なぜ?どうして?Finished!

It seems to be always the way with these bookclubs. Hundreds of people sign up, there are a thousand posts saying how everyone is looking forward to it and arguing over whether there should be a separate thread for each chapter, and few weeks later it’s down to just a tiny handful of people.

I guess life gets in the way! But, this thread is really useful for those who do manage to participate, and also for the larger number that are reading along, and for all (any!) future readers too. So thank you so much @emucat for all your wonderful hard work. I know I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Here’s the page in full (plus the start of the first sentence which is on page 38, and excluding the captions under the flags:

まだ、いろいろな 国の 人が あつまる 国さいてきな 会ぎなどでも どこの 国の だいひょうで あるかが、すぐに わかるように 国きが かかげられています。

国きは その 国を あらわす シンボルです。

ところが、せかいには まったく べつの 国なのに、国きが ほとんど 同じに 見える ところが あります。

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No, I think it’s just talking about the country that has the flag in 国旗は right before it.

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Page 39

Given the ところが, should there be a “however” or “even so”, at the start of your translation?

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You are right! I didn’t even check jisho thinking: I know this word!!
but I was… why ところが appears twice?

So…

ところが、せかいには まったく べつの 国なのに、国旗が ほとんど 同じに 見えろ ところが あります。

However, there are places in the world where completely different countries have flags that look mostly the same

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Page 39

Doesn’t it mean “flags are the symbols representing these countries”, ie the countries just discussed?

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By the way, the flag captions are Monaco’s flag and Indonesia’s flag :sunglasses:

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Which one is which? :grin:

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Monaco is the one with the red top part, and Indonesia is the one with the white bottom part

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Great that we’ve got that cleared up at least! lol!

Just wondering - is anyone else still using our shared vocab list? I haven’t noticed anyone else adding words for a while…

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I haven’t in a while… but so far, I think every single phrase has been translated in the thread. So anyone can search for the page number and find the meaning. It was nice to know in what level you learn the kanji in WK and so…

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:roll_eyes::no_mouth:
Well, figuring that it was collaborative document, I’ve been lazy and only adding the information that interests me, and expecting other people would add what they care about… So there aren’t any WK levels listed for the past few sections…

I think some people still read the book but don’t ask questions because someone else has already answered them. That’s mostly my case anyway.

And because of some recent problems I have (neck pains, so I can’t read for more than a couple of minutes without my everything hurts), I read much more slowly unfortunately :confused:

But please do not be discouraged by the quietness of the thread. I am sure many people are reading your posts. :slight_smile:

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I’m still here, but haven’t posted because I’m having trouble with both page 38 and 39 and it’s taking me longer to translate them :frowning:

I’m still running a bit behind, just caught up to the end of the chapter at page 36. Unfortunately there are no more scans in the Google Sheets for eBook users to check they are reading the pages. Would anyone who has a physical book be willing to make scans and edit them like there were for the first 36 pages? I’d be really grateful as its a great help when following along!

Think I will skip 38 and post 39 and check out some prior posts so I can understand 38 a bit better. :confounded: My lack of grammar knowledge is starting to get in the way I think and these longer sentences are almost impossible for me to understand.

国旗は その 国を あらわす シンボルです。

The national flag represents that country’s symbol.

ところが、せかいには まったく べつの 国なのに、国旗が ほとんど 同じに 見える ところが あります。

However, in the world there are entirely separate countries that have national flags that are mostly similar in appearance.

モナコの 国旗。

Monaco’s national flag

インドネシアの 国旗。

Indonesia’s national flag

Gahh just realised my pages are different depending on if I move forward or backward through the book :weary:

I’m still here! Just being a creepy lurker :kissing_heart:

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Rather,

The flag is a symbol [that] represents the country.

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Hey everyone, I haven’t posted much because you’ve all done such a good job with posting your translations but I wanted to check in and say that I’m following along each day and really enjoying the process and learning a lot.

As people predicted, the hardest part for me is piecing together the grammar. I’m usually able to understand what individual participles mean and I can recognize which words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. But for some reason I struggle to put everything together due to what I think is the order of the sentences feeling so different from English.

Is this something I’ll get used to and gradually figure out? It just doesn’t feel like i’ve made a whole lot of progress from the beginning of the book on this front. I’m only about halfway through N5 in Bunpro so maybe I’ve just got a lot to learn but it feels like the grammar is fairly simple in this book and I’m still struggling to put everything in order.

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Ah right. :slight_smile: I think the sentence ordering tripped me up.