ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん 🌳 Week 2 (The Wolf of the Small Forest Book Club)

Week 2 May 20 2023
Pages 9–15
Chapter 1
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Home Thread ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん ・ The Wolf of the Small Forest
Last frame of this week's part (page 15)

image

We’re reading volume 1 of this manga as part of the Absolute Beginner Book Club.

Vocabulary Sheet

The base for this vocab sheet was prepared using a fair amount of OCR/parsing.

Some notes for using/improving it:

  • Some words might have been recognized or parsed incorrectly, e.g. they are split even though they belong together, or they are simply wrong and aren’t even in the manga. Feel free to correct/remove those if you see them!
  • Words might be missing. Feel free to add them!
  • By default, translations in grey are auto-filled with a list of possible meanings (from a Wiktionary database). If you know the specific meaning in this context, feel free to fill it in! (It’ll turn black then.)

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: text here (that’s: [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]).
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
  • Join the conversation — it’s fun!

Not all pages have page numbers on them, so you may need to find a page with numbers to determine which page you’re on.

Participation Poll

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m planning to catch up later
  • I’m skipping this book
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished

0 voters

For our new readers: How are you doing so far?

  • It’s going really well
  • It’s going well
  • I’m struggling, but I manage
  • I’m struggling so much I’m thinking of dropping the book
  • I’m no longer reading the book
  • I have read harder manga/books than this one but I still need to click a poll option

0 voters

(This poll is anonymous.)

7 Likes

This is just unfair, how cute it is. How am I meant to be productive and not just read ahead by a mile?

spoilers



She went from wolf to puppy really quickly.

Also, she’s surprisingly big, didn’t seem like she was bigger than Mia in the first week, but I guess her thighs are longer than Mia’s legs. Feels a bit inconsistent though.

9 Likes

General question: will this club read just the 1st book before moving on to another title?

1 Like

That’s the pattern, yeah. But if there’s enough interest we can do a spin-off to read the 2nd book!

4 Likes

I imagine it would be a lot harder to get new people to jump into an absolute beginner book club that started in the middle of a series.

3 Likes

yep! that’s why they are all spin-offs.

1 Like

I’ve got some free time so I will post my attempted translations again this week:

p9 オオカミだよ - "I'm a wolf you know", I am taking the だよ to be her phrasing it like "I am a wolf you know, you should be scared of me"

じゃあ行くわよ - “Well lets go”, わよ appears to be an “empathetic sentence ending particle” here.

みあちゃん待って - “Mia, wait up”

そっちは危ないからダメ - “It is dangerous over that way”. Not sure what “からダメ” is doing here?

ついてきなさい - “Follow me”

p10 みあちゃん ちょ...ちょっと 休憩しない- "Mia a-a little break?" - hard to translate this nicely into english
p11 よく遊んだね - "We played a lot right"

日が暮れてきたし - “The sun is setting”

そろそろ帰ろっか - “Should we return home soon…”

ねみあちゃん - “hey Mia”

どうして森に来たの - “Why did you come into the forest?”

p12 ママとケンカしたの - "I had a fight with my mum"

ママは弟が生まれてから弟のことばかり - “Since mum gave birth to my little brother he has been her only worry/concern”

ただいまー - “I am home”

ママ! みてみてきれいなお花見つけたの - “Mum! Look, look, I found a pretty flower”

みあ静かにしなさいおとうとくんがおきるでしょ - “Mia be quiet your little brother is sleeping”

ねえママってば - “hey Mum”

わがまま言わないの - “I told you not to be selfish”

みあはもうお姉ちゃんなんだからわかるでしょ - “Mia you need to understand that you are an older sister now”

ママは忙しいからまたあとでね - “Mum is busy again from now on” (?)

ママのばか - “Mum is an idiot/fool”

p13 夢中で走って - "I ran away in a daze" - She is saying like "I was overwhelmed and thoughtlessly ran away"

気がついたらこの森にいたの - “When I came to my senses I was in this forest”

だから帰らないわあたしは悪くないもん - “That is why I cannot return home, I did something bad”

ママなんか弟がいれば - Really wasnt sure how to translate this one so I stuck it into deepl and it come out with “I wish my mum had a brother.”? Is this right?

あたしはいらないのよ - “I dont want one” - I think this connects to the last sentence maybe saying “I wish my mum has a brother because I dont want one” (?)

p14 な...泣いてる - "c-crying"

どうしよう - “What should I do”

えっと - “Ah” - Lightbulb moment

こういう時涙を止めるには - “There was that time when my tears stopped…”

p15 いたいのいたいの飛んでいけ - Seems like this is a japanese expression "Pain pain fly away"

オオカミなのに…オオカミなのに. - “Youre a wolf…Youre a wolf…”

変なの - “And youre weird/A weird one”

This weeks section is probably the most confident I have felt going through and translating line-by-line. Felt like the vast majority of the sentences were nice and simple and I recognised a lot of the vocabularly.
Looking forward to the next part!

6 Likes
p9

“because it’s dangerous that way, you shouldn’t do it (lit.: it’s bad)”. It’s just から for “because”, and だめ.

p12

またあとで is commonly said for “let’s do X later” or “maybe later”.

p13

I think these together mean “My mom only wants my little brother, they don’t need me”, though not exactly certain about it either.

p14

This is more along the lines of “At that the time (reason) my tears stopped…” I’m pretty sure

p15

なのに is “even though”
“Even though you are a wolf…” “You are a weird one”

5 Likes
Page 9

I’m not sure here either, but I saw this as “don’t go that way, it’s dangerous”. から acting as a warning because of the danger and だめ being tied to そっち as that direction being bad.

Page 10

I think the 休憩しない is being used as a request to stop like “don’t you want to rest”, as negation gets used like that in japanese. The ちょっと is her stuttering through asking her to wait. So, I viewed it as “Mia. Wa-wait. Let’s take a break?”

Page 12

The mom stuff has a bit I have to figure out there. I get that Mia is getting angry because the mom is busy with the new baby brother, but… there are some pieces there I’ll look into later.

cute

2023.05.20_143841 ookami

Overall I can make out most of it and what is going on, but some of the finer details need work to interpret. I figured that going in, though. The idea was that by the time we get to the end of this it should be a good fit for an easier read, and it seems like it should work out.

2 Likes
P 12

oh my gosh, is that how it works. So you say “I didn’t say be selfish” = “I told you not to be selfish” ??? That blows my mind!

P 13 - likewise a bit baffled but here is my take

Why not the opposite? “That’s why I’m not going home. The thing is I’m not bad”

I was wondering about this interpretation:
If my brother needs someone like my mom, then I don’t need (her)

so the first いれば could be the conditional if iru, and the second would be the negative

3 Likes
Pg. 13

I’m not actually reading along here, so take this with some salt because I’m guessing based on the scanning through some of the sentences for context, but to me, these sentences:

Would be along the lines of, “If Mama has someone like my little brother, she doesn’t need me.”

Also, fwiw, I agree with your interpretation of the other line. Context seems to me like Mia is sulking a bit. “I won’t go home because it’s not my fault. If mama has my little brother, she doesn’t need me anyway.” type of deal

7 Likes

Expanding on this, at its base のに is “even though”.

If you have a sentence that would end in 「nounだ」, and you add のに, the だ becomes な. So rather than saying 「nounだのに」 it becomes 「nounなのに」.


Page 10

A good approximation in English would be, “Wouldn’t you like to take a break?”

Page 13

MrGeneric covered the translation, so I’ll just add to it by saying the first いる is “exist”, and “to need” for the second いる. It’s one of those things you get used to over time and based on context.

(わる)い can be used to refer to fault or blame, so that part would read as “I’m not at fault” or “I’m not the blame”.

If you were, you’d probably get through both volumes in an hour, tops.

4 Likes

You may overestimate my reading speed a bit. :joy:

Though I admit, the previews did make this one seem very easy. Artwork is adorable, for sure, and that tempted me a bit!

2 Likes

An afternoon, then. =D


For first time readers wondering what gets a person from “three and a half months to work through a volume” (at book club pace) to “can read in an afternoon”, it’ll be a few things:

  • Understanding grammar.
    • Some people seem to be able to intuit grammar from early on.
    • Most people, myself included, need to actively learn grammar, which formal study and these book clubs both help with.
  • Learning vocabulary.
    • It’s nice to have vocabulary frequency lists for the specific material you’re reading, but even learning the 1,000 more frequent words from a comparable list will go a long way.
    • Knowing the 350 most common words in Wolf-chan gives 80% coverage of the manga’s dialogue.
    • A somewhat longer (but still easy) series may require knowing about 550 words for 80% coverage.
    • A longer and more complex series may require knowing just over 1,000 words for 80% coverage.
  • Repetition. Reading, reading, and reading.
    • With continued reading, pattern recognition for grammar develops. This allows you to understand the underlying function of the grammar without thinking about it.
    • With continued reading, you start recognizing an increasing number of vocabulary words. The ones you see the most you come to understand without thought.
    • These lead to your reading speed increasing.
  • Repetition. Reading, reading, and reading.
  • Slowly introducing more difficult material to read.
  • Repetition. Reading, reading, and reading.
11 Likes

:raised_hand: Fritz-sensei, then what gets someone from being able to read a volume in an afternoon to being able to binge a 10 volume series in that same time, then get frustrated that the author doesn’t produce new chapters at superhuman speeds?

5 Likes

日本人転生

5 Likes

I got carried away and accidentally read next week’s pages as well ;-;

This is the my first book club (though I’ve made heavy use of the past threads for yotsubato and Shirokuma cafe) and I’m having a lot of fun with this book, it’s definitely the easiest time I’ve had reading in japanese so far! I don’t think this week’s reading even took me 20 minutes, whereas a chapter of yotsubato or wataten usually takes me 40 minutes to an hour. plus I only needed around 7 lookups, which meant this was pretty much the first time I felt like I could actually get into a flow reading in japanese instead of having to manually decipher every sentence. definitely very encouraging, i’m looking forward to reading more and also feel motivated to study harder so that I can someday read books like yotsubato and chainsaw man as easily as I do this one :slight_smile:

7 Likes

My hope I never find out.

(Although I do have a tradition of reading each new volume of a couple of series in one to three sittings when a new volume comes out. I’m slightly trying to break myself of that habit.)

Ah, the good ol’ days when I used to only read completed series…

It happens =D

4 Likes

I wanted to make this the one club where I don’t click “I already read this part” in every thread, but now I am curious how long I’d need for both volumes…

4 Likes

finished this week’s pages (✿◕‿◕✿)

it felt easier than last week! I’m sure if I tried translating sentence by sentence I’d encounter grammar points I’m not 100% sure of but my goal isn’t to be able to understand Japanese as English but rather to read lots of Japanese and understand it as Japanese :slight_smile: and for this week, I was able to follow the story along and get the jist of the meaning in Japanese I think :wolf::smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I’m enjoying it so far !

9 Likes