When I began reading in japanese, I thought that manga would be the easy option (and I was happy with that because that’s what I wanted to read as fast as possible), but finally I’m realizing that it is often most difficult for me than reading a satori reader episode, a short story or a novel
Of course I don’t read difficult manga, I’m at a lower intermediate level. But even manga that should be easy are sometimes giving a hard time. And why is that ?
Well of course, there is the slang, the shortened words and the unfinished sentences.
However, the worst for me is often guessing what is the subject of some sentences. You could think that in manga, you have a lot of context because of the pictures, but it’s not always the case !
So, I’m asking for help : what are your tips for knowing what is the subject of the sentences in manga ?
Is there something I’m missing ? Does that come with experience ?
I don’t have any specific tips, but it helped me to think of the unspoken subjects as similar to pronouns in English.
For example, consider this panel.
There’s no way to know who “he” is based on this panel alone.
For an English comic, when you suddenly realize you don’t know who someone being talked about is, you’d go back a panel or three to find where the current conversation started.
That brings us here.
However, whereas English presents the subject more commonly in sentences and leaves the topic to be inferred from context, Japanese (as you may already know) is the other way around. The topic is stated more commonly, and the subject is often to be inferred from context.
Here is that latter panel in Japanese.
This one is actually easier than the English counterpart (when viewed in isolation) because this one gives the topic, which in the wider context of this scene, beyond this panel, we can infer to also be the subject. (But you still need context to know who 奴 is.)
And here is the earlier panel in Japanese.
By chance, this one clearly gives the subject (and that fills in who 奴 is when used later), but if は was used instead of が, we could still infer from context whether the は-marked noun was the subject or not.
It does get easier over time, but I think you can speed this up a little by stopping now and then to ask yourself what the topic is and what the subject is in any given sentence.
Start with simpler sentences, especially if you find one with both は and が.
Then trace that topic and subject through the subsequent dialogue and panels and watch for when the topic and subject each change (or do not change).
@ChristopherFritz 's answer is great; I will just add one minor thing, which is that occasionally the Japanese does give you clues about who’s doing what that some learners might miss. Specifically, with verbs of giving and receiving (くれる あげる もらう and friends), the ingroup/outgroup dynamics narrow down who could be on which end of the giving to a point where subjects and agents can often be dropped. (For example in 本を買ってくれた the person buying the book cannot be the speaker.) If you’re just thinking about these verbs as “give” and “receive” you’ll occasionally find yourself thinking a sentence is more ambiguous than it really is.
Thank you for your very detailed and illustrated answer
It’s true that I need to pay more attention to these particles. I tend to focus on others with all meanings I’m not totally familiar with, but these ones are my allies to investigate on the subject of the sentence. Back to the basics !
Yes, of course ! I’ve never thought of that… And these verbs are everywhere in manga !
Thank you ^^
I’ll give another go at my manga this afternoon proceeding carefully and applying your advices ! hopes up
So many contractions, I think that was the hardest thing to overcome for me in manga.
Like a French learner would be taught that I don’t know is Je ne sais pas, but then they read a manga and it’s “chaipa” everywhere, what is that o_O
So accurate !
But it’s something I like in manga, that it tries to convey the feeling of a real conversation.
When you hear french people talking, you hear “chaipas” among other contractions very often^^
However, I lacked a reference for getting all contractions when reading and the topic you linked is a treasure ! Thank you so much for sharing !
