🍀よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! - Week 10

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Yotsubato
Yotsubato759×616 142 KB

We’re reading this as part of the Absolute Beginner Book Club

Week 10 September 12
End Page 100
Chapter 3
Home Thread :four_leaf_clover:よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! (Absolute Beginners Book Club) // Home Thread
Final Page

image
image865×1268 176 KB

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current section(s) and any content in future sections.
  • When asking for help, please mention the volume and page number.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if they initially seem embarrassing. All of us are here to learn.
  • For the lurkers out there: Join the conversation; it’s fun!

Participation

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll. (You can change your answer later if you’d like.)

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I will catch up later
  • I’ve already read this
0 voters
2

Can’t believe we’re already on week 10!

Anyways, I’ve been using the Comic Walker free trial so far, and now that we’re on Chapter 3, I guess it’s time for me to borrow it on Internet Archive since I never did end up buying my own copy. (I’m really glad that free version exists.) One of these days I’ll buy it on Amazon so that I have the physical version, since I like physical books way more than ebooks, but probably not for a while because I keep telling myself that I’m going to buy it and then forgetting about it :joy:

3

One presumes Fuuka has resumed her trip to the bookshop.

5

Time for another week! A bit fewer in pages than last week, so I can only assume we’re going to have some complicated conversations included.

Page 90

Huh?

Page 91

Dad!!
What is it? Did something wake you?
Look
Fuka drew me!
When I woke up it was here!
Isn’t that good, she’s a great big sister
She’s surprisingly a good person!!

Page 92

This picture isn’t drawn well but it turned out alright
I’m taking a liking to it
Make sure to thank her properly when you see her
I will!!
Thank you very much!

Page 93

Ah
Last time a person came out
Ding dong
I pressed it!
Ding dong
Ding dong
Ding do-
Ding do-
Ding dong
Ahaha!!
Fuuka!! Come out!!

Page 94

Stop it!!
…Who is it?
…That what I want to know…

Page 95

Oh it’s you
If it isn’t Yotsuba chan
Ah! It’s pretty big sister!
It’s Asagi, Asagai
Asage
Asagi
So what brings you here today?
I wanted to thank Fuuka!
That sounds interesting
But Fuka isn’t here right now

Page 96

Huh?
So what do you want to do?
This kid is funny…
Why don’t you come inside for now? It’s hot outside.
Make yourself at home
Aah!?

Page 97

This room is cold!
Cold? Is the air conditioner set too low?
!? !? It’s winter here!?
Is it really that cold? Are you sensitive to the cold Yostuba chan?
It’s not cold, it’s uh
It’s the right amount of cold!
… is it?

Page 98

Do you know what an air conditioner is? It’s this machine right here.
What’s that!!
That
Ooo!! Cold wind is coming out!!
What’s that!?
Air conditioner, air conditioner
It’s a machine that keeps it cold even during the summer
Oh, amazing!
Can this thing make ice cream!
It can’t do that

Page 99

Here
What was it that you wanted to say to Fuuka?
I wanted to thank her
Thank her?
Look! Fuuka draw a picture of Yotsuba!
I see

Page 100

That girl can’t draw, huh?
Yeah!
Even so, I came to thank her!
That’s admirable
But if you’re after drawings, Ena is good at them
Ena?
You know she’s here, right? Me, Fuuka and her
Ah, the tiny one
She’s upstairs right now, go play with her

Finally got it done! Some of that was definitely difficult

6

Edit: and of course they made their post while I was doing mine :rofl:

OK, so since @Dathmach hasn’t done their translations as yet, I’m going to have a go at it myself this week! Also I started looking up onomatopoeia that i usually don’t bother with, but i couldn’t figure out how on earth sitting up could make the sound むく. But honestly even after looking it up i’m still confused, haha. According to https://ono.jepang.org/ it means:

‘Muku to (or mukutto) captures the sudden, physical motion of rising up, most commonly when springing up from bed after waking. It implies going from a flat or lowered position to an upright one in an abrupt or slightly surprising manner.’

As a native English speaker, I had never heard the word ‘mimetic’ before, so then I had to look that up:

A mimetic word is a word that imitates a sensory image, a physical movement, a condition, or a feeling rather than a sound.

OK. So not really onomatopoeia.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, よつばと！

Page 89

Global Warming.

SIde note: This got me wondering how long ago this was actually published. 2003 apparently! damn, older than I thought!

Side note 2: Literally just yesterday I got a message from my italki tutor with a story from a kids book she wants me to try reading, I think because she knows I have a degree in astronomy, and the story is about why the moon and the sun look the same size to us. Anyway, just mentioning it because I learned the word ちきゅう in that just yesterday, so nice coincidence that it pops up (in kanji form) here the very next day.

Anyway, ADHD, can we get back to reading the Manga now please? Great, thanks!

Page 90

eh?

Page 91

Dad!!
What? Woken up huh?
look!
Fuuka drew a picture of me!
(not 100% sure on this bit but I think it’s something like) She left it here for when I woke up.
wow that’s good. She’s a nice girl.
It’s a nice surprise and she’s a good person? Not sure about this again.

Page 92

This picture is also bad but well done. (this doesn’t really make much sense to me)
I’m pleased with it? (I guess a better translation would be I liked it?)
You need to say thankyou to her
Yes, I do!
I’ll go and thank her.

Page 93

Oh
That’s the switch that makes people come out!
push
bing-bong
bing-bong
bing-bong
bing-bong
bing-bong (oh good grief よつば！)
hahaha!
fuukaaa!
COME OUT!

Page 94

ALRIGHT!!
who’s that?
That’s supposed to be my line

Page 95

what’s up?
ah. よつば
OH. The pretty older sister
It’s Asagi, Asagi.
Asage! (Breakfast, apparently)
Asagi
What are you doing today? What do you want?
I need to have a word with Fuuka
That again? interesting.
But Fuuka is out at the moment

Page 96

huh?
So what should I do?
You’re a funny kid
Anyway, do you want to come in? Because it’s hot out here.
Seems to be something like ‘sit wherever you want’
eh??

Page 97

This room is cold (a cold object)!!
Has the cooler made it too cold for you?
Is it winter here?
Does this feel cold to you? Is yotsuba sensitive to the cold?
co…not cold. umm… precisely! cold! - I’m guessing this is her realising that she used the wrong type of word before when she said つめたい
could it be…?

Page 98

Do you know about aircon?
This machine.
What is that?!?
here
OOh! Cold wind is coming out!
What is this?!?!
Cooler…cooler. (aircon)
It’s a machine that makes it cooler in summer.
Ooh! Amazing!
Does it make ice cream?
No, that’s not possible.

Page 99

So
What do you want to talk to fuuka about?
I want to thank her.
thank her?
Look, she drew a picture of me!
ooh!

Page 100

That kid is not skilled (at drawing)
Yes
However it’s right to thank her
That’s admirable
But if Ena is good at it (Not really sure about this, doesn’t seem to make total sense)
Ena?
Let’s see shall we? There’s me, fuuka and one more person
oh, the small one
Now, go upstairs and play with her.

So a few tricky parts, bits I’m not 100% sure of, but it was no problem to get the gist of the story, but plenty of words needed to be looked up in the vocab sheet. Again though, the grammar is mostly fine, I think.

Yotsuba is still funny.

7

We were working on it at the same time it seems :stuck_out_tongue:

8

I might have finished mine first if I didn’t keep allowing myself to get sidetracked.

Not that it’s a race or anything, hehe

9

@Dathmach

Page 91

There’s no “something” in this sentence, it’s just “You’re awake?”

Page 92

いってくる = I’ll go (and come back). お礼 should probably have a に here, but it’s been omitted. In total, it’s “I’ll go thank her now!”

Page 93

人出てくる is a phrase that’s modifying スイッチ, so “It’s the switch that makes a person come out”. (Though it’s obviously a button. Get it together, Yotsuba.)

Page 97

もしかして is the start of what she’s about to say next, so “Could it be that…” turn page “you don’t know what an air conditioner is?”

@martywolfman

Page 91

意外, when forming an adverb, takes と as the connective particle rather than に, so 意外 = unexpected, 意外と = unexpectedly. “She’s an unexpectedly good person”.

Page 92

Don’t forget last chapter when Yotsuba judged Fuuka’s drawing skills as へた. So she’s still へた, but she tried her best at drawing this picture.

Page 97

It’s more like “just the right amount of cold”. She’s stumbling over her words because さむい isn’t the right word choice either - since she’s describing it as ちょうどさむい, it’s probably すずしい instead. :face_with_tongue: さむい = unpleasantly cold; すずしい = pleasantly cool. It’s nice in here, is what she’s trying to convey. That’s why Asagi is thinking it’s too cold. Asagi uses すずしい on the next page.

Page 100

You skipped over the first clause there. でも絵だったら when it comes to (drawing) pictures, 恵那が上手よ, Ena is good at it.

I bet she’s also 日本語上手.

10

Thanks as always for the help! I actually wrotec this at first, though i used surprisingly, then changed my mind because of the ‘to’ (I’m on my tablet at work currently and can’t write hiragana haha)and forgetting how rude yotsuba can be! Hehe

But yeah that makes sense, thanks

11

For fun, another example of むく (same mangaka):

image
image515×380 69.8 KB

image
image515×380 73.3 KB

(She was having a dream that her mother put the kotatsu away.)

12

Blasted through Chapters 1 and 2. Will start this section either tonight or tomorrow.

Generally, vocabulary isn’t an issue for me. My biggest gap, of course, is the kanji. Because of the furigana though, I rarely have to look anything up.

Not sure what others do but if I know the word (even without knowing the kanji), I just keep reading. I’ll only lookup/mine words that are truly unknown.

13

Yippie, more shenanigans. Yotsuba is a gem.

Here are some things I struggled with.

page 95

ふーかにひとこと言っておくことがある！

Having throuble with おく here, per the vocab sheet it means “to do something in advance”, but I think I need some more examples to understand this properly. Looking in Bunpro it seems to have a slight nuance of “getting something over with”? Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Hm, considering the ことがある part means “sometimes” or “there are times when” maybe a translation could be:

It occurs that / it so happens that I’m going to say a few words to Fuuka.

page 98

夏でもすずしくしてしまう機械よ

In chapter 15 of Genki there is a grammar point about using sentences to qualify nouns. Pretty sure that is what’s happening here.

A machine that makes it totally refreshing despite summer.

page 100

ほらいたでしょ

ほら: Look! Hey!
いた / いる: to be / to exist (past tense)
でしょ(う): don’t you agree? / it seems / probably
Trying to think about this phrase in isolation.

Hey, wasn’t it the case that…

But can ほらいた be used as “you saw”?

You saw, right? Me and Fuuka and one other person.

14

I’ve been lagging behind a bit these past few weeks, but I finally gathered enough motivation to catch up :partying_face:.
…I’m definitely not the first person to say this - but reading this manga has really made me realise how stuff I still have to learn, especially grammar-wise (which should be obvious, but it’s easy to forget sometimes lol). On the other hand though, it is nice to see that the past year or so of studying has paid off (even a little bit).

15

Totally normal. I still find it difficult to have the correct amount of おく usage myself. It basically means you do something as a kind of preparation for something else (either an action you want to do or a situation you expect to be in). What Yotsuba is preparing for by telling Fuuka the ひとこと is unclear to me as well :smiley:

That’s a tricky part of this sentence. There is the grammar ことがある that means what you wrote here. In this specific case it sadly doesn’t mean that.
It simply is the nominalization of the sentence and tells her, “I have something to say”. Compare it to a sentence like 言いたいことがある. You wouldn’t translate that sentence as “I sometimes have something I want to say” in most cases. It would more probably simply be “I have something I wish to say”

page 98 you got good.

I, personally, would go with
“Remember, she was there, right?”
More of a liberal translation (ほら being interpreted as “remember”), but I think it catches the intended meaning the best. You need a pronoun in English; it would be even better if I could leave it off :frowning:

16

co…not cold. umm… precisely! cold! - I’m guessing this is her realising that she used the wrong type of word before when she said つめたい

Reply

Yes, I think Yotsuba uses 冷たい wrong because it describes cold things you come in contact with, like an ice cube or drinking something chilled, so it doesn’t make sense to Asagi.

寒い would be more appropriate because it means the coldness of the ambient air.

17
page 95

置く (おく) on its own means to put or place something, such as placing a book on a table.

When a verb has おく attached to it means the action of the verb is being done for the purpose of putting something in place. Imagine placing a drink in the refrigerator. This is done so the drink will be chilled when you want to drink it later, so you can say you placed the drink there “in advance” of something to come later.

In another sense, it’s doing something now do it’s out of the way for later.

Yotsuba says she says something to say to Fuuka, and uses 言っておく which means not just that she’ll say it, but she’ll say it “in advance”. She’s getting it taken care of now, because she may forget later, or may miss the chance to say it.

Here are some other examples of verbておく:

image
image1029×354 109 KB

In this scene, Yukari is glad that she and her friends had “put the decision in place” to switch to their winter uniforms, as it’s gotten colder.

image
image1057×353 90.2 KB

In this scene, Tomo uses 決める (to decide) + おく + volitional say for the group to “put the decision of a meeting spot in place” so they know ahead of time where to regroup.

image
image1055×396 98.8 KB

In this scene, Chiya uses 空ける (to empty; to make room) + おく to say she will clear out a room so it is open for Cocoa to move into.

ことがある can mean that, but it can also mean, “there is something that…”

Let’s break it down into its parts:

こと refers to an intantigible thing. The tangible counterpart is もの. If you have a book, that is a もの. If you have an idea, that is a こと. If you want to give someone a boxed lunch that is a もの. If you want to give them a lecture, that is a こと.

が is the particle that marks the subject of a sentence.

And ある states that something exists.

「nounがある」 means “[noun] exists” or “there is (a) [noun]”.

Here, the noun is こと, an intangible thing. But there are all kinds of intangible things that exist. We need to narrow down what intangible thing is being talked about here. This is done by placing a phrase (essentially a sentence in itself) in front of こと, and that will define what intangible thing this こと is.

Here, it’s 「ふーかにひとこと言っておく」. This essentially means, “I’m going to say something to Fuuka”.

But adding 「ことがある」 makes it read more like, “There is something that I am going to say to Fuuka” or more naturally in English, “There’s something I need to say to Fuuka.”

You can see this in the official English release, as well.

image
image400×493 67.9 KB

page 98

Correct.

It’s like in English if you say, “This is my friend who always borrows money and never pays me back.”

In Japanese, this would come out as “this always-borrows-money-and-never-pays-me-back friend is.”

「これはいつもお金かねを借かりて、全然ぜんぜん返かえしてくれない友達ともだちだ。」

You can see similar with adjectives in English:

  • “I want the balloon that is red.” (Descriptor is after the noun.)
  • “I want the red balloon.” (Descriptor is before the noun.)

You can think of the Japanese “sentence” that qualifies a noun similarly to the English adjective that describes a noun, in that both appear before they noun they apply to.

page 100

This one’s a bit awkward to render in English, as it comes out unnatural unless you rewrite it to the point ot no longer being informative on the grammar involved.

I might go with something like, “Look, there (we) were, right? Me, Fuuka, and one other person.”

Here, I’m using “there was” as いた, and I’m filling “we” in as an unstated subject.

18

As I mentioned in my previous reply, 寒い is also wrong, because it’s got negative connotations. A cold winter’s day is 寒い. Something you don’t want to be stuck outside in. Stepping into an air-conditioned room on a hot summer day is 涼しい.

19
A couple such scenes...

image
image520×525 98.9 KB

image
image374×346 45.6 KB

(Yotsuba is the series where I see 涼しい used most for a cool room, showing up two or three times throughout the series. It was a struggle just to find even two examples from other series I’ve read!)

20

Another way to get a feel for the general vibes behind words is Google image search. :slightly_smiling_face:

samui
samui1919×825 550 KB

suzushii
suzushii1905×855 724 KB

21

アイキャッチ画像-7-1024x576
アイキャッチ画像-7-1024x5761024×576 141 KB

I guess my thinking was that one person’s 部屋が涼しい is another person’s 部屋が寒い when it comes to air-conditioning.