魔女の宅急便 (Kiki's Delivery Service) Discussion Thread: Chapter 1

There’s also the consideration of how tall the trees with the bells on top are, and how far they are from quiet parts of town, and thus how far the noise would carry.

What I wonder is…just how likely is Kiki to be passing directly over a tree coincidentally as she’s losing altitude?

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Well, this is a small, warm village. Not cold, impersonal modern life. Everyone here knows Kiki and Kokiri.

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I’ve (once again) finished the first chapter. Excited to finish the book this time around!

@Sharpevil - I’m also using the Anki deck from last go around. I’ve split it up into chapters, and I’m starting each chapter 1 week before we’re supposed to read it. I’m curious how it will speed up reading, if I don’t have to look things up so much!

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Have you got a link to that deck? Tried to look around but couldn’t find anything about it.

Yes. I found it by googling, so someone else made it (thank you whoever that was!)

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1268045618

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AH okay I thought it was here so I didn’t even think to look elsewhere. I swear I know how to computer.

Thanks for the link!

What determines whether or not a word/phrase will be spelled out with kanji or hiragana? For example, 人間 vs. ばあい(場合). Is it the author’s personal decision on what they think a child will understand? I’m noticing a lot of words that I’ve already learned through WK that are written out in hiragana.

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That’s the impression I get, although I don’t have any specific information on it. I do know that manga authors don’t write in furigana[1] (as the text is redone for the print release), so I would expect that leaves room for the editor to change what does and does not use kanji. I imagine it’s the same for a novel, where an editor, or maybe the publisher, has some standards on certain kanji usage based on a targeted age group.

Again, I don’t have any direct knowledge of whether this is the case. It’s just the impression I get based on seeing when a mangaka shows a preview of an upcoming page, or when an online manga gets a print release, or even comparing a re-release with the original.

[1] Since I wrote statement as an absolute, it’s probably wrong.

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It’s probably highly subjective based on the author’s assumed age/grade range of their readers. I would expect they would like to keep things close to the Jouyou kanji taught at the approximate grade level(s) of their intended audience. I would expect one is not going to use a bunch of high-school-level kanji for a book meant for primary school students, for example.

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That was me, actually. And you’re welcome. The deck is actually from this go around, the vocabulary is from last go around’s spreadsheet.

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it’s also in the home thread’s OP under “Decks”…! :blush:

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Could use some help with clarification for the following phrase: これも一つの魔法といえらかもしれません

What is the purpose of the negative conjugation here? Is it to affect implication and/or possibility, since the sentence is talking about black cats being considered another type of magic?

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Do you mean かもしれません? That’s a set expression which means “maybe” / “perhaps”. (And a super-common one, fwiw)

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Ah, thank you! Good to know, especially that it’s a common phrase and not necessarily conjugated due to context. I keep forgetting to use Jisho; it’ll most likely solve the vocab/idiom issues I’ve been running into haha.

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Wow this chapter got a tad poignant at the end with the description of the witches and the role that black cats play in their lives. Having the little drawing of Kiki and Jiji on the last page as the author talks about them being an important partner and friend as they grow up is absolutely heartwarming.

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This grammar (which I would often see as the less formal かもしれない) was difficult for me to really grasp and remember until I watched CureDolly’s video on it. Here’s the transcript of the relevant portion (with the video linked below):

Hidden for length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00nKUtmnzvI

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You’re a saint.

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In case you don’t know about it, ichi.moe is pretty good as well. It parses out the expression.

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Oh heck yeah that’s totally the kind of linguistic content I live for. Fascinating explanation and makes total sense now. Thank you so much!

Oooooh that’s a really cool resource. Thanks for sharing! Always good to have more tools in my belt.

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Win! Finally caught up with this chapter, so I’ll move on to chapter 2 tomorrow :sweat_smile:

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