Doggy Detectives! Week 7 Discussion 🐶

Pages 42 - 49

Story 1: 消えたデミキン 事件

Start Date: 18th May
Last Week: Solution Part 1
Next Week: Story 2

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Vocabulary List

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reaction to the resolution which is probably a spoiler of sorts

:scream:

further details

:scream:

:scream:

:scream:

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Right let’s see if I can contribute a bit more this week… :smile:

Page 42

それに、訓練された犬は、かってにひとの家に、入ったりしません。

それに - besides
訓練された犬は - a dog who has been trained
かってに - of it’s own accord
ひとの家に - to people’s houses
入ったりしません - doesn’'t do things like entering

Besides, a dog who has been trained doesn’t do things like entering a person’s house of it’s own accord.

I’m familiar with the A〜たり B〜たりする structure for meaning “doing things like A and B”. I haven’t seen it often as a single たり word in a sentence, although it has come up once or twice in the なぜ book. I’m assuming it still means the same thing here - “doing things like…”

I’m assuming ひと is 人 here, I don’t know if there is a reason they’ve not used the kanji when they used it in the next sentence.

Page 42

主人に命令されないかぎりね。

主人に - from it’s master
命令されない - not being ordered
かぎり - unless
ね - sentence ender

Jisho says that かぎり means “unless…” used after a negative verb. I’m assuming this is one of those negative structures that is a bit back to front from English - i.e. it means:

Unless it is being ordered by it’s master.

Page 43

ねらってできることじゃないから、ぐうぜんにきまっています。

ねらってできる - being good at aiming
こと - thing
じゃない - not being
から - because
ぐうぜん - accident
にきまっています - …must be the case

I think the できる is the “not being good” meaning, rather than “not being able” meaning. So:

Because he’s not good at aiming, it must be an accident.

I remember being confused by the にきまっている form when it was used in a previous book, as I was looking at the words separately and not realising it was a set grammar point. Here is a grammar link I found.

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Page 44 - So, earlier in the chapter I looked up how to say dachshund, as I realised from the katakana I’ve been saying it wrong all my life! (I still can’t spell it though…)

I also learned that the word comes from the German “badger” and “dog” as they were originally bred for going down badger holes and rabbit holes for hunting. This origin of the dachshund actually comes up on page 44. This is this video although you don’t need to watch it now I’ve told you what it says! (Unless you want to hear how it’s said with a German accent…)

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I have an acquaintance who has had several Keeshonds, and got her nose out of joint when I mentioned it was keis/hund, not keesh/und

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Yes, I’d almost say I see it used on its own more. It gives the same sense of an incomplete list; here we’re particularly interested in whether or not they will run into people’s houses, but there’s an implication that that’s not the only thing a well-trained dog will refrain from doing without explicit instruction. It really is the same kind of flavour as English - “they don’t do things like [that]!”

Yes, I assumed the same. I’m trying to come up with an English equivalent, but it really is quite opposite…

Yeah, the easiest kinds of grammar points to miss are where they look like standard words that you ought to “de-conjugate” and look up normally. This one’s tricksy.

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But, but… hundes! My favourite word I learnt visiting Austria was hunde-parkplatz :grin: (I recommend an image search)

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How delightful! :parking: :dog:

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I hope you don’t mind me carrying on with some observations/questions:

Page 45

そして、ゴルフボールをくわえようとしたやさき、床の上に、 おいしそうなものをみつけたんです。

そして - and so
ゴルフボールを - golf ball + object marker
くわえようとした - was about to hold in the mouth (くわえる “to hold in the mouth” in volitional form + とした)
やさき - just when
床の上に - on the floor
おいしそうなものをみつけたんです - saw a tasty thing

And so, just as it was about to hold the golf ball in it’s mouth, it saw something tasty on the floor.

Volitional form + とする (past とした) - meaning “about to do/about to happen” - Maggie Sensei link (quite far down, it’s point number 8)

Page 45 - end of last sentence

というわけです

We just had this in the なぜ book and I struggled to look it up.

From Hi Native:というわけです:

=ということです。

=このような状況です。

I.e. “this is how it is”.

EDIT - page numbers corrected

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Ah, page 46, the page of horror.

Yes, I vaguely remember @Belthazar giving a good explanation of わけ? - that it basically works as a generic noun in a similar way to こと but is for less concrete things and more used for reasons / explanations…??

(it’s worth noting that というわけ does have its own entry in Jisho)

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Page 48
そのあと、おれのいったとおり…
いった could be 行った or 言った
Is とおり from 通る?
Something like “after that, my went/said passing…”
I’m guessing it means “after that, having left…” or “after that, having spoken…”

Page 49
わるいことしたらだめよ。
Something like, “if you’ve done a bad thing, then that’s bad!” ??

おれの気持ちをちっともわかってくれてない
て-form plus くれる is “to do something for me”
So is this - “You don’t understand my feelings at all.” ??

Right, now 34 pages of ゆるキャン△ to read! (EDIT - thankfully it’s actually only 24 pages not 34 in this week’s chapter! As my Japanese gets better my maths is getting worse…)

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Yes to the second - it’s 通り, and the 6th meaning listed there. It’s quite a common way to use it.

In this case it’s 言った通り - “just as I said” - “after that, just as I’d said / in line with what I said, Dachshund footprints were found in Kaneyama’s garden”.

I found this whole bit a tad weird too - I think your translations look good though. Basically, I believe Hanae is a bit suspicious either of where he got the money from, or of what his motivation is in spending lots of money in her shop (in the same way as the stereotype of being suspicious of your husband if he buys you flowers :grin:). Not sure which is right here, although the comment about not understanding feelings makes me lean toward the latter, cos it seems to be more about motivation?

:open_mouth: good luck!

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Until seeing the vocab list I was guessing this was Not without being ordered (to) by the master, thereby incorporating the negative aspect, but maybe that’s just me trying to force English grammar onto another language.

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I don’t know, I think it can be useful to find equivalents if they help you to remember how it works, even if they sometimes lose a little of the nuance. 限り more literally means “limit; degree; extent;”, so the usage must come from that in some way…

Perhaps meaning 4 is more fitting here: “as long as the master doesn’t order…”.

But “unless + positive” sounds a bit more natural in English for this sentence, I think, and I’m not sure that’s quite the right usage of meaning 4, based on the alternative phrasings (as far as, as much as, to the limits of).

One can definitely end up tied in knots though!

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Look at that it does! And it took me a while to find it elsewhere!

I’ve learned this tip with Jisho before but obviously forgotten. If you’ve spotted something that you think might be a set expression, and it’s not in Jisho, trying typing it again without the last word.

In this case Jisho listed it as というわけだ not というわけです, so nothing turned up on my search. But if you put in a shorter phrase (like という or というわけ) it will find longer phrases that start with those words.

We had something similar in なぜ recently where the phrase in the book was だけでよい. Jisho listed the very similar だけでいい, but turned up nothing for だけでよい. But searching for だけで brought up the useful entry.

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Oooh yes. Your jisho-fu definitely increases a lot with practice.

Another good tip is that you can use * as a filler. So for example there are lots of verb phrases where the dictionary entry might use the が particle, but the text uses the の particle - so if you’re ever looking up a phrase that includes particles, it can help to replace them all with stars instead.

Or you can include a * at the beginning to pick up on any longer phrases or compound verbs you might not be aware of. For example.

As a somewhat tangential aside, I think it’s useful as a beginner to know that there are a few verbs which get mashed together with others all the time. The ones that immediately come to mind are 付く (link above), まわる - usually “to do X around”, e.g. to walk around, to fly around, to search about - and こむ - usually “to do into” or “to do deeply”, e.g. to jump into, to think deeply, to swallow down.

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Hey everyone,

I feel so bad for not contributing much to this book club :pensive:
Definitely hope to be more active for the next story. To be honest - I just spent waaaaay to much time with Animal Crossing these past few weeks (with the current circumstances being as frustrating as they are, it was very comforting), but now I’m slowly getting back to a more “normal” playtime per day AND I feel like reading more Japanese again.

I did read the whole first story and quite enjoyed doing so. I haven’t finished the Kitty ones (yet!), but I think this story was way more easy to read and understand. To those of you who read the Kitty Detective books - do you feel the same?

And I want to take this opportunity to thank @Radish8 for organizing this book club and of course everybody who asked and answered questions! This is really helpful, even when reading through the forum posts after reading the book. :wink:

I’m looking forward to the next story and hope you bear with me and my inconsistency :see_no_evil:

Great! I didn’t know something like this existed. :dog: :two_hearts:

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I’m definitely finding it easier but I’d put it down to what I learned from reading those books. I thought the language overall seemed a similar level. There were some tricky deduction passages in the kitty books.

I love your confession about Animal Crossing!

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There’s no need to apologise! Life happens :slightly_smiling_face: and there are no rules about how much you must comment or anything like that :wink:

It was very enjoyable watching you go through the threads via likes :grin: I hope you have more time to be able to read story two along with us, but don’t stress over it.

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This is a great tip, thank you! Just saw 芝生 written in an odd font (in another book) and couldn’t recognise the first character. Typed *生 into Jisho and had it in seconds!

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