Aye, one of the great joys of manga - bubbles spoken by off-screen characters often lack leaders altogether.
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Okay! I just read this over like 5 times, and I think I get it now! The only problem will be remembering to look out for this 
Ah, okay, yes the ellipses did catch my eye but I wasn’t sure how to read into them.
Well, when you parse it out like THAT! 
Makes sense!
Again, I really thought those were Yotsuba’s bubbles… I’m embarrassed I can’t even read the basics of Manga 
Oh! It just got lost at the bottom of my google.doc when I copied and pasted Here’s how I translated it: Kind of close??? Poor 
“I wonder what she thinks she’s doing…”
Thank you yamitenshi! 
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ICHINICHI! “ONE DAY” YOU WILL BURN! 
IN THE MEANTIME I AM NOW YOUR MASTER!
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Well I decided to level up to 8 and just do the new radicals / kanji. I’m sitting at 92 apprentice, but I only have 5 more level 7 vocab to unlock, so I can wait some time to start the 33 level 8 vocab. I will hopefully be unloading a good 30-40 vocab out of my apprentice pile over the next few days too. I think the “planning” is getting a little easier, which is nice too. I’m realizing I don’t have to lock myself into one way of doing things, but I can go with the flow to stay at the pace I want. So grateful for user-scripts!
Didn’t sleep well last night, and 142 reviews still left in the day on top of the 55ish + 30ish lessons I’ve already done. I hope I get to some other things today, but as I’m feeling like this, WK is one of the easiest things for me to keep up with…
PS. Question:
Why is WK teaching similar kanji and vocab so often? For example: 図 and 絵, or 身 (somebody) and 者 (someone)? Is there a strategy to this other than introducing us to things around the same time because they are commonly used and different??
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So, I’m reading a comic this morning, and these two characters are whispering to one another:
Just another use of the traditional “thought bubble” that you may one day encounter =D
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I think I’m starting understand some, but I will probably continue to make mistakes for a while!
Thank you ChristopherFritz!!!
For your specific examples, 図 and 絵 are actually both learned in second grade while 身 and 者 are both learned at 3rd grade, so it’s not odd to introduce them close together as these are characters that are fairly common and deemed important enough that even 6-7 year olds are required to learn so they can recognize and write them.
However, the way WaniKani is designed is not for the native Japanese speaker who is already exposed to these words in their everyday lives but to someone learning Japanese as a second language, so Koichi and the team pieced together the kanji and the corresponding levels based on what they think potentially an adult learning Japanese to study, visit, or live in Japan should need to know.
At the lower levels, some of the kanji includes ones that lower grade ES students will learn because there’s some that are just easier to learn (based on number of strokes, easy to decipher radicals that form a story, etc.) but not all of them are relevant to the average person who would be using WK services. For example, 虫 (insect) 竹 (bamboo) are both interesting an culturally relevant to 1st graders, so it’s part of their curriculum at school, but chances are, the average WK user doesn’t really need to know these kanji immediately so they’re not introduced until after the free 3 level subscription is up (introduced at level 4).
Hopefully that made any kind of sense or if I even answered your question because I’m half awake over here Sending you lots of good sleep vibes for tonight too!
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Ohhh wow yes this was a fantastic answer! I will no longer roll my eyes when I see another word that means something the same as what I’ve already been taught 
Thanks Hantsuki! And sleep well yourself I’m about to take a cat nap I think!
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Something I’d like to add on to Hantsuki’s response is that in the earlier levels you’re still somewhat limited in complexity on how far they can go, but also, they have to arrange the kanji they teach based on what words they can teach with them. A lot of the similar meaning kanji can clump together into words that mean the same sort of thing, so they end up together. Like, there’s a level where I’m pretty sure you learn 3 or more kanji that are all basically “judgment,” because they both combine with each other and combine with some other kanji all the time that are also in that level.
That said, there is definitely a risk of interference on memory, but to some degree that’s inevitable because of the constraints.
Edit: Wanted to make this a little more clear with the example. All around the same time you learn 判断 and 審判, both meaning judgment in a sense, and all 3 kanji involved have “judgment” or something very similar as a meaning. It’s a little unfortunate for the interference effect, but to make some of their common words, you have to double up on judgments from the beginning.
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I will definitely keep an eye out for this level and other similar WK tactics as well!
Yes, true. Definitely messes with my memory a lot! Some of my least favorite kanji are the ones that show up in vocab a lot but always have some tweak to their reading. It messes with my ability to remember the meaning too. And I don’t mean rendaku - I don’t seem to have too much of a problem with that (so far) unless there’s like 10 vocab with 学 in it, for example, and some of them like 大学 have rendaku but some are just basic 2 kanji on’yomi readings, so remembering so many and which have the rendaku can be harder then.
Yes this makes sense, though difficult like you said!!
Thank you for this extra detailed insight Daisoujou!
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Here's my Yotsuba attempt for today! Pg. 22, 23, 24!
Page 22 - 1/17/22
わっきた
Waah!! (I couldn’t figure out the きた)
なー
Hey! (getting the girl’s attention)
あれなんだー？
Do you see that over there?
え？
Yes?
あれって
That over there…
ブランコのこと?
What’s the matter with that swing?
Page 23 - 1/17/22
きーこ
“Screech / squeal / squeak”
こう
Like this.
こうやって
It works like this.
あそぶの
to enjoy it.
あ
Surprise.
ああーっ!!
I see!!
やる！やる！
I want it!
よつばもやる！
Yotsuba wants to have it!!
はい
Yes
おして おして！！
I can push I can push!!
はいはい
Yes Yes
Page 24 - 1/17/22
おー
Oh! / Ah!
キー
Screech / Squeal / Squeak
自分で反動つけたら動くから
Push by yourself to keep the swing moving (?)
あはははは
Ahahahaha
それじゃあね
Well see you later.
I feel like it was easier, probably because of the text being simpler overall. However, I did test out Lapis - Language Learning Platform - Japanese for the first time today, and I really kind of like it! It reminds me of koohi.cafe + ichi.moe combined, but it actually uses hiragana first instead of forcing katakana upon everything like koohi! Has a lot of different features I like, especially adding the vocab directly from the parse to the SRS flash card system (although this is a little funky and I can see why it might not agree with some people’s preferences). It seems intuitive at times, but it also seems to be lacking in some areas with parsing and dictionary lookup. Anyway it’s in the beta phase but I think I’ll continue to play around with it!
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A lot of the following you’ll see so often that soon enough you’ll look back and say, “These are so simple!” At least, that was my experience with quite a few things, after I got used to them!
Comments on page translations
きた = 来た = completed form (past tense) of 来る
なんだ = 何だ = used to ask “what is it?”
Note that there’s no verb for “to see” in the dialogue here.
え often lines up fairly well with “huh?” or “eh?” in English. The latter should be easy to remember =D
The って is the older girl quoting what Yotsuba had said, so this is along the lines of, “Over there, you say…?”
こと is one of those words that may take a bit of seeing it used in various cases and situations to get used to it. When you see 「nounのこと」, you can imagine こと as sort of an aura that encloses itself around not just the noun, but everything about it. So, it’s not just about the swing itself, but what it’s used for, how it’s used, why it exists, etc. These are all kinds of things about the noun, which こと conveys.
I’d say a translation closer to the Japanese grammar would be “About the swing?”, but this sounds like nonsense in English, so an English counterpart would be “You mean the swing?”
て is used to join multiple verbs together, similar to using “and” in English. But there’s also a sense of the verbs taking place in order.
Here we have やる + て + あそぶ = do and (then) enjoy.
やる is a common verb for “to do”, so here Yotsuba is saying “(I want) to do (it)!”
You’ll find that やる gets used in many situations (thus why it’s so common). Over time you’ll get a sense for its meanings based on context.
A verb + て + ください is a polite way of asking someone to do something. But you can also leave off the ください for a less polite command, verb + て. Here, おして is Yotsuba telling (asking?) the older girl to push her on the swing.
たら marks a verb conditional, so we have:
"If 自分で反動つける, then “動く”. I’m actually not certain enough of the nuance/purpose of the から at the end of this line to explain it, but essentially, “If you yourself lean back and forth, it’ll move.”
You’ve made a lot more progress and more rapidly than when I first tried (and failed at) reading Yotsuba!
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That makes sense! Still confused as to why the online searches I did couldn’t find きた. Like with the 何 below, I have trouble sometimes seeing that as a “word” And yes, I do see now that there’s no verb in the なん sentence
I was thinking this, but I always seem to pick the wrong option!!!
Ah, the quote thing. I keep forgetting about that!!!
This is very interesting! Thank you for explaining this, I hope I understand and retain this aspect of “こと” !!!
So more like “Do this to enjoy it” ?
Yet another grammar point to remember You say she is saying “I” - but - she uses her first name when she’s talking… that’s why I was confused. So wouldn’t it be “Yotsuba wants to do it!” ??
Ah okay, this makes much more sense based on the pictures!
Ahhhh okay! This also adds clarity to the context!
Thank you ChristopherFritz!!! I appreciate this very much. I’ll just keep moving forward and hope my brain figures things out better however slowly
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In most cases, I’d use “and” for the て, but in this specific sentence, “to” does work as an English translation. But that’s taking it further from the Japanese grammar. This is fine earlier on, but over time you’ll want to ensure you have a clear distinction between what the grammar is doing in Japanese, and how you might change the wording to express a similar sentiment in English. (There’s no rush on it, though, as that comes after getting to know a lot more grammar.)
To mention as well, although I wrote “enjoy”, because 遊ぶ can be used to refer to enjoying doing something, its usage is a bit wider than that. You’ll probably mostly see it used to mean “to play”, although it also is used for when visiting with someone.
Thus, “Do (this) and (then) play” is another way of looking at it.
It’s common for Japanese kids to refer to themselves by their name. (At least, in manga and anime. I assume that’s part’s based on real life.) Thus, if Yotsuba were referring to herself, it would indeed be “Yotsuba wants to do it” rather than a pronoun.
Remember, the brain is a pattern recognition machine. As you see the same patterns in different contexts (and look them up to remind yourself of them as needed), you’ll reach a point where you recognize them after thinking for a moment, without having to look them up. And then you’ll reach a point where you recognize them without even thinking about it. It may take some time to get there, and it requires a lot of exposure (which for me personally is reading lots and lots of comics), but so long as you keep at it, you’ll get there.
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Ahhh I see. Sometimes I pass up on other meanings when I look things up because they seem a little off from where my brain is going. I imagine this will get easier as I can identify some sentence structure easily and then fit the hard stuff in after!
Okay it just sounded funny but I liked it too gave her some character, like this was how she was letting the other girl know her name since she just met her.
Oooo I like how you described this! I can already see it happening with WK and stuff, but then again I pour most of my efforts into keeping up with reviews each day. I’m proud of myself though, I spent 13 days on level 7, as opposed to my 7 to 8 days I had been trying to hold myself to before. I love this slower pace!
Also, question: I got my first batch of level 1 radicals to “Enlightened” today, and I began wondering: I know that when you leech a Guru I it takes it back to Apprentice III, and I think it’s the same when you leech a Guru II (apprentice III), but what happens when you leech a Master or Enlightened or even Burned item?? Do they all go back to apprentice III?
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I have a hard time parsing this line, but I thought it must have something to do with kicking since you can propel yourself on a swing by swinging you legs back and forth:p “You can make it move by kicking” or something…
Can you explain which part refers to leaning back and forth? What’s up with 反 if it’s “independent” from 動, or am I just misunderstanding something simple? It feels like I might not even be asking the right questions.
Edit: I realize it’s a different kind of kick than what I interpreted it as:p I guess I was too hasty when trying to get through the pages today.
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There’s a page on WaniKani with the formula, but I believe it’s something like after making one mistake in a review session, every two mistakes in that same review session knocks it down two stages.
Anything that reaches Burned status no longer comes up in reviews.
Edit: Here’s the page with the formulas.
反動 has two main meanings:
-
Reaction/recoil. Think of throwing a ball against a wall, and the ball bounces back.
-
Movement in the opposite direction of a tendency. For example, if you’re moving forward on a swing, you lean backwards, and when you’re moving backwards on a swing, you lean forward.
This is an area where simple “Japanese word to English word” dictionaries can fail. I wish there was a dictionary that gave English translations of Japanese definitions for Japanese words.
As for the kanji, you’ll learn these from WaniKani as:
- 反 = anti
- 動 = move
This may sound like being still (anti-move), but rather it’s more moving in the opposite direction from the direction that you’re moving in, so you’re going against the movement (anti-move).
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Important note about these and Japanese in general. Japanese is way more nuanced than English and doesn’t recycle (at least to my experience) words to mean different things nearly as often or at least not in the same way. For instance, “light” in English means “illumination”, something not heavy, etc. In Japanese those are completely different terms. The word はかる (to measure) in Japanese uses several kanji to mean “measuring” of different things like length, weight, etc.
Regarding the kanji you mentioned (in brackets - roughly how often I encountered them in compounds):
図 - refers to all sorts of maps, blueprints, diagrams, etc. (quite common)
絵 - pictures, paintings, etc. (not so common)
者 - a suffix used in a lot of profession names (extremely common)
身 - relates to the “body”, but not always the human body (fairly common)
I would recommend adding “body” as a synonym for 身 when seen alone (as a kanji or radical). The “somebody vs someone” is just confusing 
.
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Wait, so, when it’s burned… you can’t leech it anymore?? I did not know this…
So like if something were Master, it would go down to Guru 1 if I leeched it?
I definitely sensed this limitation when trying to puzzle this out, but it’s far to early for me to attempt a monolingual dictionary 