Well but this holds true regardless:) it even has a name, forgot what it is
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I think it’s gikun (義訓): gikun | Japanese with Anime
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It’s not - it’s generally just “here’s how you pronounce this thing”.
9 times out of 10 that’s going to be the standard kanji reading, but sometimes it’s going to be nonstandard readings, double meanings, or completely different words (like ひとつなぎの大宝, or the 半世紀) you found here.
Often the latter is done because the name something has in the story would be meaningless or confusing without further context - a ワンピース is a bathing suit, and エーラ isn’t even really a word in Japanese, but using them in this way immediately clarifies the meaning.
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It’s fun to use in English as well!
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That reminded me of this relevant scene:
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finally finished, was really surprised and it’s even made me sad
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That’s what they call 物の哀れ, a sadness at the transience of things.
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There’s a pretty funny example of gikun/forced furigana reading on page 144 (chapter 5) for those who don’t mind having a peak ahead.
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Well would you look at that, turns out the floor isn’t made of floor 
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The Week 3 thread is up! See you all there for the end of Chapter 1
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A little late as I haven’t had time to read in the last few weeks.
Page 22
Resumo
いつか君にこうして返すべきものだったんだ
I believe it’s something like “It’s something I should give you back”, but I don’t understand what it would be こうして
Page 26
Resumo
こうしているとあのときに戻ったかのようだ
Confused about this こうしている, (it could be the same thing as the previous sentence)
Thanks for any response!
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22
こうして is ‘in this way’, so the sentiment is something like more like 'It’s something I thought would be good to return to you (in this way)"
26
こうしている is ‘doing it in this way’, so ‘[as a consequence of] doing it in this way, i feel like i’ve returned to that time [of our adventures]’
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I loved what you said here. For me this is what is all about in the experience watching/reading this series. Having finalized the anime my personal conclusion is that Frieren is us in our long life (allthough we know we are going to die someday, actually our experience feels infitine) and the circumstances and people that Frieren meets and passes through represent times of our lives. Makes you think about how that person that is not in our life anymore changed us for the rest of our journey, things that we do now that if it hadn’t been for them we wouldnt be doing it now, and other things too. Anyway, at least that is how this series hit me.
I really liked what you noticed here! I was just this week learning about the impliance or nuance that has the use of あなた for japanese people, and seeing it here was nice, I overlooked that before. It’s a nice detail.
I’m catching up. This turned out to be surprisingly hard, I am a little bit sad about that. And so I’m just reading (like passing my eyes above a lot of words i dont know too) and learning with what you guys post here. I just want to catch up so maybe when I arrive the part you are reading I can hopefully take more time and maybe try to learn a little bit more by my own. Also it has been tiring days lately so I dont have that much of energy to decipher all the words I dont know now.
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Overall thoughts
I like that interpretation a lot, thanks!
That’s ok! I totally understand this. I think it’s great that you’re choosing to read more loosely for the overall understanding. To be honest I wish I would have started that much earlier in my Japanese reading. I started by reading everything really carefully, but it was very slow. Now I find it really helpful to be flexible, sometimes reading more intensively (more lookups) if I have time and energy, and sometimes reading more extensively (more for enjoyment, fewer lookups).
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if you don’t mind clarifying, could you explain what nuance あなた has?
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あなた
あなた is a weird thing, because it originally was very polite, just like おまえ and many other generic second person pronouns. Iirc it originally was similar to こちら and そちら used for people, in the sense that it referred to the direction instead of being direct. But in practice it’s barely being used nowadays, some wives call their husband あなた, and it can be used in some niche situations properly, but generally it will sound a bit distant, which can be come off as rude-ish. It’s like being in a group and talking about someone there as “this person” or “that person”.
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Yah, it’s the あ member of the こなた／そなた／あなた／どなた tetrad.
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Yes, Is just what Gorbit said. What my teacher taught me is that Japanese people don’t like pronouns when calling somebody, they pretty much like using names. So everytime they want to say something they use the name. So using anata would be odd, and very impersonal. She explained to me that in textbooks they usually use anata because there is no context, it could be any person, but in real life, they would just say your name. She repeated many times this about being impersonal and that they just dont like using it.
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