Week 1: 小川未明童話集 - Ogawa Mimei’s Collection of Children’s Stories

I’m using Anki with single vocab flashcards but I’m trying to counter the downside you mention by always including the sentence I encountered the vocab in in my flashcards.

I wouldn’t stress out too much about there being N1 grammar points. The categorization by JLPT level is after all artificial and the language doesn’t care about it. I might be wrong but I believe N1 grammar is still mostly intelligible from the context unlike lower level grammar which could entirely prevent you from understanding what’s going on if you’re not familiar with it.

What bothers me so far about the stories is how peculiar they seem to be. I started to read the second one and it makes me wonder whether I would find fairytales like Hansel and Gretel for example weird if I weren’t exposed to them at a young age.

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I have to say that I was also having trouble rereading the first story because of all the unfamiliar vocabulary. I just started the second story and it seems a lot easier so far, so maybe there is some variation in the difficulty of these stories (it probably depends on the subject matter too). I do find that reading a lot helps you more easily recognise sentence structures so keeping at it has that benefit at least.

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I don’t stress but it’s a barometer for me…often find one here …having several pop up in this one and then when talking to the native speakers…even they were like this is a harder one :slight_smile:

seriously!!! read them now as an adult and go WTH are we reading to our kids…read an older printed one…they are dark and scary…gorey and sometimes very morbid…but they were meant to teach lessons to kids … looking back on them some of them are just peculiar is a polite way of putting it :wink:

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That’s a fair point. I’m sure the stories being older plays into it.

Haha, glad I’m not the only one!

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I personally don’t use Anki or any other kind of SRS outside Wanikani. I have learned new words just from reading, but I know there are plenty of words that I keep looking up again and again - I’m sure they’ll stick eventually too, but they’re taking their time. Words that come up in very different context (different books, different media, etc) tend to stick better. I don’t worry too much about vocabulary at this point though, it’s easy enough to look up. It’s grammar that can make a sentence unintelligible, even when knowing all the words in it, so that’s my priority right now.

And speaking of grammar, out of interest, what specific N1 grammar points have you spotted in this story? My approach to grammar being quite haphazard (I just try and look up whatever I don’t understand), I often miss those.

I thought so too, although it does have its quirks. Added vocabulary for it to the vocab list, by the way. Not everything’s in there, but it’s a start.

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For the curious, my takeaway from reading それでも歩は寄せてくる is that the main difference include:

  • Some pieces move differently compared with their chess counterparts.
  • When your piece gets near the opponent’s side (last three rows), you can opt to upgrade it (flipping the piece over to reveal the upgraded rank), allowing it to move in more directions.
  • Any piece you capture join your side. You can place (drop) one captured piece on the board (pretty much anywhere?) per turn. Dropping a piece means you cannot move that turn.

I’m unfamiliar with both chess and shogi, so I’m assuming that chess may have similar handicap rules of one side starting with fewer pieces. If not, then that would be another differencee.

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I’d have to go backwards… :wink: the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the でかなわない mentioned a while back (was coded as N1) in the link.

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trying to do a little at lunchtime on the tablet and didn’t see this one anywhere (unless the search on my tablet is failing me)…but depending on how this middle piece is read it seems like there is a subtle change in meaning

青年は、また勝ちみがあるのでうれしそうな顔つきをして、いっしょうけんめいに目を輝かしながら、相手の王さまを追っていました。

DeepL dumps out:

The young man was chasing after the other king, his eyes shining with excitement, happy because he had another chance to win.

But depends on how you parse かちみがある … If I replace that with the kanji: 勝ち味 (sign of victory [noun]) which makes sense DeepL spits out something slightly different:

The young man was chasing after the other king with a happy look on his face, his eyes shining with excitement, because he was going to win again.

another chance to win / going to win again are very different in meaning (at least they could be)…the first one implies a new game, while the 2nd one implies a game in progress…at least in English.

haven’t asked a native speaker yet but thought I’d throw this up there and see if I’m missing a grammar point somewhere? or something else… The subtle stuff is what kills me sometimes. :crazy_face:

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Chance to win/going to win both sound pretty close to me. Regardless, I may be missing something here, but what else could 勝ちみ be other than 勝ち味?

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A few thoughts on the 'other king' and 'another chance'.

If I remember correctly, in the prior line the old man remarks on having lost. Thus in this line, they would be playing another round, the young man looking to winning again (by checkmating the king).

“Other king” is a mistranslation (thanks DeepL!) of “opponent’s king”.

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Not unless you’re playing some sort of variant version.

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Yeah, I probably should have included the word variant. (I’m not familiar with all the lingo.) It wouldn’t be part of the “normal” rules.

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Whew!!! First attempt along the BBC!
It was quite, quite challenging mainly due to vocab and yet it was really a blast to be able to follow the story and also have fun with it. Can’t believe I did it. I’ll be forever grateful for this book club!!! (and also @NicoleIsEnough for sorting it all out!)

Looking forward for next week!! :slight_smile:
(in the meanwhile I’ll ‘rest’ with レンタルお兄ちゃん’s 3rd booklet)

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As this first week draws to a close, I just wanted to say thank you all for responding to my questions and for sharing your own thoughts on the story. This is the first book club that I’m actively participating in and I really enjoyed this first week of discussions!

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The state of the game the young man is trying to win

I could be misremembering, but I don’t think this is a new game. I think the old man says that he’s pretty much lost, but the young man still has to seal the deal. (Fun for the young man, not so much for the old man.)

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I also wanted to say thank you, I did not introduce myself in the main thread and have been silently reading along. I was not sure I would be able to stick with the book club, but it has been wonderful so far :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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This is also my first time joining a wk reading group. I’ve really appreciated the responses to my questions, the discussion in general, and everyone’s generosity. It’s an amazing resource.:pray: :pray::pray:Thank you all!

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That’s how I understood it too.

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I’ve managed to read the entire chapter now. It was, admittedly, very difficult, and I think I’m way over my head here. I will have to come back to this one at a later time, I think. While you can learn vocab as you go, I found it very tough to decipher the grammar and to recognise all the unknown kana-words as individual words (if that makes sense). It was still a nice learning experience, though. :slight_smile:

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Yes, that makes perfect sense! I feel it’s one of the downsides of children’s books and stories (although the Kanji use in these stories doesn’t seem to be aimed at children…). Another thing that I find to be hard with Kana words is that there are sometimes several Kanji words with the same reading which makes it harder to find the right one in the dictionary. This is even worse when conjugations come into play, especially when I can’t tell whether I’m looking at a verb, adjective, adverb or noun… :slightly_frowning_face:

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