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Discussion questions
What do you think about this week’s invention from the future?
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I’m still reading but haven’t reached this point yet
I’ve already read previously but I’m here for the discussion
The very first page introduced me to じどうしゃ (自動車) which reminds me that I’d love a Japanese dictionary resource that was useful for understanding contextual differences or usage differences between apparently similar words.
I already knew くるま (車) and jdict/jishou translate them, respectively as “car; automobile; motorcar; motor vehicle; auto” and “car; automobile; vehicle” (with a secondary meaning of “wheel; castor; caster” for 車).
They’re both tagged as “common” and “jlpt 5”, so one is not clearly older / archaic / etc. I’d suspect the longer 自動車, which also appears as the base for a bunch of compound words related to automobiles, is more formal.
The one to ride it is me. You guys did a good job (making it)?
Page 2
Winner goes first! (pushing him)
Haa…Haa…
Why are you so weak?
Suneo, your turn. Where’d you go?
Doraemoooon!
How pitiful.
The slope lever!
When using this, you don’t have to push to run/go fast!
Page 3
Let’s go…let’s go (encouraging himself?)
It’s no good…
Quickly push (the lever) away from yourself
The road becomes sloped and it begins to roll forward.
By pushing the lever away from yourself like that, it makes a bigger/faster slope.
Hya! Fast!
Page 4
To people outside the car, it’s not a sloped road, it just looks like a flat road.
Waa, it’s going too fast!
Pull back the lever!
Whew, it stopped.
Let me ride, let me ride!
It’s too dangerous on the road.
This narrow place?
Page 5
The Gulliver tunnel.
It’s so wide!
What a change!
Lend it to me.
Waa, Jaian!
I’ll push the lever like this!
Page 6
WAA IT’S SCARY
Don’t worry!
If you get out of the car, it’s back to normal (?)
This invention seems pretty dangerous! I probably wouldn’t want to play with the lever or the Gulliver tunnel (although it might be fun to shrink down and ride around on an RV car or something).
I have to look up official spelling for the names, too.
I really enjoy a monolingual children’s dictionary. There are often images and examples to distinguish different uses of similar words, or the same sounding word with different kanji. And they provide example sentences/ fragments. I have this one and love exploring it. Just keep in mind it won’t replace your need for other dictionaries and especially online resources. But for that exploratory purpose it is fantastic.
And don’t underestimate the importance of just as you’re doing, noticing and taking the time to think who said something and what was the context? You’ll notice patterns quickly for common words.
Honestly, this invention would be too much for me, but my child self would love it! Funny that.
Thanks to the others with the help so far! I do have a few parts I’d like to ask about. I’m sorry if my questions are really obvious.
Page 19
のるのはおれだ。
What is a good explanation of のは? It seems a lot like は when I searched for it online and then I got confused.
Page 20
かったものからじゅんばんに。
Does this mean, “the order (of who pushes first) is who won/the winner”?
Page 24
車からおりれば、ただのじめんたもの。
So is this saying, "To dismount the car, simply *** "
I’m guessing it would end with something about the ground, but I’m not sure what that could be. Could it be, “to dismount the car, simply go on the ground?”
I could definitely be misinterpreting, especially since I am new to the ただの
Nice questions - there’s nothing too simple to ask!
p 19
It as actually just a variation of は here! The の here is what is called a nominaliser because normally it’s
Noun + は…
So for a verb it’s
Verb + の + は to get the verb"ing"
Here: as for getting on, it’s me.
= I’m the one getting on
P 20 - nice job, that’s right
P 24 - I might be wrong but I understood this as the conditional if: if you get off, it’s just the ground (as in, you don’t continue tumbling down the cliff seen from the perspective of the cart)
This week’s chapter was quite interesting. Harder in some aspects and easier in others.
It is quite surprising to me how leaving a textbook setting can completely change everything. I feel like I’ve been learning so much from what we have read so far. I think this is truly the difference between something geared toward beginners in the language and children, as one expects children to be able to wholly master the language, despite their lack of vocabulary.
I notice now that I greatly overestimated how big of a problem my lack of kanji knowledge would be when starting to read Japanese material. I used to wonder if I should wait to pass more WK levels before joining the ABBC but I am so glad I didn’t.
Actually, I wish the comic would use even more kanji, I feel like it makes it a lot easier to quickly understand what is going on. I feel like Japanese has so many homonyms…
When ジャイアン said “かったものからじゅんばんに” it took me forever to understand he was talking about 勝った and not 買った, and it didn´t help that I had never seen もの used in such a way before. I couldn’t understand for the life of me which things they had bought and how this tied to のびた winning the じゃんけん…
Here are some grammar points I noticed from this chapter that I had never studied before and that I summarized so I can go back to it at a later time:
ば～ほど: When ドラえもん says “レバーを前にたおすほど、きゅうなさかになるよ”. It’s doubly interesting because the hypothetical seems to be omitted.
ではなくて: When ドラえもん says “車にのっていないひとから見ると、 さかみちじゃなく、ただの たいららなみちなんだよ”. The conjunction particle て seems to be omitted. I wonder if this serves a particular purpose.
I’ve also noticed some more occurrences of 「なんだ」and「のか」and「んだ」. I find this a fascinating structure that the more I try to understand rationally, the less I can grasp, but when I decide to “go with my heart”, it’s suddenly much clearer.
I wonder if I will soon get to the point where I will stop trying to translate everything I read in my head, and if I will just trust the overall meaning I was able to “feel” in my heart. Does this even make any sense? I feel like it definitely happened at some point when I was learning English, lol…
Funny anecdote, I am Brazilian, and in the region of Brazil I grew up in, we call this game “jokenpô”. I found out, thanks to this week’s chapter, that it comes from the Japanese じゃんけんぽん. It is so because my region had a great influx of Japanese migrants in the past and we incorporated many Japanese words into our daily vocabulary. We even do the little song-songy cry before showing what we chose.
This makes sense to me! For sure when I stopped translating it made things like that easier. The problem I found was to trusting it, since I wasn’t always correct. Being involved in clubs helps a lot for that, then I would trust myself more on what I read on my own, expand my knowledge slowly with grammar books, and always learn a lot from the specific points people discuss in clubs. I guess it’s like everything, balance is good
I’m not too familiar with Doraemon, and I din’t know what the Gulliver Tunnel was.
For anyone who is interested:
This igloo-shaped gadget is a piece of technology from the 22nd century that belongs to Doraemon. It serves a main purpose like the Shrink Ray, to shrink people down and bring them back to size, with the larger end for shrinking, and the smaller side for enlarging. Anything brought inside the tunnel will shrink down in size as well.
Not too many questions this week. I am still not 100% sure on some words being thrown into sentences, such as the way some sentences end, or using もの, but they don’t seem to be needed to understand the sentence.
Trying to understand panel 8.
My literal translation: “winner from(?) turn order to(?)” which should = “The winner (decided) the turn order (for pushing).”
What is the こ used in panel 33?
My translation is: literal: “change turn (こ) is you know!” = “It’s my turn!”
What is the もの used in panel 39?
From what I understand, the translation should be something like: “When/if you get off the car, (it) is ordinary ground (i.e. not a slope).” Normally I see もの appear immediately after the object or verb it relates to, not after だ as in this case.
It was interesting seeing a Gulliver’s Travel reference, even if it doesn’t make much sense (Gulliver didn’t become tiny, he just found an island of tiny people).
It’s such a cool meld of cultures, I’m more exposed to Brazilian people in Japan but hear stories of the opposite too and all the neat carryover. If you drink beer I so highly recommend Japas, absolutely amazing beers that often highlight both (more Japanese focused overall but still). I think they’re out of Rio but not sure.
Welcome to Week 3 of ドラえもん ・ Doraemon 
Vocabulary
Discussion Guidelines
Discussion questions
Participation
