Teasing Master Takagi-san 😝 ・ Volume 1, chapter 2

Japanese Language Reading
#90

Thank you both for the replies and explanations, it is all very much appreciated.

Here is the rough thought process I tried before asking for help:

Summary

If I considered な coming from ‘na-adj’ (or na-noun), then what does の mean?
I tried to brute-force the uses of の that I’ve encountered:

  • N1のN2 - can’t be it, as we have attached な to N1 already and a Noun takes one or the other.
  • の normaliser - but why would we normalise a N1な? what would that even mean? nope.
  • explanatory の - I’ve only seen as a sentence ending particle, and here we are followed by ダメ.
    At this point I threw in the towel.

I don’t think I had seen this before so initially I wasn’t sure how to make sense of your reply sorry, but now combining it with @ChristopherFritz it makes sense :slight_smile:

Is this の the same as the explanatory の? Or are they different?

I ask mostly because up until now I had thought explanatory の had to be a sentence trailing particle, so I’m wondering if that was wrong, or if this is a new/separate particle that just happens to be spelt the same.

I think it is making sense to me.

This usage of の is extremely interesting!

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#91

They are the same in the way that a kitten is a cat. They are different in the way that a cat is not a kitten.

In other words, the explanatory の relies on this nominalizing の. (If I understand it correctly.)

Technically, the explanatory の is のだ. I believe this is the nominalizing の followed by だ.

However, the だ is often left off. This is what makes it more difficult to learn initially.

It’s important to know that it’s のだ, because that だ comes at the end of a sentence (or clause, in which case it’s で resulting in ので).

Bonus stuff hidden because it makes this sound more complex

Disclaimer: Below is a mix of “I know this for fact” and "I never really thought this through, but this at least sounds about right to me.

A noun-ending sentence already ends with だ. When adding のだ, that first だ becomes な. This means that noun-ending sentences with the explanatory の end with なのだ.

Since the final だ often gets left off in sentences, this means a noun-ending sentence ending in the explanatory の can end in なの.

If this noun-ending sentence is the first clause in a longer sentence, I believe the final だ is required, and it becomes で. That means if you see ので or なので in the middle of a sentence, it’s the explanatory の at the end of a clause.

(However, you can probably also use の to turn something into a noun so you can attach the particle で to it. At this point, I imagine it comes down to becoming familiar with sentence patterns.)

If you see なの in the middle of a sentence without で following it, then I expect it’s turning a so-called “な adjective” into a noun.

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#92

Ah, sorry about that. You can look it up as nominalizer の。Tofugu has an extensive explanation for example. Particle の: Nominalizer

@ChristopherFritz explained it much better than I ever could, and I don’t pretend to know stuff well enough to explain them properly, but I believe it’s exactly the same の、yes. It takes the whole preceding clause, turns it into a noun, and then with the だ after it, it turns it into “It is that…”. Which sounds more like you’re giving a reason for something instead of just stating a fact, even in English.

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#93

This makes a lot of sense! Thank you :slight_smile:

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#94

I found this chapter really difficult. I think because they are just sitting and talking so there are not many visual clues as to what is going on. As a result a lot of it went over my head and I only understood thanks to other people’s efforts.

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#95

I’m very behind as sadly my health isn’t on my side :pensive: but going to try and catch up as best as I can! I’m not sure if I can explain this very well, but I seem to be able to understand the main points of a sentence usually, like the noun and the verb, but often struggle with the grammar (I do know this is a weak point of mine). Am I best trying to look up each grammar point and try and learn or just try to get through this and continue through Genki and other resources? Though honestly, in the Manga I do struggle knowing how to separate words and how to google what grammar point I’m looking for.
Thanks! :blush:

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#96

We all struggle with the grammar to various degrees, which is why we discuss whatever we don’t understand and ask for assistance here. I find it’s a very good way to learn. If you come across a grammar point often enough, you’ll eventually come to recognize it. Not at once, maybe not even the first ten times or so, but eventually it will stick. Whether you want to look up everything you come across or not is up to you of course - I think it’s best to find a balance between active learning and reading enjoyment that doesn’t stress you out too much. And don’t hesitate to ask questions, that’s what this book club is all about.

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#97

Okay! I think I’m probably gonna go through as best as I can and then make note of the sentences that really tripped me up and look those up, or look for advice here :blush:

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#98

Thanks to everyone who posted this last week. What a great chapter! I truly appreciate all the in depth explanation people are posting here. I think it’s a fantastic way to learn together, and for those of you who are deepening your learning by explaining via these posts, those reading them get just as much out of them as you get from posting them, so keep up the great work everyone!

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#99

It sounds like she’s talking with cotton in her mouth. Very difficult to understand.

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#100

Turning on subtitles helps.

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#101

Hi friends, I’m slowly tagging along, this has been a joyful, funny manga so far and this discussion is pure gold, so thank you for that!

I had a bazillion questions but most of them were already wonderfully answered on this thread, however there are a couple small ones left (I’m really sorry if they were already answered):

Page 6

じゃあ 私(わたし)の勝(か)ちでいい？

I don’t fully understand the でいい construct here. For the translation, I went with Well then, is that my victory?, but I cannot explain it grammatically.

Page 7

だとしたらオレを甘(あま)く見(み)すぎ

What is this trailing すぎ here? I’m having trouble finding what this is on-line. I went with If that’s the case, you’re not taking me seriously.

Page 16

わ、つめたっ。

What… is this? :thinking:

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#102

This is a shorter way of writing でもいい, which in this construction means something like “it’s fine even if”. Together with the rest of the sentence I’d translate it as something like “so, it’s fine if it’s my victory?”.

It comes from すぎる, which is something you can add to the stem of a verb to add a meaning of “too much” to it. For example 食(た)べる = to eat → 食(た)べすぎる = to eat too much. In this case it’s attached to the base of 甘(あま)く見(み)る, so it’d mean something like “you underestimate me too much”.

I think it’s just 冷(つめ)たい, which means cold, but cut off halfway. I’d probably just translate it as “brr” or any other exclamation you can make when you jump into cold water on a hot day :grin:

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#103

Joint reply to both @omk3 and @ChristopherFritz

TL;DR Thank you both very much for the detailed explanations on my の confusion!

Sorry for the delay in writing back, I read your replies and the linked material on the same day you wrote them, but kept putting off thanking you and getting distracted by reading more.

The reason I was initially uncertain about the normalizing の is that I had understood it as taking a non-noun thing and turning it into a noun thing.

But in this case we had a na-adj, which as cure dolly taught us, is really just a noun.
So if we wanted to make a na-adj into a noun proper we could just trim off the na, right?

The indefinite pronoun interpretation made much more sense, thank you both for highlighting that. I also read through the tofugu article (I printed it out so I could go through it on my commute more slowly).

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#104

Na-adjectives do indeed behave grammatically like nouns. But I don’t think you can necessarily use them on their own and make sense, because while grammatically they do behave like nouns, in terms of meaning they’re still adjectives, and adjectives need to modify a noun. In the sentence we were discussing, の isn’t just used to turn あいまい into a noun - as you say, it is one already. It is used to substitute for the missing noun that the adjective あいまいな modifies.

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#105

phraww, I have only just finished working through all of chapter 2, I’m a bit behind! (I’ve also written out the lines from chapter 3 and 4 but haven’t worked through yet).

Here are some still unknown / uncertain pieces from chapter 2.

Page 10, panel 2「言っちゃあ」

「高木さんは。。。言っちゃあ悪いが、あまり胸がない。。。」
Ichi.moe says this is 言って + は (+ あ)
I think this is consistent with the SO post linked earlier
This would mean this sentence has 2 は(s)

For some reason I’m still not quite able to make this click into a translation.
I did see some posts on this in the thread, going to try re-read them again for a 3rd time and see if I can make them click in my head.

Page 11, panel 1「ワケない」

「って。。。言えるワケないだろ…」
Not sure what to make of「ワケない」, maybe related to わけだ “reasonality”?

Page 15, panel 3 「ため」

「オレをからかうためだけに見学を」
what is「ため」
I think 「ため」 can mean “reason”, “purpose”, or “for” - but I wanted to double check if that is correct in this context

Page 16, panel 4 breakdown

「だまされない」
I break this down as
だます to trick, to deceive
-られる receptive or potential
-ない negative
If it weren’t for the negative, say 「だまされる」, it could be interpreted as Nishikata receiving the deception.
But with the negative, and the context where we know he had been deceived, I think we have to interpret this られる as instead being the potential form.
Meaning this changes to “I won’t be tricked (in the future)”.
Does that seem right?

Sorry for some duplicate questions, I’ve tried reading (and re-reading) posts already covering these points, but they aren’t clicking yet. So I’ll leave these open problems here for now and come back later to try again.

I also wanted to give a huge thank you to everyone for their breakdowns and discussions, I had many more questions but most of them were already answered =D

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:books::books: Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 :beach_umbrella::beach_umbrella:
#106
Regarding the two は:

There are basically two sentences here:
高木さんは isn’t part of a complete sentence yet, so you don’t need to worry about this は for now。
言っちゃあ悪い It’s bad to say. This is a full, complete sentence. The は here refers to 言って。As for saying that, it’s bad.
あまり胸がない There is barely any breast. This connects to the first は, so we know we’re talking about Takagi.
As for Takagi, it’s bad to say but, there is barely any breast.
Nearly literal translation works here. It’s just two sentences mixed together.

ワケない

If you look up ワケない on Jisho you’ll see that it often means there’s no way that when written in kana only.
って＝と, quoting particle, it quotes his previous bubble about the supposed complex
言える= can say
ワケない= there’s no way that
There’s no way I can say that, I guess.

That’s right. ために means in order to.

You did 見学 just in order to tease me?

It’s される, not られる, and it is, as you said, the passive of だます。 You don’t need the potential to say that something will or won’t happen in the future. The plain forms of Japanese verbs are already more future than present. So yes, he is actually saying I won’t be fooled, although I’m not fooled also works. I believe he means that he won’t be fooled by her invitation to swim together in the future, because she’ll surely tease him again .

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#107

Thank you so much for this reply, I had been turning this over in my head for a while as every thing I read on it gave a slightly different view.
I think you’re right, I had taken the “na-adj are nouns” too far and (in my confusion) oversimplified it.

Last night your comment prompted me to deep dive a bit and read into this Wikipedia on na-adj, and this Wikipedia on Ja adjectives more generally. I had previously read the Tofugu article on this but I had found it less helpful.

Part of why I had been thinking this way is because (sometimes?) a na-adj is used in the final position of 「AはBだ」sentences, just like a noun.
「元気」 can be used as 「私が元気だ」, and the same with 「大丈夫」
similar to the noun usage 「あれは本だ」.

From my reading last night it seems this final position usage is somewhat of a special case, and comes from the な / だ being potentially considered part of the na-adj itself (depending on linguistic interpretation).

TL;DR
But at the last the takeaway for me is that I cannot generally treat a na-adj as a noun and do actually need the の (either normalizer or indefinite pronoun).

This book club is helping my grammar so much!

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#108

True adjectives (i-adjectives) can be used in the final position too. It’s just that i-adjectives can act as verbs on their own (they include the meaning ‘to be’ in themselves), whereas na-adjectives, behaving like nouns as they do, need an actual だ at the end of the sentence.

So adjectives can take two positions in a sentence. They’re either at the end, or before a noun. In both cases their function is to describe the noun. So there is a need for a noun, which is where our の comes in, for when the actual noun is omitted. I-adjectives have the sense “to be” already in themselves, so they need no additions, either at the end or before a noun. Na-adjectives don’t have that, so they need something.

な is sometimes called the connective form of だ. You might find it helpful to think that na-adjectives need the sense of “to be” added to them, so they take だ at the end of a sentence, but な, the connective form of だ, when they need to connect to a noun.

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#109

Right, again sorry, my wording could have been much clearer.

I wanted to highlight how in「A は B だ」, B can either be a noun or a na-adj.
Previously my brain had seen this, along with the idea of “na-adj are just nouns”, and taken it too far to thinking “na-adj and nouns are completely equivalent” and roughly “each noun has an affinity either for の or な” (「AのB」 vs「AなB」), which you’ve helped remedy =D.

This is a great framing, the more I’ve sat with this the more it has slowly started to click into place.

See, this is an example of something I had heard before, but my brain hadn’t properly engaged with and had kind of discarded. I think when I first heard that I had thought something like “that is just history, I don’t need to pay attention to that”…
Last night reading this in the Wikipedia article was a “ohhh yeeaaaahh” moment, thanks for highlighting it as well as it helps reinforce it =D

+1
That was something I picked up from Cure Dolly and have found it very helpful.

Thanks again for all the help =D

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