三ツ星カラーズ — Week 4 Discussion (ABBC)

A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners; page 512, section on ば

In casual spoken language, sometimes the combination of “consonant + eba” at the end of a word changes to “consonant + ya” (gives examples), and the combination A-ければ may change to A-きゃ

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Told you it was good for reference :grin:
Of course silly me never thought to check it… It’s not consonant+ya in this case, but I suppose it still works the same.

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There’s 8 pages on different ば uses, so I’m happy to go with a rough idea that it involves buying bananas!

edit: tofugu has a good article including that if the sentence includes だろう then it’s expressing doubt

So I feel the meaning is it’ll be okay if I buy some… (will you go and leave me alone)

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-ばいい can usually be translated as “should” (literally “it would be good if…”. So in this case, “I guess I should buy”

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I have a few small questions that I don’t think have been answered yet.

  1. Page 23, panel 5: 私たちが食べてる分も買うといい. I translated this to We are eating and buying a part but I don’t think that’s right.
  2. Page 26, panel 1: The old lady comes in and says ちょっと道を尋ねたいのだけども. I translated this to But I want to ask about this road. Why would the old lady say that?
  3. Page 26, panel 2: The old lady continues to say いいですよどちらまで. This one I think is Which way is good until a place

Also, I’m curious if I’m understanding exactly what’s going on in pages 26-27: When the old lady shows up Kotoha decides to play a prank by kneeling and curling up and lying to say she was kicked, then Sacchan says her eyes were gouged out and finally Yui says her butt was broken (what? implying Saitou had kicked her butt earlier?!). Saitou calls the girls liars but then the old woman believes the girls and decides to curse Saitou. In order to make them go away Saitou decides to pay for the last bananas.

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Yeah I think you got the storyline! (well the same interpretation as me at least)

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I have “we should eat a portion as well as sell [the bananas]
I have " excuse me, I would like to ask the way"
I think that is saito the cop replying “that’s ok. where to?

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Breakdown

私たちが食べてる = 私たちが食べている= We are eating.
What our we eating? 分. The whole above phrase modifies 分
私たちが食べてる分= The part that we’re eating
買うといい - This と here is the conditional と. If you buy it will be good, or, in more natural language, you should buy.
Putting everything together: You should also buy the part we’re eating.
It’s a miracle the おやじ likes them, if you ask me.

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Although I’m not the most knowledgable here, I will put my answer below:

Page 23, panel 5: 私たちが食べてる分も買うといい. I translated this to We are eating and buying a part but I don’t think that’s right.

私たちが食べてる分 refers to the part that we ate. So basically she is asking him to also (も) buy the bananas they ate.

Page 26, panel 1: The old lady comes in and says ちょっと道を尋ねたいのだけども. I translated this to But I want to ask about this road. Why would the old lady say that?

That is a tricky one and I struggled with this as well! Apparently (as I learned in another book club) だけど can be used to introduce a new topic (like は). And だけども is a more polite version of だけど, so the old lady is polite. She is saying: I want to ask about the way.

Page 26, panel 2: The old lady continues to say いいですよどちらまで. This one I think is Which way is good until a place

I thought that this was Saitou speaking and he asks the lady: It’s fine! Where do you want to go? (or just: where to?)

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Ah that really adds to the humour, asking him to buy what they eat too, much more in character than my translation of them tryign to be extra helpful!

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I believe it still means “but” yet the second part of the sentence is missing. Something along the lines I want to ask directions, but… [I don’t want to distract you from the job]. Very japanese if you ask me.

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comment

Dear god. I thought she was referring to themselves, so おやじ mumbled something indiscernible laughing at her joke. They are truly something.

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Very well possible! Thanks for th clarification!

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分 also means “share” (as in “share of the profits” or “share of the bunch of bananas”). “You should buy our share (that we’re eating).”

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For first-time readers going through one to two pages per day, the two weeks are a lot closer together.

I highly recommend this for anyone who will benefit from it. Seeing what happens in later pages can make it easier to understand earlier pages.

I’m actually not putting consideration into that one, so there’s no harm in voting for it =D

I’ve been using the polls to track participation and drop-off, and check which percentage of first-time readers prefer two weeks per chapter for now. I think there may be a good point to definitely switch to one chapter per week, and get something solidified scheduled-wise on when the next club starts. But for the moment, it looks like it’ll be at least one more split chapter.

This will make it all that much easier for you two to answer questions (should you decide to do so) because you’ll have resolved any initial ambiguities that may have made you uncertain how to answer some questions =D

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Page 28, final panel: I’ll use a spoiler for my question since it involves the very end.
I just wanted to make sure I fully understood this. At first I thought the mother was concerned that the kids had troubled Saitou selling him the bananas… creatively. But then I read it again and now I think she is worried about them causing him future trouble with the costumes.

Gramatically I was thinking this was a form of 倒しに行く. I think she means “Once again (they’ll) go to trouble Saitou again.” But then what is こーっ?

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It’s the girls saying that. The mother says, or rather thinks to herself: 気持ちわるっ.

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That makes more sense. Thanks.

You are correct about the line ending in a form of いく. In this case, it’s the volitional いこう, so rather than “to go”, it’s “let’s go”. The enlongated vowel sound is often changed from う to ー in this comic, as a matter of style.

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That makes so much more sense now that I realize it wasn’t the mother talking, thanks.

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