This week doesn’t have as many pages as week 1, but the text is much denser. If it feels like there is too much text, don’t worry about it for now. The first chapter is pretty dense, especially when the adult characters are having a conversation with each other.
Most of the pages from here on out involve characters speaking directly to Yotsuba, and they use simpler dialog there. If you can make it through this week and the next, it should be smooth sailing from then on!
Something to note so it doesn’t confuse people: ヤンダ is the name of another character. He doesn’t appear in this chapter (though he will show up some time later).
OK This week was definitley harder work. I managed to figure it all (i think) out with some effort, and lot’s of reference to the vocab sheet, plenty of words I don;t know in these pages, and the grammar seemed a bit more complex. I’m definitley going to have to go over it all a few more times during the week, to make sure I can fully understand it on my own.
皆んなさん こんにちわ！I worked through page 10 today. here’s my rough translation (I am about N5+ level Japanese). I felt like I got the gist, but open to feedback. Thank you!
Dad: Have you heard from Yanda yet?
Jumbo: Because he started on an errand, he’s not coming. That guy is no good!
Yotsuba: Jumbo, it’s been a while since I last saw you, haven’t I grown again?
Jumbo: Oh? where do I remember this line from?
Dad: Well, OK fine. Jumbo does the work of two people.
hey, i stumbled upon this thread by chance and decided to join in. i’ve read up to the current page, but i think my “absolute beginner” is probably different from everyone else’s “absolute beginner”. i think i understood about three words in the whole thing. anyway, just wanted to register myself as “present” in the thread.
I had the same problem when I started reading the book we went through in the last ABBC. However, there are a few words of encouragement I want to give you.
First, the pages we read this week are probably the hardest in the whole first volume. Last week wasn’t too bad, but a lot of people had some growing pains as they got used to reading native manga for the first time. If you’re in that camp, I’d suggest going through the first couple of pages over and over again and try your best to use whatever tools you have to understand what everyone is saying. At the very least, you can learn what you don’t know and see what you can do to learn it. Chances are, once you know the words they’re saying, you’ll have plenty of things to research afterward (i.e. what does ぞ mean when it’s at the end of a sentence, why does she use the に particle there, etc.).
As for ‘Absolute Beginner’, unfortunately, there isn’t much native Japanese manga that’s easier to read, while also being as good as Yotsuba is. I agree that ‘Absolute Beginner’ is probably not the best label to use, but as far as I know, these are meant to be the first manga you read, not necessarily that you could read it right away. It’s going to be hard to read any manga without much vocabulary to back it up, so you may want to spend some more time on that before trying to dive into native material. I’d also recommend NHK Easy or some graded readers about a topic you’re interested in. I remember reading one about some really old castles in Japan, and it was really interesting and fun to read because I didn’t have to look up any words.
No matter what you do, though, we’re always here to help!! If there is any advice or resources you need, there is always someone here who can help!
So, there is manga written for native kids who are themselves only just starting to learn how to read, but the thing is, the way native kids learn Japanese and the way adult foreigners learn Japanese is quite different, which makes material intended for the former paradoxically hard for the latter to read. You wind up with this absolute wall of solid kana, which the kids, who learnt how to speak the language every waking hour for five years before they picked up the manga, can understand just by sounding it out, where as the adults, who generally learn by reading lists of vocabulary, instead have to break the sentence up into words to figure out what’s meant to go where.
Absolutely. I was going to say this earlier, but sometimes I feel like a big shot when I can read Yotsuba or an NHK Easy article without any help, but then I have to bring myself back down to earth and realize there are Japanese 8-year-olds that can read better than I can. I have a leg up on them with my Kanji, but their vocabulary and grammar are leagues beyond mine because they spent their whole life using Japanese.
I mentioned this in the first week’s thread, but I’ll say it again here, that I think the fact this manga uses very little kanji is actually a good thing for reasons people might not expect. Beginner Japanese learners like me use Kanji as a way to memorize the words, then they become dependent on them. Reading Yotsuba for the first time helped me find different ways to study vocabulary and encouraged me to learn words differently, which I think helped me in the long run. That’s why trying to read something slightly beyond your level is so good. You get a better idea of what your weaknesses that way.
That’s why I picked that page. It’s a perfect example of something meant for little kids that learners likely won’t know the meaning of without a lookup, or may only recognize with kanji.
The pages in the book present a series of “why is x the way it is?” questions (about the sky, animals, nature), and the final page is, 「それは かみさまの みことばの わざです せかいの すべては かみさまによって つくられた」
thanks! it’s all okay. i knew i wouldn’t understand and didn’t expect to. it’s all just exposure, right? i didn’t want to dictionary lookup every single word so i tried to target lookup a few words in sentences that seemed easier to parse and then guess the rest through that context.
i ripped this sentence to an anki card (sorry, i don’t know how to spoiler an image):
おー！ – guessing this is just an expression, like “Ooh!” and not really a word.
えらいぞ – i knew that ぞ as a sentence ending particle is a bold assertion, but i didn’t understand the word so seemed like a good lookup target. jisho’s #1 definition puts it as great; excellent; admirable; commendable; laudable; honorable; wonderful; outstanding; extraordinary. easy enough to understand that.
よつば！ – character name
great! a sentence that can be broken down to easily understand. he’s saying "good job, yotsuba!’ or “that’s great, yotsuba!” or “how commendable, yotsuba!” or something along those lines. rip it to an anki card!
but of course there are other words where i do the lookup, and the #1 definition on jisho doesn’t seem to make sense, or none of them seem to make sense, or i can’t even find the word because i’m probably including a particle thinking it’s part of the word, or the sentence has three words that i don’t understand and it would take way too long to spend this much time on every single sentence (or maybe people doing that actually…)
Use the spoiler tag as usual, but make sure there are linebreaks so that the start and end tags are each alone on their own line. Same goes for spoilering multiple paragraphs at once. Or you can just use a Hide Details box.
This will be the first manga I will atempt to follow with the comunity, just read the first chapter and it looks perfect for what I was looking for. I have studied japanese many years ago but haven’t used it for a while and forgot mostly reading and was looking for a way to get back. English is my second language so be patient with me!
よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! (Absolute Beginners Book Club) // Home Thread
here’s my rough translation (I am about N5+ level Japanese). I felt like I got the gist, but open to feedback. Thank you!
On to the next page!
