📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

The link I found said “ですね” but I guess it’s more natural to only think of it as ね (but polite). じゃが is just じゃ (slurred/方言 version of だ) + が, so ですがね (at least, that’s how I would interpret it)

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Cool, thanks.

Not entirely sure what it adds/changes/does to the sentence, but it feels like a nuance thing I will eventually get after enough repetition; as in, I understand the sentence and vaguely what it does, but if you asked me for a straight definition, I wouldn’t be able to give it, and if you wanted me to translate it, I’d also have a hard time pinpointing the exact nuance it adds; however it doesn’t feel like I’m loosing anything by not having a perfectly clear understand of ですが in this situation. (Like is it nevertheless, or but, or still, or any other permutation of similar English phrase? I would be loath to try and pin down exactly, but I get the gist.)

I will re-check all the sentences with that, and keep it in mind for the next half of the story. Perhaps it will be clearer to me by the end of the story. Just understanding what the dialect/slurred thing is when it isn’t dialect/slurred will make it easier going forward.

Much appreciated because I was very stumped with searching for じゃが because all it thought I wanted was potato. :rofl:

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:tiger2: :books: Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220505 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

Tanuki Scroll XXXV: 茶・栗・柿(ちゃくりかき) :chestnut:

Read today’s folktale about a man selling tea, persimmons and chestnuts, but he tries to combine all of them into one word when sales-shouting and fails miserably.


:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

New Things

「かご」ー Basket; hamper
ちっとも「些とも (Rarely used)」ー Not at all
気の毒「きのどく」ー Pitiful; unfortunate; poor
頷き「うなずき」ー Nod
うまくやる「旨くやる」ー To do something well

Magical Adventure of the Periodic Table

Earlier I came across: 鎂「マグネシウム」- magnesium, and this got curious about how many of the elements have kanji.

Though it is unlikely to see these elements in kanji-form over katakana, other than the common ones like gold, iron, copper etc., I still thought it was pretty cool. It seems most of the elements do have their own special kanji though some common ones like potassium have their own kanji names that don’t use the special kanji 「加里 vs. 鉀」- so there’s not really much reason for me to be looking them up, and most only really seem to be used for Chinese… it’s just cool okay

I didn’t check all of them, but here’s some that I found cool:

鈉 - Sodium
鈣 - Calcium
鐳 - Radium
釔 - Yttrium
锰 - Manganese
鈷 - Cobalt
汞 - Mercury
硅 - Silicon
溴 - Bromine
氦 - Helium

Nihonium, you know the element that is named after Japan, isn’t know by its kanji, just as ニホニウム :frowning_face: sad times (Chinese is: 鉨)

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Cool stuff! Of course I had to look up Nihonium. Apparently it was first created in 2003 and it has only been made in very small amounts that decay within seconds, so I guess it’s no wonder there’s no kanji for it. :grin:

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It’s a bit like ノマ, I guess, but I didn’t know there were more words like that. That one is really pretty cool!

Yeah, it’s surprising, but I’ve seen it before with percentages from book club schedules not lining up with my device.

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Read the first two chapters of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 🛵 Volume 6 and it was nice as usual :slightly_smiling_face:. Either it was bit poetic and light on story this time or I’m missing some implied story-telling (not sure if that has to do with my understanding of the Japanese or with me not reading between the lines enough in that case).

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reply re: 薬屋のひとりごと ch 28

I guess this part still doesn’t make sense to me. So the child is the crown prince, which is the current emperor, that much is clear. But the crown prince’s mother was also his foster sister who later became 淑妃, one of the four wives? I feel like the mom and the wife/foster sister should be two different people, which is why I’m so confused :durtle_durtverted_lvl1: Edit: Actually, I feel like all three of those should be different people. This is what I meant with the “my mom’s younger sister…” kind of sentence, much bamboozle.


Summary post :bookmark:

May 5th :cherry_blossom:

・ お兄ちゃんはおしまい!Vol. 2 (0% → 48%)

I read manga today because tired and has exam tomorrow.

Click here for panel of cute character

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Day 35 :heavy_check_mark: :milk_glass: :japanese_goblin:

告白 ~ 26-27%
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 49 pages

Finished the current ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 story - at 57 pages, it was the longest one in the book. It was also chock-full of yokai! Kitaro is framed for a serious crime against the yokai, but manages to escape and prove his innocence. All sorts of yokai make an appearance, often many of them together. This story emphasized how much everything is out of order in this collection: We jumped from Kitaro’s birth to him casually defeating bad yokai, to this chapter, where we first(?) learn about his amazing camouflaging ability, and we meet many yokai he has defeated, and some he has saved, in the past. What past though? I was supposed to be reading the first volume.
So out of frustration I also bought the first volume of the other collection I had in mind. The titles of the stories had 墓場の鬼太郎 in front, which I believe was his name before he became more suitable for children as ゲゲゲの鬼太郎. The birth story is the same (with differently worded text), but from a quick look at the next stories, they seem to be in better chronological order (he is at school in some), and somewhat darker too.
In case anyone else is interested in this 鬼太郎 mess, the first book is the one I’m currently reading, and the second one the one I just bought:
image , image

some panels I liked

The yokai were caught on camera partying:
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Angry yokai request from the Big Tengu to bring Kitaro to justice
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This is the yokai police in bird form, and in human(ish) form:
image, image

Kitaro’s trial

So many yokai in one place
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His lawyer, おばば, sending ばけがらす on an errand.
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Crows chasing Nezumi Otoko
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There was a lot of new trial-related vocab as you can imagine, which I won’t list here. This chapter had an extra difficulty for me. Several words stumped me because I just couldn’t break them down or find them in a dictionary. In the end it turned out that most were just yokai names… :joy:

On the 告白 front, I only read about 1% today. Without uninterrupted reading time it was hard to concentrate properly. I’ll read some more before bed, but I don’t expect to make notable progress. I can say that I’m still enjoying the constant sense of foreboding. The narrator is describing the most normal, mundane things, yet there is a sense that something has happened/is happening in the background, or will happen any moment. Other than what we already know, I mean. Even normal student-teacher interactions seem somehow strained and weird. No better place for this oppressive atmosphere than a classroom. :smiling_imp:

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That panel of the trial is really nice!

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ch 28

There are three people in that sentence. The current emperor, the kid of the current emperor, and the 淑妃 of the current emperor, who’s also his foster sister and the mother of that kid.

Somehow, the interface doesn’t show it, but it’s a reply to @Redglare :sweat_smile:

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More 坊っちゃん today. In fact, I read two chapters. :partying_face: (Most I have read so far.)

That was about a third of the second half of the story (15/37 pages). Truly it makes a difference when you’ve gotten used to the author voice.

And, and, and! A new dialect grammar (apparently just general grammar) thing came up, but somehow I managed to find the answer to it myself.

〜げな = そうだ (as in I heard that)

That was kinda cool. But I also had trouble searching for something else because I doubled the wrong consonant. :rofl: (Accidentally searched for なっぐて, instead of なぐって. Dictionaries were confused. :joy:)

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That’s not dialect, that’s grammar :joy_cat:

(Have some more if you like: grammar - What is the usage of 〜げ and how does it differ from 〜そう or 〜っぽい? - Japanese Language Stack Exchange)

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The webpage I found the definition on called it 福岡の方言. ¯\(ツ)/¯ (dictionary.goo.ne.jp, I know nothing about them, just randomly popped up for my interweb search)

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Probably everything is some part of dialect somewhere :joy_cat:

But if you look at the overall search results, the topmost entry (which comes from a Japanese dictionary) is what I was referring to, while at the bottom (in the dialect dictionary) you also have the Fukuoka entry:

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may 5 :cherry_blossom: home post

A lot of reading today! I’ve been steadily working through 恋人 on Satori these last few days (about 25% done now) and I also read chapter 28 of 極主夫道!

Wait, how did I not realize that’s why 々 is called that? It’s so obvious now that you say it (oh, looks like WK even explains this, but apparently I forgot. but to be fair that was way back in level 2). I wonder what other words there are like that other than ノマ and くノ一

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Well, all I can say is interweb search preferred dialect dictionary. :joy:

And here I was so proud for finding dialect answer. *sniff sniff* Another time, I guess. ^^

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May 5th!

Work was tough today, so a chapter of Yotsuba was a perfect thing to read tonight. It’s impossible to not be cheered up by it. :slight_smile:
I read Chapter 58, and Yotsuba pulling her bear around in the little wagon was super sweet.

(Home Post)

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Summary post

It’s been a stressful time – starting to notice a pattern :upside_down_face: . So I just kinda sat down and read 10,000 characters. Was dragging by the end but I was close enough I wanted to hit that point. Just trying to distract myself in it, but hey, I’m learning I hope. The major arc has finally taken shape for this route I believe, but even then, I could still see the ending being a way off.

Slightly morbid word discussion

I came across 土左衛門 (どざえもん), the word for a drowned body. Lovely. Thing is, jisho says “after sumo wrestler Narusegawa Dozaemon.” I can’t really find a reliable looking source (probably need to be better at Japanese and search sites actually in the language), but the claim seems to be that this sumo wrestler was pale (and, well, sumo wrestler sized) so the comparison was made to the state that victims of drowning are found in. If that’s actually true, wow, imagine an entire new word being invented and spread to insult your appearance. That’s a whole other level.

Cool new word: 晴れ姿 (はれすがた), appearing in one’s finest clothes or in one’s hour of triumph. Neat.

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Here for it

My dictionary lists this:

  • どざえもん (どざゑもん) [0]【土左▽衛門】〔享保(1716〜1736)の頃の力士成瀬川土左衛門が太っていて肌が白かったのを溺死者のようだといったことからという〕
    溺死者。水死体。

Kyouhou Era - Sumo wrestler Narusegawa Dozaemon was said to be fat and pale like a drowned person
Drowning victim. Drowned corpse.
^ my usual rough translation standards

I couldn’t find much elaborating on that in a quick search, but there is this bizarre youtube video (you’ll hate the sound quality, it’s bad even to me)
Anyways I think these are drawings of him:

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I finished the Star People story. The boy raised cattle, the girl was a weaver. They met in the Milky Way, fell in love, got married, and totally neglected their work. So the cattle got sick, people had no cloth, and the god got angry because everything and everyone was in a very bad way. So the god put the boy on one side of the Milky Way and the girl on the other, and created a chasm between them. They went back to their work, but cried all day every day. After a year the god sent birds to make a bridge in the Milky Way so the two could reunite, having learned their lessons. To this day in Japan, people celebrate the Star Festival by writing their wishes down and attaching them to bamboo grass.

New Vocabulary:

こま
困る to be troubled, to be bothered, to be in a bad way

えんづ
縁付く to marry


合う to come together, to meet (irregular use of kanji)


呼ぶ to summon, to call, to invoke

たなばた
七夕 Star Festival (held in July or August)

Also my two new “Learn Japanese with Stories” books arrived today. So now I have four more books to read now that I have finished the entire set of Level 0 Graded Readers.

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