@parasoxical was the one that had the original thread…not sure but pinging in case
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Thank you for your help, I think I’ll try making one myself, as the process of making one is already part of the practice for me. I’ll let you know if I have something I can share!
Also, I’m new to the reading club and the forum in general, and I’m so glad this place exists. Thank you!
Last night after work I went and bought the whole series (vol 1-18) second hand at Mandarake. I’m new to reading in Japanese, but I love the series so much that it’s great motivation for me. I hope to catch up soon with the club and join the discussion!
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I only have the first two manga, but haven’t had time to read, lately. I suppose you already know that there are anime cartoons for at least a few of the chapters which followed the manga rather closely. #fun fun fun
According to the You Tube videos that I watched, using a computer, it is very straightforward to create decks out of data tables. Therefore, you ought to be able to use the Vocabulary lists that were already made for those manga to generate your own Anki deck. I only use my cell phone and no computer, so I haven’t made decks before…
I’m still planning to use a gigantic vocabulary table to create my own personal vocabulary Anki deck… I just never seen to get around to it. And now I am shifting all of my attention to studying for the JLPT N3 for this December, so I am only reading textbooks. 
Good luck, DikkeDraak!!
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Question on the anime, episode 1x01 from the chapter 消しゴム
After Takagi fools Nishi once again with the eraser trick and asks the teacher to go to the toilet, Nishikata, frustrated, thinks “な…何(なに)かないものか…”
I’m not sure what’s so confusing about it but I’m not able to translate it. 何か is something. 何かない is “is nothing” or “there’s nothing” as well, maybe… and what about もの? It’s a bit confusing, I always vaguely grasp the overall sense but never get the nuance, unless it’s used to explain like the feminine もん at the end of the sentence.
The next line is “高木さんを辱める方法が”
Edit: now that I think of it, is this an inverted sentence? If yes, it makes a bit more sense logically. I would still like to hear a more logical breakdown tho
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So I’ve had it my head that I am going to respond to this, and I keep forgetting. I’m about to call it a night, though, so definitely not going to be able to give this proper attention. If I haven’t responded by the morning (say in about 8-10 hours), tag me so that I remember to come back. My memory has been so bad this week. 
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Hey my man no worries! Actually, I’m glad you didn’t lose time answering it. I don’t know what was going on in my head when I posted, because looking back at it again it’s clear everything is obvious. I think I asked it when I was sleepy and about to go to bed two nights ago
Even though, the explanation of a bit of nuance about the use of もの in this context would help!
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That’s a grammar point. I am on my phone right now so I can’t link, but look for ~ないもの(だろう)か on Bunpro (or elsewhere).
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Great! Do you mean the ないものだろうか grammar point?
Bunpro always handy
Btw what’s wrong with the phone, I only study from there 
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Question of a sentence that takagi says to nishi while explaining what she wrote down in the calligraphy practice chapter.
Nishikata ask “現状維持？”
And she answers: あぁこれ？これはねぇ、そのままからかいやすい西片でいてほしいなあって…"
Three questions:
- これはねぇ？ what is this? Edit, I bet it’s これは、ね (particle)
- でいて？ what is the で and what does it mean in combination with いる verb?
- I know ほしい is desired but what’s ほしいなあって?
Edit: I’d translate it as “I’d like for Nishikata to keep being easy to tease as it is now” but shouldn’t このまま be used instead? Or is she referring to Nishikata’s trait so she uses その instead of この？
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Yes!
でいる is the ている form of だ (like 食べている for 食べる) and means to stay in state X or keep being X.
verbてほしい is “I want you to do verb” so からかいやすい西片でいてほしい I want you to keep being the 西片 that is からかいやすい
てほしい + particle な (elongated) + って
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Can’t believe it was this simple, it actually makes perfect sense logically as well!
Or more literally “verb is wanted (by me)” right? 
Are you 300% sure about it? Because it makes all the sense in the world and if you check episode 1x2 at 3:35~ you can hear her trailing a bit but the subtitles I have on animelon seem to put a bit of space after な so to me it looked like な+あって (which seems not to make sense so…)
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Thanks! By the way I’m really not sure about the nuance between このまま and そのまま, I feel I heard both used basically in the same situation… 
Maaaaybe このまま is slightly more about the current situation right now and そのまま can be any kind of situation? (like how これから・それから both mean something like “and then after that” but これから is about now (from now on) while それから can be used for past and future?)
Yeah, but てほしい is a bit of a weir one IHMO because there is a very clear emphasis on I want YOU or I want SOMEONE to do something but it’s not clear just looking at the structure.
なぁ+って seems to fit the situation well, and I can’t think of what an あって like this could mean 
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Interesting point let’s see if @MrGeneric @ChristopherFritz have an opinion on this. Btw I remember watching a Cure Dolly video on the まま expressions if I’m not wrong
Could you spend some more words on it or provide a link? I’m not sure I it. Maybe it’s because of the subjectivity of ほしい adjective?
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I don’t know how to explain well, but usually the pattern ClauseXてadjectiveY means that the situation X is the cause or the reason of my feeling Y.
See some examples here in the paragraph “Verbs and Adjectives that express Feelings”:
So 1) the volition is low, it’s mostly feeling arising in me, and 2) the subject in the clause can be anybody/anything, me, you, something…
But then somehow てほしい is quite different, because the volition seems quite strong (I WANT you to do something), and the subject cannot be me (YOU or SOMEONE).
I just find that a bit odd, I don’t know, it probably evolved this way because there is already a way to say I want to do X (たい form) so the てほしい got used for something else, maybe?
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This is in volume 3, correct?
The following is my sense of そのまま. I do not claim it to be 100% accurate, so anything others can add/correct is always appreciated.
Think of このまま as being “the current situation” or “the present situation”.
Think of そのまま as “to remain in that situation without changing”. (It is separately used for “to resemble completely”, similar to そっくり.)
Consider this panel from Flying Witch:
The first character bites into a freshly-picked green pepper.
The second character asks, “It can be eaten (when it is) like that?!”
Here, I see そのまま reflects that the green pepper is being eaten the way it is, without change such as cooking it.
Consider this panel from Mitsuboshi Colors:
The girl on the left, with her friends, plan to bury a time capsule made of a taped-closed cookie tin container.
The girl on the right asks, “Could it be, you intended to bury this as it is?”
Because of the material the container is made from, it will corrode over the ten years it’s intended to be buried. Here, そのまま refers to the state of the container without modification to account for corrosion.
Here’s a scene from 俺物語!!, where the main character is blindfolded and his friends are guiding him toward a watermelon to split open with a stick. This leads to:
“Left, left! Yes, straight ahead just like that.”
Here, そのまま is about keeping in the current state of the direction he’s walking, without changing direction.
Here is an example from Detective Conan, where a bride is about to drink some soda before the wedding ceremony:
“Ah, that’s no good, drinking it like that. Your lipstick will come off!”
Here, the unchanged situation is bad, so the solution is to change the situation by introducing a straw.
Notice that these are all about not changing a situation.
このまま, on the other hand, isn’t about maintaining a situation, but rather it simply refers to the current situation.
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It’s this. The rules for この, その, and あの still apply, regardless of the まま.
この = close to the speaker (physically or metaphysically), but could also be close to the listener
その = close to the listener, but not the speaker
あの = far from both speaker and listener
They can be interchangeable in some cases. If Takagi-san and Nishikata’s relationship were closer than it is in the time this is happening, このまま could be acceptable, I think. But since it’s not yet, そのまま makes the most sense.
I did see @ChristopherFritz replying too, though, and he might have a more lucid explanation than me. I’m going off of gut-feel for the most part. (Edit: he hit post before me. 
)
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I’m trying to avoid that lecture because it would put a lot more meat on an already full barbecue, but actually your explanation was perfectly clear as you put it. Just to be sure - as I understood it: if there is a clause ending in て that is followed by an adjective, usually it’s expressing the correlation of the clause happening and having the adjective as a desired result…? (At least when talking about a certain kind of adjectives)
Don’t know as well but makes perfect sense! If we’re talking about how things evolved I would annoy (once again) @Jonapedia
Anyway a question I do have on this is, why do you feel that てほしい 's volition is so much stronger than other forms? Is this the sort of “the longer the expression, the more polite (or in this case, more emphasis on the volition)” thing?
Oops, I was sure it was vol. 1 
I have no more doubts left after your explanation! I noticed that そのまま always refers to the condition/ situation in which is the direct interlocutor (as it’s normal to be with the そ~ series).
Also thanks for the two links!!
Did you ever hear or read あのまま? I could imagine it being used when - for example - describing the current situation of a foreign country during a politics conversation with your friend and the such…?
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Also in volume three ;)
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once again impressed by your indexing capacity
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I don’t really know either, but if you look at how ほしい is used with nouns, I think what we can infer is that it’s used for things that one wants but doesn’t have. The kanji for it (欲) was used in Classical Chinese to mean ‘to want’, and even now, in both Chinese and Japanese, it means ‘desire’. In any case, if it’s used for things one doesn’t have, then it doesn’t make sense to use 〜てほしい on actions you’d do yourself, because it’s not really that you don’t/can’t have the action, or rather, it doesn’t come from an outside source. At any rate, that’s how I think about it.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense that 〜てほしい is not at all a strong expression? One of my dictionaries even says (in usage notes for ほしい) that it’s used to indirectly make a request, and that definitely lines up with how I’ve seen it used in anime. ‘I desire that [someone] do [something]’, but I can’t/don’t force it to happen. That’s my impression of ほしい. I’m not sure if ください is more or less polite, but ほしい does seem more conversational: ‘I’d like you to take a look at my essay, actually.’ That’s what 〜てほしい is like (possibly with a です for politeness).
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