Doggy Detectives! Week 14 Discussion 🐶

Japanese Language Reading
#1

Pages 88 - 94

Story 2: バラと天ぷら 事件

Start Date: 13th July
Last Week: Solution Part 2
Next Week: Solution Part 4

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Doggy Detectives! Week 15 Discussion :dog:
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#2

What an action-packed chase! My favorite part of this case so far!

On to some questions:

Page 88
どけ is the imperative of どく= to step aside?

Page 89
おいてあったバイク
Is the meaning of おいて＝おく＝to leave behind?
So…“the bike (he) had left behind”

Page 93
おれをのせるくらい、なんでもないらしい。
What is くらい doing here?

Page 94
逃げようとはしなかった
So for ようとしなかった＝ようとしない I found the following (on bunpro): not willing to; not make an effort to; to not attempt to/try to
But in the book there’s an extra は? Does that have any special meaning?

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#3

That’s what I thought for both of those.

I think it may be this grammar point: https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/234
If so, I interpret this sentence to essentially mean: So, the extent to which he gave me a ride seems to be of no concern. (because of the history of St Bernard dogs in the swiss mountains)
I’m not a hundred percent sure on this translation, but this is my best guess :upside_down_face:

I wasn’t sure of this either. A look in a J-J dictionary for とは gives: https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/とは/

With the definition: 「と」の働きを強めた表現。
My translation of the definition: “An expression which strengthens the function of と.”

What exactly the effect of this in this context is, I’m not entirely sure :man_shrugging:

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#4

I think this is more simply just “a bike that had been put there”. Japanese often seems to get quite elaborate about introducing A Thing That Is There.

I think we’d need a lot more context to assume it had been “left behind”.

I can’t see the BunPro grammar point slither has linked, but they’re right in their interpretation, I think: “as far as giving me a ride goes, it seems trivial”.

I THINK think that this effectively takes the phrase from:

“no longer made any effort to escape” to something more like:

“no longer even thought of trying to escape”

It’s really just for added emphasis. As for thinking of escape? Not a chance. - rather than just a simple statement of fact.

This was a pretty great section! Alps is such a good boy :star_struck:

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#5

He is best boy :star_struck: the colour pages are also lovely

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#6

And on page 90, how he looks at Spitz (which is also described in the text)! “Come on, use me! I’d love you to ride on me!”, I can imagine Alps wanting to express something like that. I can also imagine his excited face with his tongue stuck out, sadly he doesn’t face the reader in that picture so we can’t see. But he looks so happy on page 93. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

To be honest, I already like Alps more than Bobo :speak_no_evil: :see_no_evil: :hear_no_evil:

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#7

No totally, so far Alps is definitely best boy :joy: :purple_heart:

I really love the depiction of 花屋さん in particular getting splatted with paint - her expression!

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#8

I totally agree although it would have been made even better if stingy Fukuoka got covered in a bit more paint. Spitz must have quick reflexes to have avoided the paint altogether though :joy:

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#9

Thanks for asking such great questions Frayderike!

The other sentence I had to go back to was:
首輪にしっかりつかまっていないとふりおとされそうだ

Summary

首輪に - to the collar
しっかり - tightly
つかまっていないと - if not holding on
ふりおとされそうだ - it seems I would be thrown off

If I don’t hold tightly onto the collar, it feels like I would be thrown off.

Great action packed few pages. Forced me not to get too bogged down in the details first time through, as I wanted to know what happened next. I should probably read like that more often!

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#10

Yes! Do you know, this is actually the thing that I really love about the 銭天堂 books; reading those was really the first time I ever experienced that sense of rushing through the pages even though I wasn’t getting everything 100%, because I was just so keen to find out what happened next.

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#11

I basically rush-read everything like this for now – which is also why I miss details and weird grammar bits, just skipping over them to see what happens!

So I’m glad others in the club read more intensively than me, I learn a lot from questions like @frayderike’s :grin:

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#12

I had to binge read last week’s part to catch up and ended up reading this week’s pages as well! The questions/answers really help and I learn so much from them, I wanted to thank you all for them! This week’s pages have been superfun to read :smile:

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