the text). So having young witches go and spend time in a place which doesn’t already have a witch in residence is a good method to ensure that (the existence of) witches become known, even if it’s in just one more town or village at a time, to one more person at a time.
11 Likes