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

OK, not a question, but I love this part on p. 15 (red book) where they’re explaining the first steps in learning to be a witch:

First you learn to make medicine for sneezing (…yawn…), and also you learn to fly in the sky on a broom (…holy crap!) :smiley:

I’ll try to help you a little bit.

気が気じゃない
気が気じゃない - Jisho.org

魔女たちが生きのこっていくためには you are looking for the word いきのこる
生き残る - Jisho.org

数もめっきり小なくなってしまった = number of witches has become remarkably low

今では魔法の力も弱くなり = nowadays magical power is getting weaker

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Thank you, that does help!

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Page 15 (red book): キキの鼻の頭と両足のひざっこぞうに合計三つも昆布をつくってしまいました。

I’ve mostly got this: It produced three lumps, on the tip of Kiki’s nose, and both knees. But what is this っこぞう after ひざ?

Weblio defines it as a dialect for “kneecap”, which would make sense in context. (ひざっこぞうの意味や使い方 わかりやすく解説 Weblio辞書)

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Can anyone explain this part (page 16 red book):

”そのかたっぱうをキキがいやがるのですから”

So many constructs in this book that are confusing me with my poor understanding of grammar :sweat_smile:

Edit: The last part of the chapter (p 17, red book), is it talking about Kiki’s mom…? I think I understand all the sentences, talking about a girl and a cat etc, but I don’t really understand how that links to the story.

It could be something like “the so-called highest trees in town…” or “what you would call the highest trees…” I actually think this sentence is referring to all the trees in town. It’s not making a distinction between plural and singular. The bells are there to wake Kiki up everytime she flies too low; it doens’t make sense if there’s just one tree with a bell. So…

その一つは、町の高い木という木のてっぺんに
This one (special) thing, the tops of the tall trees in the town…

“It is a green painted door wide open.”

ペンキでぬった means to be painted… ペンキ isn’t katakana for pink but for paint in the Dutch language I believe.

緑色のペンキでぬった戸が大きく開いています。
green colored – painted door – bigly open

Something like that :wink:

もちろん、小さな女の子にとってそれはたいへんなことだったのですが、
Of course, when it comes to little girls, this (journey alone) is a tough thing.

今では魔法の力も弱くなり、
But now magic is weakening (in general).

数もめっきり小なくなってしまった
The numbers (of witches) are falling,

魔女たちが生きのこっていくためには、
So for all those witches who are still out there,

大切な習慣なのでした。
This is an important custom (to spread awareness of witches).

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Keeping in my tradition of bumbling through this book a couple of sentences at a time, I think I’ve managed to get through a few more. Thanks to the help of some people already explaining one of the trickier aspects up above.

そして、町のほぼん中には駅、ちょつとはなれたところにはかたまって、役所、軽鎖署、聖宝署、学校があります。
そして- and or thus?
町のほぼまん中- in the center of town
駅- train station
はなれた- seperated
かたまって- grouped or huddled together
役所 - City Hall
軽鎖署 - Police Station
聖宝署 - Fire Station
学校 - school
あります- to have

I don’t know what these phrases are:
ちょつと and
ところには - I think this might mean something like “in this spot”?

What I’m gathering from this sentence is something along the lines of
“Grouped in the center of this town there is the train station, city hall, police station, fire station, and the school.”

Next sentence I managed to get through is this
ところが、すこし気をつけて見ると、ふつうの町ではあまり見られないものがあるのです。
ところが- However, even so, despite
すこし- I think this is meant to be 少し or a little bit?
気- I know that ki is spirit or energy. So すこし気 is like small spirit, or maybe sleepy? Like… This sleepy town?
見る- to see
ふつうの- I looked this up and it looks like it means something along the lines of ordinary?
見られない, I think this means something that can’t be seen?

From context clues (and posts above me) it looks like this sentence means something like
“Despite how ordinary this town is, there is something you might not see in other towns.” There are still a lot of phrases that I don’t quite understand, but I think I’m getting the gist?

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ちょつと should be ちょっと or “just a little” - ちょっと - Jisho.org

気をつけて - This is a phrase that goes together meaning “take care” or “be careful”- 気をつけて - Jisho.org. And すこし can be “a little bit” or “a little while”, so すこし気をつけて見る would be something like “to look carefully for a little while”.

I’m still not quite sure on the full translation myself, but I think the last part - ふつうの町ではあまり見られないものがあるのです。- says something like “there are things that don’t look much like an ordinary town”

Edit - I just realized there’s a breakdown of this earlier in the thread: #19

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There is a grammar that was new to me in the second page of the chapter so I did some research to understand it and found a good explanation, so I wanted to share it with you guys :blush:.
“おや、おや、またちっちゃなキキが足をひっこけたね”と笑いあうのでした。
笑います=to laugh
あう(合う)=to fit together
Verb ます form+ あう =do something to/with each other
笑いあう=to laugh with each other.
Here’s a good explanation with many examples
I hope this is as helpful to you guys as it was for me.

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Actually, it’s a Portuguese loan word. Japan’s earliest Western trading partners. Just a little bit of trivia for you :slight_smile:

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second day…just finished page 8 on the blue cover. :see_no_evil:
seriously my brain is moving at a crawl trying to piece everything together.
The use of commas and が and か are confusing the heck out of me.
「台所からは、ちょうど居間の正面の壁が見えますが、どこの家でも見られるような絵や写真の代わりに、木の枝を束ねたほうきが、大きいのと小さいのと、二本ならべてかざってあるのが、ちょっと変わっているといえましょうか。」
why do the sometimes write kawari in hiragana and then in kanji?
honestly it took me a while to try to piece this together and i’m sure i messed things up a bit.
"from the kitchen you can see the wall facing the living room. unlike other houses that have paintings and picture, this one has a bundle of wooden brooms hanging. One small and the other large decorating the wall. Let’s change things up? let’s talk about something else?
i don’t even know, how do you guys understand it. :upside_down_face:

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I’m having a hard time seeing what you mean. Where’s the かわり? I see 代わりに and 変わる which are two different uses.

EDIT: The commas are meant to help with parsing the sentence so it’s easier to follow along because the final verb is so far away.

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変わる can also mean to be strange/peculiar, so I took this to mean something like
‘its a bit strange, wouldn’t you say?’

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the 代わりに is the かわりit just automatically changed while i was typing.

also shouldn’t it be ちょっと変 if it were to mean strange?

Yes, 代わりに means “instead of” or “in place of” in this case

To help you parse this:

「台所からは、<-- From the kitchen
ちょうど居間の正面の壁が見えますが、<-- the wall straight in the living room can be seen,
どこの家でも見られるような絵や写真の代わりに、<-- but instead of photos and paintings that one can see in any house,
木の枝を束ねたほうきが、<–the tree branch brooms
大きいのと小さいのと、<–a big one and a small one are
二本ならべてかざってあるのが、<–lined up decorating the room,
ちょっと変わっているといえましょうか。」 <–which one can say is a little different.

Put into a coherent sentence (I took some liberties to make it sound more natural):
From the kitchen straight ahead, lined up on the wall in the living as decoration, there are a pair of brooms, a small one and a big one, made of bundled tree branches. One can say this is a little different in place of photos and paintings that one sees on walls in any other house.

I hope this helps for understanding the sentence better.

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it does thank you :grin:

ちょっと変 does mean a bit strange, but in the text, she uses the verb 変わる (変わっている) which can mean ‘to be peculiar, different, strange’, so same meaning, just a different way of saying it.

Is that so? That’s really interesting. Thanks for the trivia.

I’m working my way through the next sentence. I’ve seen other people above me translate it as “there is a sign hanging above the door that says ‘sneezing medicine is sold here’.”

I can see where most of the words map to, but I’m having trouble picking out which one cold medicine is. Is it “銀色の鈴”? Because that looks like it would be silver bells?

くしゃみのおくすり= sneeze medicine

くしゃみ = sneeze ()
おくすり = humble way to say medicine (お)

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