May 3rd Daily Reading ブラックジャックによろしく Manga

[Jonapedia]

OK, since it looks like today has been a slow day (we started out by discussing format issues, after all), I’ll try tackling the panels which I think most of us will avoid. They’re likely to take a while to analyse after all. They stumped me for a bit earlier, and there are some things I’m honestly still not sure about, so I might need to do some searching or ask a friend, but this will be a good way for me to record my interpretation anyhow. Before that though…

@Zizka

As for editing the first message, they were tons of suggestions so voting for each one would impracticable at this point in time. We could edit as we go along and eventually we’ll find our feet and have a system which works.

If 50 replies isn’t right, comment about it and we’ll increase the ceiling or lower it.

@Zizka

50 replies sounds fine to me. I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure how the 1st post formatting works, but I suppose we'll figure it out as we go along.

It would really be best if the first post were editable for everyone, because a longer thread is probably gonna mean needing to change the top post from time to time. Unless someone has another idea? What I was thinking: perhaps we can try to post 3 screenshots per thread by default (inside triangles, if possible), because that should get us to 50 messages. By the way, you might want to read @Shannon-8’s thoughts on formatting on the May 2nd thread. In essence, she’s saying that we might want to try collapsing as many things as possible so scrolling just turns into a summary-skimming experience.

------End of formatting thoughts------

Now then, I think F, G and H are the panels that look hard. I’ll start with F. Anyone is welcome to take the other two if they’re interested, but if no one speaks up, I’ll just move on to the next panel when I’m done.

F

患者 は 自宅 で 倒れ 意識 不明 の まま ここ へ 運ばれて きた……
patient [topic] self-home [location] fall-continuative consciousness not-bright ['s] state here [direction] transport-passive-TE come-past

Translation

The patient collapsed in his own home and was transported all the way here…
かんじゃ: patient
じたく: one’s own home (the patient’s in this case)
たおれ: continuative form (I think this is the term) of 倒れる, which means ‘to fall/collapse’. The continuative form has the same meaning as 倒れて in this sentence. It can also be used as a noun describing the action designated by a verb. E.g. in お待たせ しました, 待たせ is technically the noun form of 待たせる (to make wait), so the phrase literally means ‘I did [polite] the act of making (you/a customer etc) wait’.
いしき: consciousness
ふめい: literally ‘not bright’. Means ‘not clear’ here i.e. the patient was not clearly conscious = semi-conscious.
まま: describes a pre-defined state. So the patient was transported in a state of semi-consciousness
はこばれて: to be transported. 運ぶ=to transport/convey
〜てきた: a structure that indicates that the action of ~ was done in a progressive manner up to the point that it ended. Hence ‘transported all the way (here)’ as opposed to ‘transported (here)’.

それ にも かかわらず 手術 が 行われた の は 一日 たった 後 だ
that to-even be-related-[not-state] surgery [subject] conduct-passive-past [nominaliser] [topic] one-day pass-past after to-be

Translation

In spite of that, the performing of the surgery happened only after one day had passed.
にも かかわらず: this expression is actually a unit. かかわらず literally means ‘without being related’, while にも indicates what is the sentence is ‘not related to’. As a result, its figurative meaning is ‘although’ or ‘in spite of’. かかわる can be written with various kanji, but it fundamentally means ‘to be related/linked’. かかわら is the negative stem of this verb, used for forming things that mean ‘to not be related’. Negative stem + ず means ‘without [verb]-ing’, and it usually indicates a state in which that action has not happened.
しゅじゅつ: surgery. Literally ‘hand-technique’.
おこなわれた: to be conducted/performed/organised. 行う=to conduct/perform/organise
の: a nominaliser similar to こと, creating a block that means ‘the act of [verb]-ing’
たった後=経った後: 経つ=(for time) to pass. (Thanks @ayamedori for telling me this was the verb, not the adverb!) Hence 一日（が）たった=a day passed. Verb past form (ending in た/だ) + 後 = ‘after [verb]’

G

今 に も 死にそう な 患者 を 前に すぐに 手術 を しなかった 理由 が 何なに か 分かる か？
now [time] [inclusive] die-looks-like [adjective] patient [object] before immediately surgery [object] do-not-past reason [subject] what [question] understand [question]?

Translation

Do you know what the reason that the patient, who even now looks like he will die, was not operated on immediately earlier?
今にも: 今に just emphasises that the point in time being discussed is ‘now’. も is something like ‘even’, which is just a step away from its usual meaning of ‘also’.
しにそう: the continuative form of 死ぬ (it’s the ‘masu stem’ i.e. the form you put in front of ます for the polite conjugation) is 死に. Masu stem + そう = an adjective meaning ‘looks like [verb]’.
りゆう: reason
理由が何か わかるか: Japanese tends to put questions in front of verbs without any extra particles. So the question becomes the object: ‘Do you knowわかる what the reason is?’

[Zizka]

シャノンの提案を読みました
Can you understand what I said ?

Collapsing triangles could be encouraged if a paragraph is longer than 5 lines or sentences, as a guideline.

[Jonapedia]

@Zizka

But if it’s ongoing, shouldn’t it be ～て+いる as opposed to ～て+いて？

ていて is necessary because the sentence isn’t finished. He’s saying something like ‘since yesterday, the patient has been in state of anuria, and it’s continuing, and続いていて his BUN has risen to 110…’ Do you see? It’s like the ‘and’ in my translation (which is not word-for-word, just in case that’s not clear).

@Zizka

Also how do you determine is it’s sequential or simultaneous? I mean it’s a pretty big difference.

Yes and no. It's true that things happening at the same time and things happening one after another are not the same, but sometimes it's not that important or clear which it is. And to be honest, I think that with て, sequential actions are much more common. Most of the time though, context helps.

My example using 無理してがんばる was meant to show that sometimes, logically, the actions can’t happen literally one after another, and so they have to be interpreted together. It’s the same way you can make guesses in English (or in French, if it happens you’re more comfortable with that):
I had dinner and I ate dessert.
J’ai dîné et j’ai pris le dessert.

In both of these examples, you could potentially interpret the sentence as meaning I had dinner and dessert at the same time. There’s nothing stopping me from adding ‘at the same time’/« en même temps » at the end of both sentences. They’re still grammatically correct. However, most of the time, logically, dinner is finished before dessert is served. You see what I mean? The ‘and’/« et » is ambiguous, just like て, but logic and context helps us fill in the gaps, and most of the time, ‘and’, just like て, indicates something sequential, but not always.

EDIT: はい、よくわかりました。And yes, I think collapsing everything might not be a good idea then. Honestly, I think the ‘summary’ for each collapsed section should be a sentence if possible? One-word headings are OK, of course, but they provide almost no information.

About an avatar… I’ll see if I can think of something… I’m personally fine with being ‘incognito’, but I guess it’s easier when I’m identifiable.

[ayamedori]

@Jonapedia

@ayamedori, do you have any ideas?

Oops, only saw this now, sorry haha. It’s a different たった here: 一日が経った後

[YanagiPablo]

@Jonapedia

It would really be best if the first post were editable for everyone, because a longer thread is probably gonna mean needing to change the top post from time to time.

Well, my idea was to have one thread per episode (that is, between 20 to 50 pages of the manga, it depends on the episode; we are in the middle of episode 3 currently).

In that episode thread, the first message would be a wiki (so, editable by all).

Then, each time a new “part” thread is created, the first message of the “episode” thread is modified, to put a link to the new part.

The first message of the “part” don’t need to be editable, just a picture of the two-page with letters;
and people can start taking and analyzing texts;

Then when the whole two-pages of the manga are done, someone posts a new message, with a picture of the next two-pages, and their letters (that is why I think page+letter would be better when claiming/creating an interpretation).
And he would also edit the 1st message of the “episode” thread, to change the link to the current reading page (which would be some post under the “part” thread).

Someone (or the same person) could also update the wiki message of the “episode” to put all the summaries (japanese sentences + interpretations, with a link to the proper post explaining it).

Mmmh, actually the “episode” thing could be a wiki-post inside of a thread devoted to the whole manga.

Particularly interesting explanations could also be directly linked from the “episode” post.

It could look like this:

---

See here

---

[YanagiPablo]

@Jonapedia

〜てきた: a structure that indicates that the action of ~ was done in a progressive manner up to the point that it ended.

For a motion verb (like 運ぶ) can’t ~てくる / ~ていく have just a spatial meaning (“until here”/“from here”) ?

[Zizka]

@Jonapedia

ていて is necessary because the sentence isn’t finished. He’s saying something like ‘since yesterday, the patient has been in state of anuria, and it’s continuing, and 続いていて his BUN has risen to 110…’ Do you see? It’s like the ‘and’ in my translation (which is not word-for-word, just in case that’s not clear).

Ah yeah ok, I get it now. Thank you.

[Zizka]

@YanagiPablo
If you want to host tomorrow you can edit it as you wish. Otherwise I’ll take over but I might miss a lot of suggestions. I generally volunteer because otherwise I’m unsure if others would but if you have ideas as to how to do it, I’d encourage you to do it.

[Jonapedia]

@ayamedori Oh yes… thanks so much, I didn’t think of that possibility at all. I like kanji so much (probably because they’re familiar) that I usually interpret stuff without kanji as the most common hiragana-only word that matches. I would have caught it if I had seen 経った. Thanks again, it makes so much more sense than たった＝ただ

@YanagiPablo So something like a thread that acts as a contents page? I think that’s a good idea, honestly. Also, I didn’t know you could hyperlink text to posts like that. Now I understand how your idea would work. In that case, yes, we could keep adding links to the screenshot currently being translated.

[Jonapedia]

Yes, my mistake. I forgot that what I just said is more valid for a progression over time (like ‘the economy has been getting worse and worse’ or ‘the outlook has been getting better and better’). However, while your translations (‘until’ and ‘from’) are completely correct, I still think that adding 〜て来る/〜て行く (if it’s a spatial meaning, I think using kanji is valid, since that the literal meaning of these verbs. I could be wrong though. Haha.) adds a sense of continuity, because just ここへ運ばれた would have fully expressed the idea of ‘being transported here’, right? I think we have something similar in French: “depuis chez lui jusqu’à l’hôpital” versus “de chez lui à l’hôpital”. Both are technically correct, but the first is usually more natural because there’s continuity, right?

[Zizka]

@Jonapedia

In both of these examples, you could potentially interpret the sentence as meaning I had dinner and dessert at the same time . There’s nothing stopping me from adding ‘at the same time’/« en même temps » at the end of both sentences. They’re still grammatically correct. However, most of the time, logically, dinner is finished before dessert is served. You see what I mean? The ‘and’/« et » is ambiguous, just like て, but logic and context helps us fill in the gaps, and most of the time, ‘and’, just like て, indicates something sequential, but not always.

Not in French I don’t think. There’s a first meaning (sequence) but if you wanted to say you ate both at the same time an adverb would be expected. No one would think it could be one or the other. It’s either with an adverb or without.

From what I understand 〜て as a sequence is more frequent than 〜て to indicate at the same time. So と could be used to link nouns while 〜て can be used to link verbs then (among other things).

[Jonapedia]

I’m going to do H in a separate post because the first with F & G is getting too long to reliably edit. Also, I’m gonna stop right after this because it’s taking too long. Will probably reply to other things tomorrow. I wanted to finish F in half an hour, but it took me 1.5h to finish even though I already understood the sentence at the start. (half-crying, half-laughing) I won’t have time for anything else at this rate…
(Note: I’m typing the pronunciations in the explanation instead of as furigana. I will split the kana kanji-by-kanji)

H

常識的 に 考えて 手遅れ だった から だ
commonsensical [adverb] consider-TE hand-lateness be-past because be

Translation

Thinking about it commonsensically, it’s because it’s too late.
じょう/しき/てき: 常識=common sense/knowledge. 的=an ending that turns a kanji block into an adjective (it has a similar function in Chinese, although its overall function in Chinese is like の’s in Japanese). The result is な-adjective. Adding に turns it into an adverb.
かんがえて: 考える=to think/consider.
て/おくれ: ‘too late’ or ‘the state of being too late’. I think it’s used like an adjective, but grammatically, it’s treated like a noun (so we have to add の after it and so on…) The reason I said ‘hand-lateness’: I’m trying to prove that even native Japanese compound words function with the same logic as kanji compounds. Realise this, and it’ll be easier to see Japanese as a whole, and not just kanji + everything else. And yes, so, if you reach out your hand and it’s late, that means you’re ‘taking action too late’. Logical, right?
…[verb]からだ: This is a way of saying ‘the reason is [verb+the whole sentence that came before it]’ This is the more complete way to respond to the question ‘why?’: 「〜〜〜からです・だ」, instead of stopping at から

EDIT to respond to another post: @Zizka

@Zizka

Not in French I don’t think. There’s a first meaning (sequence) but if you wanted to say you ate both at the same time an adverb would be expected. No one would think it could be one or the other. It’s either with an adverb or without.

True, I think everyone interprets it as a sequence, especially because the passé composé used in my example is a tense that means ‘the action is completed’, which is why the adverb is needed. But what I meant was that the words describing the action stay exactly the same, it’s just that you need to add an adverb (i.e. more context) in order to make the meaning clear. The « et » itself doesn’t reveal whether it’s a sequence or not, even though it makes more sense and is more common to interpret it as a sequence if there’s no context. So you have to guess based on context and logic (i.e. can those particular actions even happen at the same time?). See what I mean?

And yes, you can see と as the noun linker, and て as the verb linker. Does it make more sense now?

[Zizka]

@Jonapedia

常識的 に 考えて 手遅れ だった から だ

Is it sequential here? The 〜て I mean.

[Jonapedia]

You… could see it that way? But I think it’s more cause-and-effect here. Another way of phrasing it: ‘If you think about it commonsensically, (you will conclude that) it’s because it was too late.’

PS: Everyone, I think I’ll take a break tomorrow and maybe only come on after 7pm (GMT/UTC +2h) for 1-2h maximum. Need to sort some stuff out, including how all my Japanese stuff (this forum + my own studying) should fit into my current schedule. You can tag me if you’re really stuck and can’t find anything online so that I’ll get an email and respond when I come online, but I probably won’t scroll through all the translations like I usually do.

[Zizka]

I’m confused about the 〜て it’ll get better with practice.

日本語を練習すると分かります。

[YanagiPablo]

I created Reading ブラックジャックによろしく manga exercises (p14-15);

we can start trying the new ideas (post a new image of the following pages in the same thread once all letters are done);

If that goes ok, we will then create the “episode” thtread, to put all the meta-info and links (and make it a wiki)

[Zizka]

@Shannon-8
What do you make of all the information about 〜て? Maybe your take on things would clarify things for me.

[Shannon-8]

My attitude is like Jonapedia right now. I had a half hour this morning, and I think I spent an hour and a half just READING. (And, below, I’m confused about what I was reading) This was an important discussion today that had to be said re formatting the thread.

@Zizka, re. て

Right now re て, I can’t focus on the discussion, it’s a blur. I’ve been looking at Aeron Buchanan’s Japanese Verb Chart a lot these days, and I have fully wrapped my head around those て’s. I will look at it again tonight and try to address your question.

[details=“Re. Duolingo:”]
I’m worried more and more about my “experiment” with “Can I pass the N5 using Duolingo ONLY to learn Japanese?”. Have I already perturbed the data horribly? I’m only beginning to slowly advance from where I paused in checkpoint 4 now. ゆっくり
/[details]

Unrelated chatter to 兄弟 radish8

I’m very excited!! My daughter (the one teaching English in Japan right now) also likes Kiki’s Delivery Service, and I have her half-talked into joining the board to participate in your Book Club in June!! I think she’s uncomfortable about her reading level. Which reminds me…

Zizka, we have ALL really advanced in our reading in JUST A MONTH of tackling one sentence at a time in Monster and Black Jack. But it looks like Wanikani readers like to join AT THEIR WK LEVEL … so, (keeping in mind radish8’s book club experience that people don’t join later, study plans etc). Perhaps we could try to give notice of the expected WK level? I suspect that I’m a 10? Can any of you WK people guesstimate? We were pretty low level and just looking everything up and asking questions. (As you can still see). I think a level 5 could enjoy it if they have the research time.

[YanagiPablo]

C., D., E.

何もしなくていい…

It’s OK to do nothing

ですが先生… このままでは金子さんの容体は…

But, professor... If we do nothing the condition of Mr. Kaneko...

• まま : again this word, that gives an information about an unchanged state. There is no word for word “if we do nothing” in the Japanese phrase; but このままでは gives the idea of continuing with the current state.
  I’m not sure if では is partcile of mean of action + topic; or if it is continuation form (te-form) of the coppula だ+emphasis.
• 容体 : it has the same reading (ようだい) and meaning (condition of health) as 容態; but using the kanji 体 (body) instead of 態 (condition, appearance). I don’t know if that particular choice of writing adds some nuance.

君にはまだ分からないのか？ あの手術の意味が…

You haven't understood yet? ...the meaning of that operation

No big deal here… but note how the subject (with particle が) is added as an afterthought, after the verb and question ( 分からないのか ).

[Zizka]

Regarding ～て: ah ok then. Well, I’ll keep my eyes open and I’ll get it eventually.

Regarding the WK level: I honestly have no clue about what the level of our activity is. I don’t do the WK so I’m not a good reference in that aspect. YanagiPablo’s level has gone up so I assume he might be in a better position to judge.

Re: Duo Lingo:
I don’t understand what you mean. Is this something we’ve talked about before? I don’t remember.