It is recommended to read “To the Reader” on page viii to understand the layout of the main entries. (The 間に entry (page 63) has all elements that can exist in an entry if you want to look over an entry while reading the explanation for all the parts.)
Links are to the official starting of each week. Previous weeks and future weeks can still be discussed before and after these points as long as they are covered by the thread’s letters.
Discussion Guidelines
Spoiler Courtesy
In general, this doesn’t have a problem with spoilers, however there are two instances where spoilers are a good idea.
When you share sentences from what you are consuming, any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
If you decide to translate a sentence you are sharing, please hide that behind a spoiler so people have a chance to take in the sentence without a translation. Or if you are helping someone and use translation as a part of that help, then hiding it behind a spoiler tag would be good too.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention entry (and the page number), and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
Resources
For additional explanations, here are some options:
Whelp, I hope this works well for our letter threads. The poll at the end about what you’ve read was the idea of @NicoleIsEnough and I hope I did it justice. ^^
Let me know if I made any mistakes!
This week reading: あげる1 to あとで (that would be all A entries!).
Honestly not entirely sure why I left that part of the template in there (The “If you’ve already read this book […]” part). Seem like overkill. But I guess it now punished me* for slightly changing the wording of the participation poll. xD
*at least I think I changed the poll and I’m too tired to feel like digging through the template in the tips thread. xD And it turned out it was the same for all the threads, so bye bye line I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep anyway. xD
Edit: If anyone is curious I went looking and the template had the error, so I went ahead and updated the template, so this inconsistency will not keep propagating! xD
Due to not wanting to lug a Japanese dictionary around the Middle East, I’m technically behind, but plan to just start reading the main entires then catch up with the initial bit.
I forgot to add the recommendation to read “To the Reader” (page viii) to the reading section, but it is there now! The 間に entry (page 63), in this week, have all parts described in the main entries part of “To the Reader”, in case you want to see them all in action as you read their explanation.
あげる1: I think the in-group thing should probably have had its own entry in the Characteristics part since I remember struggling mightily with understanding this concept for Japanese. I think it might have been mentioned but flipping through the relevant sections there I didn’t see any explanation of the concept. I could have missed it, but I don’t remember reading it either.
About やる though, is the usage the same still? I seem to remember reading it was rude to use for あげる but I also feel like I’ve seen that in manga. Not saying manga is a good way to figure out how to express yourself, but I was thinking of manga that is more natural Japanese and not exaggerated. But it could be that all the やる I’ve seen is the “to do” kind (or one of the many other definitions…), not the “to give” kind. (Regrettably I do not have photographic memory or anything near that part of the scale. Just enough memory to get myself in trouble. xD)
I always think of やる as like giving “down” to someone/something, like you would use it if you were talking about giving something to a pet or an animal (or a person you don’t particularly respect, I guess lmao, in that case it would be rude but I don’t think it’s particularly rude if used toward an animal?) I could see it being a fairly frequent situation in manga where the person is looking down on the other person and/or full of themselves and/or speaking with masculine bravado, so it might be more commonly used by/toward people in manga for effect? But you also mentioned that it was more natural-language manga you were thinking of, which makes me inclined to think it may have been used in the “to do” sense (or another sense) - that does seem like a fairly common usage from my similarly faulty memory I feel like I have seen やる used toward animals in the same sense as あげる, like giving food to the animals (and you know how many animal manga I read LMAO). Idk how common it is to use やる like あげる toward close friends or little siblings like the dictionary mentioned, I don’t recall seeing it used in that particular sense? (but again, faulty memory lol, also I may just not be reading the right manga for that to come up). In my mind, that usage still falls on the “rude” spectrum but in the same way that friends making fun of each other falls on the “rude” spectrum lol, it is still technically rude but no one really minds xD
Idk if this is at all useful, it feels a bit like the blind leading the blind xD Someone with more knowledge please feel free to come along and correct me
I added that to the resource section and dang! Finally a scale to help me visualize where more people fall. So often it is like family = in group; strangers = out group. And I’m like: if the people I know in my life fell only in those two groups this would be a useful definition, but… So I liked that it actually took the time to put some more people on there.
@windupbird I remember early in my Japanese career learning やる was rude or not appropriate for “to give” but at that time, no one taught me about the other definitions (that I can remember). So when I started seeing やる all over the place I first assumed everyone using it was just a bit rough or masculine bravado or rude, and then I realized it was used far too much for that to be true considering the things I was reading, so I abandoned the idea of やる = rude, so I don’t know if I’ve actually seen it in the あげる since at all, and if I had, I probably didn’t bat my eye at it because I’d more or less completely forgotten that it might be rude.
Nihongo Switch used to explained how to properly use やる, but now she has deleted the website and podcast. Not sure if there is still the audio remaining anywhere.
あげる2: Not much new here (very similar to あげる1), but I did notice something. The description says あげる can only be used with people not in the in-group but has about equal status to the giver. Under notes, it mentions that the humble polite form is さしあげる and then have a sentence were a student gives to their teacher aka someone not of equal status, and that would not have been a mind bender if I hadn’t missed the humble part of humble polite. *le sigh* on myself. >_<
(I only mention it here because it was only as I was writing it up I noticed “humble” and maybe someone else misses/missed that too. We’ll get through this, buddy! Somehow…)
Added later:
I found an example for あげる2 while reading today! Or more specifically verb-てやる.
In chapter 1 (page 22) of ふらいんぐうぃっち is this sentence: 「[…]色々案内してやれよ」
Said from older brother to little sister (about helping 真琴 (Makoto)). I don’t know that it proves anything about the use of やる, but it tells me I might have seen やる as “to give” at other times (although it might not be the most common usage of やる I see).
can anybody explain to me why this sentence is incorrect and show the correct version of it:
僕は春子さんになぐさめてあげた
I’ve re-read this about 100 times and I can’t tell if my reading comprehension is just that bad or I’m misinterpreting something.
the book just says: ”As in KS (B), if the person receiving the benefit is the direct object of the sentence, the indirect object is omitted. Therefore, (3a) and (3b) are ungrammatical.” but it doesn’t give the correct version.
don’t get the chance to check the thread often so thanks in advance
The KS in “As in KS (B)” is Key Sentence. So it is referring to key sentence B on the previous page. KS B is:
僕は春子さんをなぐさめてあげた。
So the wrongness in “僕は春子さんになぐさめてあげた” is that it is marking 春子さん with に and not with を. Why this is incorrect, I can only guess/infer from the text, so I’d rather let someone who actually knows explains that.
ohh I see. good thing you told me about those abbreviations and markings, I was just kinda praying I wouldn’t need to know what they mean because my brain deletes that info 10 seconds after reading it. ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ
and yeah the に being the mistake makes it a lot more clearer, so thanks!
I dunno if there’s a “why” to it, but the book is saying that in this kind of sentence there are two ‘slots’ that can be filled in with a person: 僕はXにYをなぐさめてあげた
Y comes from the simple underlying sentence 僕はYをなぐさめてた (because なぐさめる is a transitive verb whose direct object is the person being comforted)
X comes from the ageru auxiliary verb (僕はXになにかをしてあげた) “I did something for somebody”
The grammar rule the book is describing is “if X and Y are the same person, then you must omit Xに” – i.e. you can’t choose to omit Yを instead, and you can’t leave them both in the sentence. (The repetition involved in 春子さんに春子さんを probably felt pretty unnatural to you anyway.) The book doesn’t mention it, but if the context makes the meaning clear you can omit both.
Spoilers for a later week, this rule also applies to くれる
I’ve been considering reading it with あげる, or in general reading the sections that are mentioned in the week’s assignment as related. Wondering if anybody is doing that?
I will probably do it the other way, it’s likely that the grammar point will be referenced at the other one, so if it’s a grammar point we already covered I will re-read it.
For me, it will probably depend on how confident I feel about the grammar point. The shakier I am, the more likely I am to go read any other entries to cement things further.
In this case, I bonked my head against the wall many times a few years ago to understand あげる/くれる/もらう, so not this time, but I know it’ll happen in the future. ^^
Home Thread
But you also mentioned that it was more natural-language manga you were thinking of, which makes me inclined to think it may have been used in the “to do” sense (or another sense) - that does seem like a fairly common usage from my similarly faulty memory 
I feel like I have seen やる used toward animals in the same sense as あげる, like giving food to the animals (and you know how many animal manga I read LMAO). Idk how common it is to use やる like あげる toward close friends or little siblings like the dictionary mentioned, I don’t recall seeing it used in that particular sense? (but again, faulty memory lol, also I may just not be reading the right manga for that to come up). In my mind, that usage still falls on the “rude” spectrum but in the same way that friends making fun of each other falls on the “rude” spectrum lol, it is still technically rude but no one really minds xD