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

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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:

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).

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.

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

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 .

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!

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.

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

110

Let’s go, 2nd chapter!

Chapter 2, page 2

西片: 「いいなぁ…みんな楽しそうで」

  • いいなぁ → “I’m jealous” this is the translation I found on hinative but I’d like to know why it is
  • みんな → “everyone”
  • 楽しそで → “looks fun” guess made by adding the noun そう for guesses. What comes after, I guess, it’s just the conjugation form of the copula だ

”Hah, I’m jealous… looks like everyone’s having fun.”

高木: 「そーねー。」

  • そーねー → “that’s true” I’m not sure because everyone on hinative translates it as ‘well’ or ‘let me see’ but this doesn’t feel right here
111

[Details=Chapter 2, Page 2]

なぁ (which you will also see as なあ) is a particle that expresses the feelings of the speaker (regardless of there being a listener). If you know of Canadian English at all, we are relentlessly mocked well known for our, “Eh?”, and it can be used in a similar way to the Japanese なぁ or ね.

いいなぁ is thus, literally, just “Good, eh?”

But tone and context matter a lot. You could literally be saying something is good. But since he is sitting off to the side, watching others have fun, the context implies that he is envious, and the tone he speaks it in would make it obvious.

With that in mind, I’d be more likely to translate it along the lines of:

“Must be nice, eh…” (which retains the “good” vibes, but also accurately portrays the envy)

Does it help to see it written as:

そうねぇ

This is the casual そうです, which is often translated as “That’s true,” with a ね particle (just elongated).

What’s important is that it is a casual affirmation, a sign of agreeing with what was said before. It can also be used as a filler word like, “well,” or “let me see,” but it would still imply agreeing with what you heard just before speaking it, I think.

[/details]

112
Chapter 2, page 3, panel 1

Note: this one was difficult and I’m not sure I did everything right, a check would be highly appreciated

西片: 「くそ…プール授業初日だっていうのに見学なんて…」

  • くそ → “damn…”
  • プール授業初日だ → “it’s the first day of swimming class”
  • っていうのに → “even though” took a bit to figure out what was happening here. Apparently it’s というのに grammar point, which is nothing more than the のに particle (despite/ in order to) with a bit more of emphasis give by という. Not really sure what’s best in english here but I’m not concerned by it because I’m pretty sure I understood the japanese concept
  • けんがく → “study by observation”
  • なんて → I’m not sure it can be translated, but apparently it has the function of taking what comes before and giving the ‘such a thing’ nuance (bad/ surprise nuance)

”Damn… Even though it’s the first day of swimming class, (I’m) really (doing) study by observation…”

113
Chapter 2, page 2

Wow, Explanation on point! I get it now, very clear. And the fame of the Canadia “eh” arrived till here in the southern Italy :wink:

Incredible how when you know the bases, the sentence gains sense in its context despite any dictionary translation! All clear :ok_hand:

I didn’t know it was like そうです, this is perfectly clear too now!

114

That interpretation looks good to me.

115

Thanks for checking! :pray:

Chapter 2, page 3, panel 2

西片: ”この手のケガさえなきゃ…”

  • この手のケガ → this hand’s injury
  • さえ → “only” Edit: no questions about it, I found all the answers!
    なきゃ → “~if wasn’t~” this is the conditional form of the adjective ない - なければ contracted. Approximative translation

”If only my (this) hand wasn’t injured…”

116
Chapter 2, page 3, panel 3-4

Panel 2
高木: 「そういえば西片、その手のケガって…」

  • そういえば → “come to think of it”
  • って → Colloquial topic marker, I guess…

”Come to think of it, Nishikata, your injured hand… (what happened?)”

西片: 「え…あぁ」

  • “Eh…? Ahh.”

Panel 3
西片: 「いろいろ…あって…ね。」

  • いろいろ → “various…(things)”
  • あって → “happen” ? Why is this present? I guess it’s the て form of ある that in this case means ‘to happen’ but I don’t get the present tense

”Various… things… happened”

117
Page 3

いろいろあって (despite being broken up by ellipses to show he is kinda fumbling a bit with his words) is a whole phrase on its own that kinda means “what with this and that; for a number of reasons”. To break down the phrase a little bit, because you can connect it with other verbs, the ある is in てform for that purpose, I think.

Since he doesn’t actually connect it to anything, because he is intentionally being vague, it sort of lends it to being the trailing off て form that we talked about before, and he just adds the ね as an afterthought as sort of a, “You know?”

118
Summary

Clear! Got fooled again by common expression (also, it makes more sense the most complicate Japanese grammar point than ‘what with this that’ :joy: I suppose it’s a common english expression)

119

Ahaha. It is a common English expression, but now that I look at it closely…it is something of a word salad, eh? :rofl:

Edit: Made worse by the fact I originally mistyped and didn’t put an “and” between this and that. :sweat_smile:

120
Chapter 2, page 3, panel 5-6

高木:

  • 「のらネコなでようとしたら嚙まれたんでしょ。」
  • のらネコ → “stray cat”
  • なでよう → “to pat” in the volitional form. ‘Let’s pat’ doesn’t fit into the english translation but I guess it would be the most accurate translation of that verb standalone? I’m a bit confused but I guess it’s because in english (and Italian) other words are needed to make the volitional while Japanese has it built in the word.
  • としたら → “After (when) you tried” this is the ‘tara’ conditional of とする. Now, I can’t really put this together with a volitional, it sounds too weird. “…after you tried wanting to pat…”? Wth? Maybe I’m missing something.
  • 嚙まれたれた → “got bitten” 嚙む In the past receptive form.
    *んでしょ → “it is that… right?” Conteacted from のてじょう, form of guessing used with some confidence.
  • ”Let me guess, it’s that you got bitten after you tried petting a stray cat, isn’t it?”

西片:

  • 「え！？なんで知ってんの！？誰にも言ってないのに！」
  • なんで → “how…?”
  • 知ってんの → “know” this is 知る in the て + いる for contracted, follow by the の particle that requests explanation.
  • 誰にも → “(not) to anyone”
  • 言ってない → “didn’t tell” I guess this is いっていない (いる negative) contracted, and while in english it’s put in the past, in Japanese is in present tense because it describes a state of not having told anyone something. Or maybe I’m just wrong?
  • に → “despite” this particle turns two sentences A and B into “despite A(のに), B” but in this case I guess Nishikata is inverting the logical order again because A comes second
  • ”What!? How is it that you know!? Despite (me) not telling (this to) anyone！”

高木:

  • 「あはは、正解なの！？テキトーに言っただけなのに！」
  • 正解なの → “Is it that it’s correct?”
    テキトーに → “carelessly” (without think about it, half-minded)
    言っただけ → “merely said”
    なのに → “despite/ although”
  • ”Hahaha, was it correct!? Despite I was just guessing!”

西片: ”Whaaaat!?” (good lord, Nishikata…)

Don’t worry, it doesn’t make any sense anyway :joy:

121

Chapter 2, page 4

Panel 2-3-4

西片:

  • 「高木さんは今日なんで、/ 見… / が… / く…」
  • ”Takagi-san, today, why are you doing lesson by observ-…“
Panel 6

友人:

  • 「プールを見学してる女子はだいたい生理だ、」
  • ”The girls that do swimming lesson by observation generally have the period”

Note: is the progressive 見学してる describing a continuous action or a state of being?

友人:

  • 「生理は腹が痛いらしいぞ」
  • 痛いらしい → “seems to be sore” this is the first time I encounter the helper adjective らしい and I’m not really sure how to tell if it’s attaching to the adjective 痛い or to the whole subsentence “腹が痛い”
  • (literal) ”As for the menstrual cycle, the belly seems to be sore/aching/painful” (totally not sure of this translation)

西片:

  • 「って、２組高尾が！！」
  • Edit: I went back to the old posts of this thread and found out what this line means. って is just Nishikata directly quoting the words of his friend from class 2, Takeo.