This is my first Japanese book. Its slow and I get about half of it, but it is very enjoyable. Thanks for all the help so far.
I do find it hard to work out who is doing things to whom. For example
page 56 The sentence beginning おれ.
From looking things up I think it means Spritz is biting (Edward ?) with all his strength, but it seems unlikely. Is there a way to know the subject of the sentence?
Hi Linda ! I noticed that you’re level 6, just curious about how you’re feeling with your reading skills so far, I’d like to buy some jp beginner books in the near future (:
Well I am looking up practically everything, and having to guess a lot. Jisho often has several meanings for every word and of course it is hard to tell where the words start and end. But it is great having other people asking questions and giving answers as you are reading along. I wouldn’t have attempted it without the stimulus and support of the group. I just do one page per day- and some of them are really short. For me the satisfaction of reading something real outweighs the pain of doing it. And it is definitely a little bit less baffling now that I have done a few pages. At the absolute beginner level the books have very few kanji- and they have hiragana above them. So your reading ability will depend on your wider knowledge of Japanese vocabulary and grammar, rather than kanji.
Are you aware that most of the vocab has been sorted for us in the Google Doc at the top of this thread - it will save you a lot of time and mental effort
As someone who just hit level 32, I can say that I JUST learned the kanji in order to read the title わんわん探偵団。
Joking aside, I count the book clubs as almost completely independent to WK level. Knowing more kanji/vocab does make things a bit easier to go faster (less looking things up), but won’t help with comprehension other than knowing the meaning of the parts.
The book club really helped me value the importance of learning grammar and gives the motivation to learn it. Definitely don’t get discouraged, and you’ll be sure to start picking up speed as we go.
Japanese sentences are often ‘subjectless’ (there is of course a subject, but it is not explicitly stated), so it may be more helpful to look for clues to find the object, and in this sentence it is marked by に.
おれ - I
も - also/too
思いきり - with all one’s strength
かみついてやった - bit
The topic is おれ, but the particle は has been replaced by も. This changes the sentence from “I bit with all my strength” to “I also bit with all my strength”
The sentence doesn’t explicitly state what he bit, this is implied from the context (and the picture), as well as the も (Spitz is also doing the same thing, i.e. the dog bit him and now he’s biting the dog).
I also struggled with the last sentence on page 61:
犬とのつきあいは、なんでもやさしくすればいいというものではないのだ
犬とのつきあいは - as for associating with your dog
なんでもやさしくすればいいというもの - to say, its good to be nice with everything
ではないのだ -explaining previous quote isn’t true
overall take: To have a good relationship with your dog, its not correct to just be nice all the time.
Thanks alot for your take on this. For the first quote, you did a great job of breaking it down to be understood. I think i was overwhelmed by the number of もs in a sentence and my brain turned off.
For the 2nd quote, I think either way to break it up is fine depending on how your brain works. We got to similar results (although your translation is definitely a bit more natural).
The one area where our translations differ is:
My translation was more “You shouldn’t be only nice for everything.” , implying that you shouldn’t spoil the dog.
Your translation “its not a however nice you are is fine” is more saying that being nice isn’t the topic at hand and implying you can be nice and still do other things.
Based on the context, the first translation is resounding alot more with me. since we know Edward is spoiled and Spits just bit him in anger earlier on so he probably isn’t implying that you can train him while still being nice.
It’s funny to see your take on my literal English translation, cause I took the same meaning from the original Japanese as you did, but somehow when I put it in English it gave off a different interpretation to you.
The way I interpreted the Japanese is: it’s not a case of ‘however nice you are is fine’ ➝ rather, there is a limit to how nice you should be ➝ don’t spoil the dog.
It’s a lifesaver when you just start reading.