なぜ?どうして?科学のお話 / Absolute Beginner Bookclub

If you can’t find it on Jisho it’s usually worth double checking you’ve copied it correctly from the book. For me it’s usually misreading ぼ as ば. In this case you’ve got aず when it should be a す.

My other avenues when I can’t find on Jisho are to try it in ichi.moe as sometimes it’s a conjugation that Jisho doesn’t recognise, or to try typing into a search engine and see what images come up.

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Count me in! Just ordered from Amazon Japan and expected arrival to Michigan USA is Jan 30-Feb 2!

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I made an attempt at the bottom (white) section of pages 2-3. I took quite awhile, but I didn’t have as much difficulty with it as the last book I tried.

translation

I wonder if there is any significance? –
Let’s take a closer look at things around us. I wonder why it’s this sort of shape? I wonder if there are any reasons? Let’s try to ponder it in detail. Every tissue is about the same size. Why is that? There is a diagonal score in the toilet paper tube. Why is it? All paper cups have rounded edges. It’s strange, isn’t it? (Or maybe "It’s amazing, isn’t it?) Why do you think?

How close is that to what other people got?

I’m not sure I understand the difference between なぜなのでしょうか and どうしてなのでしょうか。

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Oops, and thanks! I feel so dumb now :see_no_evil:

In this case I guess it’s to straighten, to smooth out.

I think ななめ is a single word, jisho lists it as slanted, sloping, diagonal.

So with this, my translation for this sentence would be something like when you straighten it (as in flatten/unravel it)… it’s diagonal/tilted.

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aaah you already started and i missed it!
Also, I have the old version of the book… pages 2-5 have been nicely provided by amazon and Micky. It seems that the old book users are missing out on 6-9? Would anyone maybe help us out with a photo?

Are we gonna do what someone suggested (one day per page of pages 2-9 until the end of the month)?

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Hi! I have the eBook version, not sure if this is allowed (moderators feel free to remove my post if necessary):

Remaining spreads from new version

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Page 2 and Page 3

方 can also “way/method” (like “way of doing things”). That’s how I read it here - but my translation ends up the same as yours anyway!

I think “no good” is a better translation of だめ here than “useless”. I think the literal translation is “in this sort of shape - is it no good I wonder”. So I think both the translations you’ve mentioned sound fine.

I cut a toilet roll centre open to have a look as I didn’t think the picture in the book was very clear! What I got was parallelogram shape. So I think this translates as “when spread out…it’s slanted”

ティッシュペーパーのはこの大きさは、どれもだいたい同じ大きさです。どうしてなのでしょう。

The first sentence refers to a tissue box rather than tissues. Literally - “speaking of the size of a box of tissues, they all generally are the same size”. Or more naturally - “all tissues boxes are generally the same size”.

I haven’t been that confident about the word でしょう so I looked it up and found this article helpful from Tae Kim.

I think sharing this is fair use. It’s only a few pages out of a much bigger work. And they must have sold lots of copies of the book due to this club’s existence!

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That makes sense! I think I went for side/area because the drawing seems to talk about the height of the box, but then it didn’t really fit very well into the translation :sweat_smile:

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I have a dumb question :sweat_smile:: this is my first book club, how do people usually do this? Do you try to translate every word on every page?

(I’m used to just looking up words I don’t recognise, trying to get the general gist of the sentence, then moving on without trying to translate precisely – but I’m OK to try a different approach!)

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I have no idea, it’s my first book club too! I think you can do whatever works best for you - you can participate in the discussion simply by looking at people’s translations and checking with the idea you had, and start a discussion if you interpreted something differently. Or ask/answer questions about things that are confusing.

I personally tend to try to make a translation when I’m reading to make sure I understood everything (and it’s easier to compare with others), but it takes a lot more time and effort, and it might not be worth it for everyone.

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Am i right there’s more than 100 of us reading this book? Wow!

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@kelitt Wow, thank you for taking the time to do all those translations – fantastic job!

I just have one suggestion to add, about 方.

In this context, it’s simpler to think of 方がいい (ほうがいい)as a single unit, meaning ‘better’.

Tae Kim has a section on this use of 方(ほう)to compare two things:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/comparison

In a nutshell, if you want to compare two things in Japanese, you can use the form

<thing 1> より <thing 2> ほうがいい

to mean:

“thing 2 is better than thing 1.”

The same form works with other adjectives, too:

ハンバーガよりすしのほうがおいしい。

Sushi tastes better than hamburger.

And you can leave out the first part: (<thing 1> より) and just say:

<thing 2> ほうがいい

to mean:

“Thing 2 is better.”

In this case, comparison with something else is implied, but doesn’t need to be spelled out explicitly.

So this gives us something like:

この くらい 大きい 方が よいかも?

Maybe something around this big would be better?

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amazon.co.jp to UK: four days.

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This is my first post in this site. I’ve only just bought a subscription to the website.

As such I have only bought this book today and have to wait for it to arrive to the UK.

Is there a way to “sub” to a thread on this forum?

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Welcome! You can do this:

Summary

Click on the grey box which is a little below the last post and select watching. You then get an email each time there’s a new post. See picture below:

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Thanks so much!!

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Page 4 bold text

それぞれの 形に わけが ある

それぞれ: each, respectively

Each [object] has a reason for its shape.

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Just rejoined wanikani after a long absence but I’m back on the learning train! Here we go!

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Shouldn’t the title be changed to reflect that the book club started earlier? Also why the decision to keep it all in this thread? Quite confusing imho. :confused:

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It didn’t - we’re only doing the spreads that are at the beginning of the new version of the book.
My understanding is that we’ll start on the first chapter of the book in February, in a separate thread.

So the table in the OP still applies, but maybe a link to where we started the discussion of the spreads could be added @zuzu

Edit: but it is true that it’s confusing, I think it was kind of an impromptu decision and we just went from there (I for one was excited to start haha). And the pages were shared a few comments ago (the first 4 were on the amazon preview), so even those who have the old version can jump in if they want to :smiley:

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