I really liked chapter 21, with the King penguin. I actually went and looked up some photos of King penguin chicks, and I think the artist made them out to be a bit uglier than they are in reality… Not as cute as an Emperor penguin chick for sure, but still cute in their own way.
I don’t think I have anything in particular to say about the other chapters this time.
I slacked off the past week so I’m only reading these chapters now, but I also wanted to mention that no one has made vocab sheets for 22 and 23 yet. I’ve started to fill out the one for 22 but it’s still incomplete as of now.
I’m reading the king penguin chapter right now (#21) and it’s one of my favorites in the book for sure! Anyways I have a question about it. On page 133, panel 2 where King Penguin (I think) is speaking they say:
ちょっと映画になって名前が売れたからっていい気になって
I think they’re commiserating with Emperor Penguin by saying something like “It’s a bit like someone’s sold a movie with my name on it” (referencing one of the many penguin movies, I guess) but… if that’s what they’re saying I don’t really understand? Can someone correct my interpretation or explain their sentiment in a different way?
Edit: I’m also a bit confused about the panda cookie at the end. The text says:
ひとことで言うとー不憫
and I don’t understand why it’s so long? It seems like ひとことで and 言うと are basically the same to me. What’s the difference?
I think you have it backwards. King Penguin is complaining that people mistake king penguins for emperor penguins, as demonstrated in the blog post in the first panel. Then our Penguin says something to the effect of “It can’t be helped because we’re famous.”
King Penguin then says (the line you quoted) something like “You got conceited because they made a movie with your name on it.” (I’m reading いい気 as 好い気, which can mean conceited, according to Jisho.)
Specifically, King Penguin is referring to March of the Penguins, I’m pretty sure, which was apparently called 皇帝ペンギン in Japan. It also came out not long before the manga, I think.
I parsed it like
“ひとことで” - single word, few words, etc.
“言うと” - if say
“不憫” - pitiful
So something like “It would be pitiful if he said anything”, though of course that’s a very loose translation. But I’m not extremely confident in that.
I had a sneaking suspicion that’s what was being referenced, but the verb 売れる made me doubt my intuition because I got hung up on the first definition.
Having to go without the line by line breakdowns that you (and others) provided has been difficult the last few weeks. It was nice being able to find clear disassembly of the sentences that were confusing me as a way to double-check my own work. Thank you for your work in the past threads.
It’s also made me realize I’m in desperate need of a grammar refresher after this book is done.
I think 一言で言うと should mean “in a word” or “in short”. Literally “if I say it in one word”. I believe it’s で as in “with” or “in” (probably to be understood as the copular gerund in some special use). Otherwise you’d have でも or を.
クールなシルバーウイーク in the first bubble on page 123 took way too long to figure out. Wasn’t until I was typing it out here that the sounds finally clicked. “cool silver-blue”
Oops. Bad auto-completion, as pointed out by @Kazzeon, below . シルバーブルー
On page 137 where Polar Bear and Grizzly are talking about the onset of winter, what’s the second kanji in Polar Bear’s aside in the second panel? The first kanji is 正 but I can’t make out the other.
I had to play with the brightness levels in an image editor, then finally KanjiTomo was able to read it. 正確 (せいかく) is what KanjiTomo determined. Looks right enough to me.
I was curious about 冬眠する versus 冬ごもり (bis page 137), especially since it sounds like Polarbear is using the latter to be more specific than the former.
This brought me to Wikipedia’s page on 冬眠 which mentions 冬ごもり only in a section on bears specifically (titled クマの冬眠).
I’m not certain I gained anything from it, but it does feel a littler clearer to me why Polarbear narrowed down “hibernation”, as he went from a more generic term to a more specific one.
