I don’t actually like the medical setting, I picked that manga because it was released to the public. I mean, I don’t hate it but I’m just indifferent. I’d rather read the news but I want the challenge of identifying kanji and the drawings help understand the context.
I see them botth the same; Maybe you are using a Chinese font ?
If you look at wiktionary for 直 there are picture animations for the stroke order, with Japanese and Chinese variants; which one do you see ?
命力(いのちりょく) vitality
Actually it is written 生命力 (せいめいりょく, life force): 生命 : life
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L
The senior Doctor is still talking:.
ちなみにこちらは手術の助手をつとめた白馬先生……
あちらは受け持ちの研修医でえーー……と……
斉藤です!!
L Vocabulary and Analysis
ちなみに “By the way”
こちらは This (person right here is)
手術の助手(shujutsu no joshu) surgery のassistant;
をつとめた; を"served as"た(was)
白馬先生 Hakuba Sensei(doctor) (he’s the Pre-something-or-other who I called ShiroTori–I’m not good at the politeness thing; GREAT DISCUSSION TODAY ABOUT THAT, GENTLEMEN!)
あちらは That (person over by you is)
受け持ち(ukemochi) responsible for/matter in one’s charge
研修医(kenshui) で
L Analysis
ちなみにこちらは手術の助手をつとめた白馬先生……
By the way this is Dr. Hakuba, who served as an assistant for the surgery…
あちらは受け持ちの研修医でえーー……と……
That is the medical intern that he supervises …um…
The senior Doctor can’t remember his name, so our hero yells, “I’m Saitou!!”
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He is not white-horse, but white-bird: 白鳥 (with a special reading: しらとり)
(also, while the senior doctor (I wonder if he is the one interested only in eels…) uses こちら to talk about 白鳥先生, he uses あっち (instead of あちら) for the intern (Saitou); which, according to wasabi-jpn web site, is quite rude towards the intern)
We can also see that Saitou proudly says his name, standing right, while Dr. Shiratori politely stands bowed (I find the contrast between the two last pictures striking)
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@Naphthalene Haha, it’s alright. Even my fluent friend made the same mistake when he first explained grammar to me. He only noticed a few minutes later and corrected himself. That’s the thing about typing the pronunciation instead of drawing the character. The worst part is that I didn’t notice because 系 made some sense in Mandarin (it can mean ‘university faculty’ or ‘series’, which has been extended to mean ‘type’ or ‘domain’ in some other uses). But yes, 形 is form. Another related word which I have difficulty telling it apart from (even in Mandarin) is 型, but it seems 形 refers to physical form or appearance, especially for a particular object, whereas 型 refers to a type or set of standards characterising a type. (That’s why it’s 新型コロナウイルス. Hope no one minds my bringing that up.)
@Shannon-8 I think 生命力 can be translated as ‘vitality’ in this context, though ‘life force’ is just as valid in general. I’m not sure if it’s really a Japan vs US thing. I’m not Japanese, so I can’t say my mindset is similar, but as someone growing up in Asia with a Chinese cultural background (even if I didn’t grow up in China or the surrounding East Asian territories), I’d think it really depends on what’s going through the doctor’s mind. The concept of a ‘will to live’ exists in Japanese, and is translated as 生きる意欲 or 生きる意志. I think the issue here is perhaps that Mr Kaneko is rather old (老人), so perhaps the state of his body (its ‘vitality’) seems more important to the doctor than his will to live. That or… well, he isn’t unconscious or really still battling anything debilitating, is he? He just needs to recover. Perhaps that would make the need for a ‘will to live’ seem rather out of place or insensitive, since we usually use ‘will to live’ in a context where death (or suicidal thoughts, in the case of a debilitating but not lethal condition) is an imminent possibility.
I would say,
‘whether he can recover without having a pulmonary embolism, or otherwise… he has cardiac deficiency too, after all…’
どうか is literally ‘how [question]’ or ‘some how’, which is to say ‘some manner/condition/state’. For instance, 明日は寒いかどうかわからない = I don’t know if tomorrow will be cold or something else. That’s also why どうか is sometimes used in polite requests: どうかご無事で（ください） = please be safe (literally ‘somehow [respectful particle] no-matter be’ i.e. ‘somehow, let nothing happen to you’). It’s important to note that the sentence isn’t complete after どうか: the doctor just trails off, indicating that he is unsure or would not like to pronounce himself on the patient’s fate, which is appropriate since it’s a sensitive issue.
Separately, し isn’t really something to ‘make the point’. It usually indicates that something is being used as a justification. Also, if 心不全もある meant ‘he will also have heart failure’, the doctor wouldn’t sound so unsure about the patient’s future recovery. 心=heart; 不=not; 全=complete i.e. the heart is not fully functional, which can also mean ‘cardiac insufficiency’, and not just ‘heart failure’. I think the doctor means
心不全もある ([he] also has cardiac insufficiency) し ([justification]), which gives us the translation I suggested.
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D part 2:
I’ll go back to the sentence I started but didn’t finish yesterday as we discussed other things.
analysis
今日『は』やけ『に』気合入ってじゃねーか？
As I was saying the sentence is about “today” as marked by the 『は』particle. Then comes やけに which is attributive to 気合. As stated by @Jonapedia, it means “awfully” or “extremely”.
ja nai -じゃない is the negative form of -da -だ (verb to be)
The only thing I’m missing is 入って, what role does it play in the sentence? I’m used to that verb to mean to enter, I saw it often in Japan and China as 入り口.
Is the meaning: what’s the matter Saitou (from the previous speech bubble) you’re coming in today awfully not motivated (it’s worded awkwardly but I’m trying to convey the idea here).
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Ah yes, I’m sorry, I forgot to reply to this yesterday. 入ってんじゃねー＝入っているのではない in full. R sounds tend to get swallowed up and turned into ん in informal Japanese e.g. in Tokyo, the abbreviated form of わからない is わかんない. 気合(い) is in fact ‘spirit’, and is also the name given to the shout uttered in Japanese martial arts when performing a strike. ‘Motivation’ is usually translated as やる気. The expression is 気合が入る, meaning literally ‘spirit is included’, or in other words, ‘to be spirited’. The particle が was dropped, as is often the case in informal Japanese, especially for expressions like this. So in fact, やけに, being as adverb, is applied to 入って(いる) , a verb, and the sentence would look something like this:
Literal – Today [topic/emphasis] terribly spirit be-included [nominaliser] not-be [question]
Idiomatic – Today [you’re] terribly spirited, aren’t you?
The のだ・のではない structure needs to be used to interpret this sentence. Attention is again drawn to something: the fact that Saitou is particularly motivated today. Negative forms such as じゃないか are often used in Japanese the same way question tags are used in English: for rhetorical questions, comments or requests.
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