We’re reading the whole of the Story Two Solution this week!
Upcoming Schedule
Week
Start Date
Part
Page Numbers
Week 8
December 16th
Story 2 Solution
84 - 89
-
December 23rd
Break
-
Week 9
December 30th
Story 3 Case
92 - 99
Vocabulary List
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For anyone reading the page on Capone’s recommendations, this chapter they’re both for Japanese fairytales, rather than western ones. Wikipedia gives decent overviews of the two:
Does anyone know why でる is used in “つくえの上にフォークがでているでしょ。”? Is there a special meaning other than the ones mentioned on jisho? They all don’t really seem to fit the context that well… or am I missing something?
There wasn’t a fork on the table when Hanae and her friend left the kitchen to go into the garden. When they returned to the kitchen, there is a fork on the table. I’m going with Jisho’s definition 5: “to appear”. “It couldn’t have been Capone. After all, a fork appeared on the table, right?”
Comparing the notes with what I recall from reading these pages earlier this weekend, here are a few differences:
For だって here, rather than “too; as well; also”, I believe the conjunction “after all; because” is what fits in here, as Hanae is stating the reason why Capone cannot be the guilty party.
For つまみぐい, since there is a fork, I’m learning toward the definition “snitching food; snatched food; secret eating; food snatched and eaten without the meal starting”.
Final image, for なくなって, there is also a meaning “to be consumed”. I’d have to go back and check the sentence for context, but I remember this being the meaning I got out of it. Never mind on this one. I forgot the context, so having this as “missing” is correct.
I’ve never seen しながら as “quality” before (but there’s a lot I have yet to see!) I read this as the continuative い form of する, which is し, followed by ながら, meaning “while”, and used to state multiple actions happening concurrently.
I hadn’t seen that definition - that makes much more sense and you’ve saved me writing a post about it!
Thanks for the other corrections as well - I seem to have a talent for poor parsing and latching on to obscure translations when something simpler makes so much more sense!
Ah, that’s right. In this case, it was certainly not consumed! (Unless Capone was really hungry.) In this case, “to be missing” (as @Rowena put) is accurate.
Agreed, though I have found that it sinks in better doing it by myself first, and then I have all these lovely people to ask questions of afterwards. Also, I hate feeling totally unprepared for the discussions as I did with other book attempts.
I just found this… kind of odd? I feel like there should be a particle or something associated with まま. Then again, まま is just one of those words I hate… It’s used again on page 88 in just the same way, with seemingly no connection to the next bit…
Not sure what I’m asking, just expressing my dissatisfaction with the word まま
Also… how did Hanae know that the boy was hiding in the cupboard? She was very confident of that, but it seems equally likely to me that he would have just rushed out of the room altogether after breaking the plate.
Quite. I’m away this week, so I don’t have my book on me, but I made a point of reading this passage before I left, and while the outcome matches my prediction, I don’t quite get some of the… I guess the characters’ motivations.
あなた, どうして…わかった = how did you know / how did you realize …
の = asking for explanation
I always struggle with のほう … I just encountered …のはXのほうだ meaning “it is X who …” yesterday (page 84) but I’m wondering… what is のほう doing on its own…? Is this basically the same as のはXのほう just instead of の there’s already a specific noun “犯人” (so we don’t need の)?
So… 犯人はおにいちゃんのほう = it is the older brother who is the criminal? But there’s no だ (same on page 84) … instead there’s って
What exactly is the purpose of って here? Is it = は?
I might be wrong here (I can’t access the Bunpro point), but is the first の in your construction not a slightly generic noun placeholder? It looks like it would be acting to nominalise a verb, but instead we have (as you suggest) the ‘actual’ noun 犯人.
って can act as an informal topic marker - I think it usually carries a nuance of the speaker having some kind of judgement / evaluation of the situation, which fits exactly here - she is saying that Hanae had determined that the older brother was the culprit.
I heard のほう a lot in Japan (without those extra bits as on Bunpro) - in this form it serves to emphasise one of two or more choices (as one could perhaps guess from the use of ほう・方). Here, the unspoken choice is between the two children (now that Hanae’s narrowed down that it was a child that did it). So, much more loosely translated, something like, “How did you know to direct your suspicions towards the older brother?”
The phrase starts with どうして so cannot end with the だ assertion declarative marker.
Even more on のほう - I used it mostly when making group arrangements; there would be a discussion of time/date/location for doing something, and if it suited me I would chime in with 私の方がいい。- “As for me (from among several people), that’s good.”
