What do you all think of the manga so far? For some of you, last week may have been the first chapter of Japanese manga you’ve read. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for what you’ve done to get to this point! It’s taken a lot of work, and there’s still a lot left to go, but if you’ve made it to this point, there’s nothing in the rest of the volume that’s going to stop you.
i’m enjoying it a lot. i’m trying to read other things too but often will hit a real wall where the lack of understanding combined with a denser amount of text can make a page feel insurmountable. よつばと！ though, i can just understand enough to not hit that point of absolute exhaustion (sometimes with the help of other people’s translations in these threads), and it’s fun enough to want to keep reading.
the other “beginner” manga i picked up the other day i think is called “flying witch”, and the last few spreads have just been characters sitting around a table talking, and my understanding is waaay low. a couple of speech bubbles pasting back and forth into jisho and still not understanding gets my brain shutting down.
Where am I!? (Bweh I know all the words here but still feel like the translation is off)
Dad
Gack
It’s strange!!
Page 57
New house!!
…
Lets eat
very much…
Page 58
(Yikes this page)
Bwah
The milk here is tasty!!
Yotsuba, today when you go out to play, make sure to properly tell me
Yeah!
Make sure to stay in the neighborhood
Yeah!
Hmm yesterdays neighbors…
The middle child could greet people properly
Page 59
Another 〣( ºΔº )〣))
Who should I follow? Which one Which one?
Huh?
Who was the older sister of the two?
The pretty one with long hair
That’s the other one
The not pretty one?
…You’re right but saying it that way is wrong
I’m finished eating!
Alright, have fun
Page 60
I’m off to the toilet!
You don’t need to tell me
Ah?
Page 61
…Dad the lock broke…
Dad!!
It won’t open!!
Page 62
Ah!
Page 63
Al-
right!
Ah ah ah
Haa!
Now what!!
Two pages had quite a lot, but otherwise it wasn’t too bad this week
I mentioned this after finishing it in last week’s thread, but I really enjoyed chapter one, and really feel like I learned a bunch of stuff. I found it so much easier to understand the very casual speech by the end of the chapter, wheras that was difficult the first few weeks. Of course there were a couple of weeks there that were very dialogue dense so everyon struggled a little with those I’m sure.
I really enjoyed it though. よつば is a really cute, adorable kid. It’s my first ever manga, I wasn’t sure how I’d get along with the art style, having read many hundreds of Marvel comics over the years, it’s a huge difference, especially to the modern styles, but it never bothered me in the slightest.
Really fun to read though too. I think I’m going to enjoy it just for the story, as well as the learning opportunity, as we continue.
The manga has some hilarious moments and it’s pretty good overall. Some of the more text heavy spots still take me a bit to parse, but this is mostly a good spot for me. I ended up doing a quick read through (without looking up the stuff I don’t know) of the first volume and overall I get most of it. There are like 2 main spots coming up (other than this page 58 / 59 >.<) that I’ll have to parse through and then just some smaller occasional panels.
I’m using this as an immersion study source and turning these things I have to look up into grammar and SRS items to study more. Working through these spots I have to look up should help fill in some of the random grammar holes I have, lol.
Most of my interpretations this week are similar to Dathmach, with small differences mostly just being phrasing on similar ideas. I’ll just list comments and the differences.
Page 57
I didn’t know that めしあがる is apparently a pretty common polite way to tell guests “help yourself to the food”. Considering how much I’ve come across いただきます it’s odd I’ve never seen this before, but most the times I’ve seen it haven’t been at a table setting. Also, some of the things like this half asleep phrase or slang sometimes can be a surprising amount of work to figure out..
Page 58
The part about letting him know before she goes out to play I agree with in general, I just don’t have a solid translation for that part that I’m happy with. It’s lacking some punctuation / grammar that is making it not sound right to me..
The bottom right panel I think is “if you meet neighbors then greet them properly”
The last panel I’m also not liking a part of that. I didn’t realize the text on the side was actually talking and not just more background thoughts at first. After I realized that, though, I think it is something like “The middle child could greet properly. You should follow her example”
Page 59
Yotsuba’s first panel here is along the lines of “The one who was chasing me? or the strong one?” I initially interpreted this differently, but then the dad’s comment didn’t make sense.. and then when I realized he was telling her to follow an example last page it made these make more sense.
Part of the background text last page is him forgetting their names. He says “what / huh?” as he doesn’t know what happened with them and who she is talking about and then his comment in the second panel I think is something like “Hey, there were two big sisters, right?”
Most the rest I’d generally say the same as Dathmach again, but the last part I’d say he says something more like “Alright, those were good manners”
ここはどこ is literally “here is where?” but English speakers say “where am I?”, so “where am I?” it is.
たいへん is more like “serious, dreadful, terrible”.
Page 57
おあがりなさい means “eat up”, “go ahead and eat” sort of thing, basically a direct equivalent for 食べてください. Formalising prefix お plus 上がる in stem form plus the imperative ending なさい.
It’s not in Jisho in any sense, but after a spot of Googling, it seems like it’s a standard response to いただきます in certain parts of Japan, possibly Kansai - I found one thread posted by a woman from Shizuoka who was a bit weirded out by her friend from Kobe saying it all the time. Possibly it’s a variant of おめしあがりください, which is keigo.
Page 58
近所の人に会ったら If you meet with people in the neighbourhood, ちゃんとあいさつしろよ make sure you greet them properly.
あいさつ is the general theme of this chapter (and indeed it’s the title too), so it’s gonna be getting a bit of usage here.
You’re also missing four floating handwritten lines on this page, one each in the fourth and fifth panels and two in the sixth.
Page 59
The one who chased after me? Or the strong one?
いいあいさつ = that was good “aisatsu”.
Page 62
You’re just gonna skip all the words in the first panel?
OK, so I decided that before reading this week’s pages, I was going to do a ‘quick’ reading of chapter one again as a refresher, as it’s been quite a while now, 6 weeks from the start. Turned out that it wasn’t so quick. Probably took me a couple of hours with a break for food in the middle. Oh well. It was a good refresher.
I was going to add some bits I understood a little differently to @Dathmach but @Belthazar already covered them I think.
I can’t believe she forgot they moved AGAIN! . Hopefully by the end of volume 2 or 3 she’ll have it figured out!
This weeks wasn’t too bad. I needed some vocab help, I still sometimes don’t recognise words straight away that I do in fact know, just because of the casual way they are said. That’s going to take some time to sink in properly still. But overall I was able to get the gist of most of it, without understanding absolutely every word, before looking it up.
But, she’s off out alone again, without telling とーちゃん！
I went through something similar when I went back to chapter 1, but I lack the motivation to read for more than an hour at a time. My personal shortcoming with Japanese is that I simply don’t read enough or interact much with the language. I’m a very recreational Japanese learner, so I spend around 4 hours a week on it, whenever I happen to get around to it.
I’m alright with doing an hour or so of Japanese, but Wanikani has been taking me almost two hours as of late, so by the time I’m done with it, I don’t want to do anymore studying lol.
This is exactly what’s been happening to me recently I was gone for a couple days and came back to 500+ reviews total across WK and Anki, and spent the hour that I usually spend studying just going though my pile of reviews for a few days.
Anyway, finally got around to reading this part. It had a few sentences that I didn’t perfectly understand but I was able to figure everything out through a combination of context and using the vocab sheet (which has been super helpful).
I like it! I think it’s a good level for me - I can understand most of it without having to spend too much effort translating, so I don’t get discouraged, but it also has some harder parts that are good practice. It has the right balance of not being too hard but also not being too easy. I’m reading it online now using the free thing but I’m thinking I might pick up a hard copy of it sometime and just try reading through the entire thing in a few sittings, once this book club is done. I’m curious if, once I’ve read the entire thing once, I’ll be able to re-read it without using the vocab sheet.
よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! (Absolute Beginners Book Club) // Home Thread
. Hopefully by the end of volume 2 or 3 she’ll have it figured out!
I was gone for a couple days and came back to 500+ reviews total across WK and Anki, and spent the hour that I usually spend studying just going though my pile of reviews for a few days.