Teasing Master Takagi-san 😝 ・ Volume 1, chapter 1

At the moment I take an hour every page :joy: but I’ll get there eventually :point_up_2:

I have some more questions (chapter 1 page 3 :snail:)

あとはこれを箱に仕込めば、ビックリ箱の完成さ。
I translate this as: “then, if I put (insert) this (spring) into the box, the jack-in-the-box will be complete.”

My questions are:

  1. How should I interpret this あたは? I kinda know its role but I’m not sure.
  2. I don’t get the role of the の between ビックリ箱 and 完成, I would expect a verb here actually. Probably it’s something very easy that I already studied and forgot🙆‍♂️
  3. The さ at the end of the sentence is the masculine assertive sentence ending particle as I believe?

Edit: small question about the expression 見てろよ which I know means “just wait and see”. Is this just 見ている with いる in it’s imperative form いろ and with the い dropped?

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My first manga, it was normal to take two hours for four panels.

Two things that made it slower:

  1. I had to look up all the kanji.

  2. It was a 4koma, so almost every panel had dialogue, and often a lot of dialogue.

For something like Takagi-san, I think one hour per page sounds about right.

The grammar probably will be the most time-consuming part. But that gets faster over time, as you learn grammar (read the meaning) and then you acquire grammar (understand from seeing it in context repeatedly).

あとは?

At a basic level, は shifts the topic (and as such, the context) of the comment.

The comment is the portion after the topic+は.

The prior topic/context was on the spring and he’s shifting the topic/context to what comes after the spring. He’s not actively thinking about changing the topic; it’s a natural part of Japanese speech.

完成 is a noun meaning “complete” or “perfect”.

An example in English would be “My homework is complete.” (There is no verb/action here.)

If you simply use the word 完成 by itself, that is very ambiguous. There are many things that can be 完成. You can narrow it down by presenting a topic, or by specifically naming a subject. Or you can modify 完成, which is what is happening here. 完成 is being modified by ビックリ箱 to refer to a complete ビックリ箱.

In this case, the topic is set to あと. And the subject is unstated, so we can use “it” for the subject in English. He’s essentially saying “(I’ve finished the spring and) with that it is the completion of the jack-in-the-box.”

I’ve seen it said that this use of さ at the end of a sentence makes the statement “playfully assertive”, which I think describes it nicely.

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あと (後) + は

I think it means ビックリ(ばこ)のは、完成(かんせい)した.

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Happy to hear that!
Most important thing is that I’m enjoying it, and also a lot. Reading mangas will become a long term passion, I’m sure

About this, I think I’m stalling because I can’t get to understand this logical order,
The only way it makes sense in my head atm is thinking about it this way

Or, if I try to interpret your explanation, there should be an implicit だ after 完成 because, to be a ビックリ箱の完成 is the action that the implicit subject (‘it’) is making…?

Yeah, I forgor :skull_and_crossbones:

Normally, です or だ, but various forms of する work as well.

I still find の confusing at times, so I might be wrong in trying to explain this way.

In my explanation, the subject is exactly ビックリ箱の.

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Yes, I thought you meant something like this - suru or だ etc… anyway that last interpretation was referred to christopher’s explanation - which I don’t understand if it’s different from yours or you both have said the same thing…?

I mean

(My interpretation)

Explanation no.1 @polv

ビックリ箱のは、完成です(/した) (kinda “ the box will be complete “)

Explanation no. 2 @ChristopherFritz

ビックリ箱の完成です (kinda “ it will be a complete box “)

same author/artist!!!

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I think it’s along the meaning in explanation 1. How it works is another question.

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In the end, the precise nuance of this use of 完成(かんせい) doesn’t matter too much, so long as you have a general impression of what’s being said. (But trying to figure out things with precision I think is definitely good in the very beginning!)

Yeah, I added that note so no one seeing it thinks it’s a spoiler from the Takagi series :wink:

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じやあ 私の勝ちでいい?Well than, I win or are you admitting defeat? I get what she is saying here. If he doesn’t play the game she is claiming victory. The part of the sentence I don’t get is でいい

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でいい is essentially asking if it is okay.

If I were to translate it with that nuance in mind

“Then, it’s okay if it’s my victory?” or perhaps “Then, my victory is okay?” , the latter of which retains the Japanese word order at the cost of not sounding quite as natural in English.

Maggie-sensei has a good article on でいい/でもいい/がいい that might help you out.

Also, welcome to the book club! I hope you have tons of fun learning with Takagi-san! :grin:

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I’m happy to hear this from you :grin: I quickly got the sense of all the page 3-4 quickly but I really want to know these details. Anyway I suppose that out last example is just an open one, where many things could be missing due to colloquialism. I can think of many situations like that in both Italian and English, too and it would still be hard to say if it was meant to be the one or the other.

I’m dropping some more questions and considerations (page 3)

*Nishikata thinks (as he is about to try to fool Takagi-san): いつもいつもオレをからかいやがって。今日こそオレが高木さんをからかってやる。

  1. In the first sentence, how can からかい be an adjective if やがって is an auxiliary verb? And how the two function together here?

  2. In the second sentence, why isn’t it just からかう, but からかってやる instead? And

  3. Why is やる and not する? I still don’t get their difference and when to use the one or the other

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let’s see if I can try to help… the fun with grammar hahaha

so 1) からかい Is a noun here
-this is a common grammar/vocab? thing… there if you drop the ru stem and replace it with the i stem the word becomes a noun: an example… 歩く(あるく)ーーー>あるき

  1. This is Te form and harder for me to explain well but in English it can kind of be thought of present progressive or “and”…
    Verb + て | Japanese Grammar SRS (bunpro.jp)

A cure dolly video:

  1. やる and する mean the same thing (to do) from an understanding point of view…however someone else will surely be able to explain it better but I tend to think of やる as less formal
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The one is common enough to be a grammar point.

https://howtojaponese.com/2011/05/13/cool-verb-ending-yagaru/

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So the からかい isn’t an adjective but a verb in it’s い-stem that has become a noun! Now it makes sense

This article looks exactly what I was looking for.
My brain capacity has arrived to it’s limit and I gotta 寝る at this point, will get back to work on it tomorrow. Thank you for the help!!!

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Thank you. for the explanation and the article. I picked up volumes 1-16 and volumes 1-10 of when they are adults so I am sure i will be asking lots of questions. I loved the anime and found someone online saying its a great manga for learn from so here we are.

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Hmm…I might have slightly misled you … While it’s true you can make many verbs nouns I wasn’t considering the aux verb when I wrote that… apologies

When you start adding aux verbs they are their own verb and you can have 2 or 3 separate verbs “combined in one”… in this case the first verb is からかう… where the first verb uses the “i” stem (which is the continuative) …so it’s in some ways like the Te-form … I know I can’t explain this well at all… someone else may be able to but for now these videos may help with the general combining/aux verbs…

apologizes. I’m not the best at explaining grammar :upside_down_face:

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Additional reading on verb + やがる:

https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/slang#Showing_contempt_for_an_action_with

The last paragraph is what’s happening here, with からかう becoming からかい.

Edit: Oops, replied to the wrong post. But close enough =D

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one day I’ll be able to explain things as well as you can…

maybe… :laughing:

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It’s easy when I copy and paste from a linked source :wink:

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