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Discussion questions
What do you think about this week’s invention from the future?
Participation
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I like this question! I think it’s pretty useful and I wonder what other songs are in the book - a ‘doing the dishes’ or ‘laundry’ song would be nice lol
Hi all. I read the first couple of pages and will come back to the rest later. As expected, slow going with lots of lookups! Fun invention (I’d choose this one over last week’s…)
Things I found hard and my assumed translations here, corrections welcome:
Page 13
Panel 6, the Japanese is やねのボールもっていこ
My rough translation is “come and hold the roof ball” but that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me! I guess もっていこ has a more general meaning than the specific way I’ve translated it.
Side note: an embarrassing admission that I kept reading it as Pole rather than Ball (I blame the small text).
Page 14
Panel 8, ほかにもいろんなきょくがある
I roughly translate this as “there are other varieties of songs/music”
The casual contraction of 色々な was new to me. I also don’t fully understand why you need ほかにもいろんな to effectively mean “other” or “other varieties”. They both feel sort of repetitive/redundant? Is using both a normal phrase? (I’ve just said “other varieties” in english there so perhaps it’s as simple as that)
Panel 9, うまくいく is a new phrase for me, sounds like it means something like “to go well”
Side note - despite my low level, I do know the kanji that would have been used for some of the words like 他, 色々 and 上手 so not having them there made those panels much harder to understand! It’s much harder to parse when words start/end. Perhaps I am starting to understand why Japanese uses Kanji for writing…
It’s not もっていこ, it’s もってこい.
持って来る means “to bring”, “to fetch”, literally “hold (something) and come (here)”.
もってこい is an imperative form of that, or more specifically, こい is the imperative form of くる. So the song is called “bring [it here]” or “fetch!”.
Page 14
In my understanding the wording here isn’t really reduntant. ほかに just means “other (than this one)”, or “in addition to this one [there are various others]”.
And yeah, I completely agree that children’s books can be harder to parse because of kana-only writing.
One tip for parsing the kana - if you type the kana in on a JP keyboard on a phone, it often offers autocorrect kanji options that can give a hint to what the kanji should be!
Hi! I mostly followed the chapter but I have a few questions I couldn’t resolve on my own. This is my first manga in Japanese, so I’m learning a lot, especially about casual speech.
The title says ピーヒョロ and it can be seen in panel 6 that this refers to the onomatopeia of the rope moving. I’m just chalking it up as another mysterious sound effect.
Panel 2: the verb is in a form I’ve never seen before. My best guess is that it comes from とる, and is in the causative form, とらせる. This form seems to give the meaning of (with the rope) allows the action of taking.
But I’m still confused about what the よう is doing. Is it the “let’s” conjugation (e.g. する → しよう)? And how does that transform the causative form? Something like: “Let’s use the rope to allow us to get (the ball)”?
3.Panel 15, I wanted to clarify: she uses だして instead of でて to refer to taking the package out instead of referring to her going out and coming back?
And in this case, から translates as “because”? So you have, “Because I’m going to take out (this package) and come back, please look after the house.”
Panel 22. No question about the grammar. Just why is he facing away from the door when he says this?
Panel 26 uses both だけ and しか, which seems redundant?
He then says “それじゃいうけど”. Does this mean something like, “Well that being said”?
I’m not sure either this time. Here are two building blocks that would make sense, maybe this was a creative combo:
ひょろひょろ - mimetic for unsteady
ピーピー - among other meanings, a noun for a flute
panel 2 p 13
You’re right and got the meaning correct, this is causative, and the way to understand why you’re guess is basically right is to know how the particle に works (good reference, scroll down to beyond the basics). に marks the actor.
ピーヒョロロープにとらせる would be "to make the rope get it. Then the よう is exactly what you thought, “let’s” get the rope to…
#3 yep #4 good question! No idea
panel 26 p 16
#5 the しかいない serves the role is "except for the two of you (being here) " and the だけ is “just” and only applies to the noun (the two) so it’s emphasising, aside from just you two, there is no one else here. In Japanese you kinda need the しかいない to get across the more lonely idea that there’s no one else, the two are not enough… (to defend themselves). Don’t worry too much, you get a feeling for this kind of nuance over time and just start accepting its not phrased as one would in English.
Yep!
And my general impressions
Week 2 impressions pp 16-17
Well that escalated and deescalated quickly
I liked how they played with this invention more in different ways, that was fun.
Panel 22. No question about the grammar. Just why is he facing away from the door when he says this?
You’re referring to the こんちは, right? He’s already inside the house
I wonder if Nobita’s house doesn’t have a doorbell, and visitors will just come inside and shout greetings to make their presence known.
I vaguely remembered this being the case in the genkan in the more rural areas, and this Japan Today article confirmed that:
In rural areas especially, the “genkan” or inside entranceway to a house was considered open to the public, and often neighbours and salespeople alike would blithely enter this space and call out to the residents within.
Since this episode is from the 70s I think, that’s probably the era when people did that. Interesting bit of culture I wasn’t aware of!
I’ve always liked that there was a word in Japanese for “pretending to be out”: 居留守 (いるす). I guess that would be difficult though if salespeople can freely enter your 玄関.
This chapter was fun! What a useful but odd invention, I love it. All of you answered any questions I had again, thank you! I might try to read it again in a few days and see if it’s any easier the next time or if there still is something I need to ask about. Thanks everyone!
Welcome to Week 2 of ドラえもん ・ Doraemon 
Vocabulary
Discussion Guidelines
Discussion questions
Participation
