Week 2 ドラえもん ・ Doraemon 🤖 (Absolute Beginner Book Club)

This week was a bit more challenging to me. The title already tripped me up from the start… then the volitional form in the first page… I was sweating…

It was even fun to break down though, plus a lot of opportunities to learn new expressions.

Anecdote on panel 26

The どろぼう bubble in panel 26: ほう、おまえたちだけしかいないのか、それじゃいうけど。。。。。

I cried trying to understand it, had to ask for help to a friend :sweat_smile:

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I can’t tell how much doraemon I’ve watched in my childhood :cowboy_hat_face:

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This week was harder than last week, but with the help of the lookup tools and peeking at the thread I was able to work my way through it.

Less kanji for me to recognize, but I did recognize and used it to guess something close to the gist of the sentence both times it showed up.

I was able to work out some of the loan words on my own: ロープ, トランポリン, ボール

こんちは is one I haven’t seen before but is close enough to こんにちは to guess what it meant.

I was also able to work out some of the particles I recently learned like は and の and that helped to at least see how the sentence was structured, even if I didn’t know the words around them lol

This was a fun chapter! Looking forward to next week, and hopefully will have a bit more knowledge of Japanese to make the reading go more smoothly.

(^o^)/

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A few notes and observations about page 14.

Summary

Page 14, panel 9: にづくりがうまくいかないわ。

うまくいかない tripped me up until I realized it’s the verb
上手く行く in the plain negative form, which I think roughly translates to:

The packaging isn’t going well.

I also added this to the spreadsheet. :+1:


Regarding the kanji 上…

Page 14, panel 14 (after Nobita performs the packaging song): まあ、じょうずね。(上手)

Back in chapter 1, panel 13, we had とび上がった。

It’s interesting that in two stories, there are three different usages of 上, and all three have different readings.

  • 飛び上がった (とびあがった)
  • 上手く行かない (うまくいかない)
  • 上手 (じょうず)

It’s also interesting that only とび上がった had the kanji for 上.


Regarding the grammar point あった and いた…

Page 14, panel 11: あった。

Nobita is looking for the packaging song, and then finds it, 「あった。」

I found it.

Which is the same grammar point as in chapter 1, panel 26, when they are looking for Jaian on the plane, and when they find Jaian, 「いた。」

An explanation with a link to a useful article is here:

Week 1 ドラえもん ・ Doraemon 🤖 (Absolute Beginner Book Club) - #25 by lcaraba

This grammar point is starting to stick for me! :smile:

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It’s great to see so many comments that although reading your first manga is tough - it’s getting easier! See you in week 3 !

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Hey everyone! Catching up on previous weeks and really appreciate all of the explanations on this thread.

One remaining question I have: What is the purpose of the at the end of a few sentences? Examples:

  • にづくりがうまくいかない
  • 出してくるから、おるすばんたのむ
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i’m still reading and digesting this article myself, and it has been helpful for me:

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It’s me again! This was so funny and cute, I loved it! Not gonna lie, I’d love some house cleaning songs to play on that flute :rofl:
And on to week 3!

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I’ve read this chapter today. These stories are very cute, even if I have to struggle to translate them, especially since it is mainly using informal speech which I am less confident with. Thanks so much to everyone for writing their thoughts in this thread which is extremely useful. I’m going to read it and the first story again in a few weeks and see what has stuck :slight_smile:

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