にゃんにゃん - Kitty Detectives - Vol. 1

A bit off topic but yes, it’s very common in novels in (at least) English, German and I think French as well.

It’s particularly bad with some American typesetting when they repeat the quotation mark on each paragraph

"Blablablalblalblalbla… (whole paragraph)
"Blablablalblalblalbla… (whole paragraph)
“Blablalbalblalbla…”
“Now someone else is talking!”

Very confusing if you don’t pay close attention to which paragraphs end in "…

Can you give a specific example? Maybe we can help you better then. I never thought this could be a problem.

Yes, it is frustrating trying to figure out who is saying what especially if you’re coming from reading manga. If you could read Japanese at the same speed as reading English then you probably wouldn’t have much problem figuring who’s saying what. But it would be worth your time learning and figuring out what each sentence says irregardless of who saying it.

After you’ve figured out what each of the sentences mean and you’ve finished the story, go back to the first page and re-read the story. You’ll be surprised at your improvement.

@aiju @trout
This is off topic, but when you’re reading yourself do you break down sentences like you do while explaining to others? Or you understand the meaning naturally?

Or you’re so used to doing this that it’s second nature for you now?

I can honestly read at a pretty good pace and understand as I read along, but I can’t always break down stuff like you do while explaining. This makes me miss out on little details at times.

I try to do some mental breakdown, but not a full breakdown.
My vocabulary is pretty bad so I do use Jisho an awful lot.
I try not to get too stuck on a sentence, sometimes I return later and the issue is resolved.

I’ve mentioned this before but I think having done a lot of complex Latin kind of helps. Although the language is very different, there are a lot of the same problems reading it (no explicit pronouns, the wordorder is even worse, you do get spaces between words at least (in modern editions) but unlike Japanese the equivalent of e.g. the “wo” particle is a word ending that depends on the “class” of each noun, which can make things totally ambiguous).
Plus the general thing of dealing with things like unusual abstract phrasings, words that can have 20 totally different meanings, etc.

2 Likes

I’m kind of wondering if we shouldn’t move this conversation here. Just to keep this thread tied closely to the actual pages of the book (unless someone swiftly jumps in with an example from the pages we are on!)

For a book like this, my reading is still very deliberate. I go through a section trying to get the gist and flow as well as overall picture. Then I go back and try to figure stuff I don’t know. I’m not anywhere near native speed so it’s still takes a lot work.

Do you know why this is done? Why not just leave it without changing が to
の.

1 Like

From what I understand there is no reason, they’re equivalent in that role.

The rest is a bit of a historical summary that is probably irrelevant but might be of interest.

Historically, が and の were both possessive particles.
Linguists argue about the meaning difference and it seems likely they had different connotations in different times (e.g. you often read that が is a ‘humble’ possessive).
There were, additionally, always used to mark the subject of relative clauses.
There are similar (but not quite equivalent) constructions in English, like “John’s coming late cannot be explained”.
が as a subject marker in the main clause actually wasn’t done in older Japanese, it is probably the result of generalising the role in a relative clause.
(I think older Japanese was more about SOV wordorder, the object marker was originally a particle of emphasis).
In modern Japanese の has become the main possessive particle (with が only used for possessives in fixed idioms).
が ended up becoming the general subject marker we have today.
In relative clauses both are still used.
Some dialects actually swap the role of の and が; it’s a remnant of the older system where they were equivalent, they just picked different ‘standard roles’ for each.

2 Likes

That’s interesting. Thanks!

yeah, speed is probably part of the problem. Like on pg 54, I figured that the first speaker was probably her friend - Hanae had told a cat story and then her friend was like, oh, I have a cat story too. Right? But then by the time I’d struggled through the back-and-forth to p55 I’d lost track of who was speaking.

And the idea of having to go back and figure it out again made me want to cry. I read VERY fast in English so I think that makes it extra hard for me to have patience.

.

1 Like

Yea, if you read fast in English then the pace of reading Japanese is going to be very frustrating. But the only way to build up speed in Japanese is to get through the tedious slow process of translation. We’ll all get there eventually but there’s a lot of stuff to get through on the way.

Personally speaking, I find reading light novels and short stories more satisfying than reading manga. Just my personal choice so the pain is worth it to me.

1 Like

Yes, it’s very slow. I go a few pages at a time and each page seems to take forever.

I also read English quite fast so it is definitely frustrating.

Remember though it’s not just about reading the story, it’s about getting to grips with a language that has a grammar almost completely alien to the English speaker’s mind. Try to think a bit about how sentences are composed and how the different parts interact rather than just guessing how the words can be put together.

1 Like

:+1::+1::+1:

If I understand correctly want you want to do, here’s a recommendation: I use the Kanji search of the Android App “Aedict” if I want to identify a Kanji i don’t know. It has several search modes for Kanji, and one of them works like this: You select a radical which is part of the Kanji. Then the App will show you all Kanji that include this radical, sorted by stroke number. It also lets you select further radicals included in the Kanji to narrow the search. Especially when I’m not sure about stroke number/order this approach works really well for me.
Hope that helps a little and I didn’t miss the point :sweat_smile:

Soooo I finally caught up with you guys after two pretty slacky weeks (lots to do at work, lazyness, hitting WK lvl 5 and getting overwhelmed by the number of new lessons - but that’s no excuse, so sorry about that :sweat_smile:).
To redeem myself a little (guilty as charged) I just finished getting the vocab sheet up to speed - added a second table for story 2 aswell, hope that makes sense and I didn’t make too many mistakes picking the right translations (as usual please feel free to correct them if you find them).

Will try not to slack too much this time :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

Thanks everyone - this group is awesome, learning a LOT here and loved the first story too :black_heart::black_heart::black_heart:

3 Likes

And place names. :slightly_smiling_face:

Page 56, Just to get ourselves on-topic again :wink:

I was going to post this as a question but I could answer myself. I share my findings with everybody.

一本松さんは お茶をいれながら、カポネをみて わらった。

一本松さんは = Concerning Mrs 一本松
お茶を = tea
いれ = …
ながら = while

Here was my question. I’ve read that ながら is used as “verb stem+ながら” to mean “while verb-ing”. So I was looking for the stem of what was いれ, which was strange because all examples in tae kim’s guide about ながら used verbs whose stems ended with an “i” sound:

  • 走る => 走りながら
  • 歩く => 歩きながら
  • 聞く => 聞きながら

But then I saw that る verbs stem is just the verb without る. So いれ should be いれる’s stem!
A further dictionary search showed that besides the typical “insert/input” meaning, いれる can be used for “to make tea/coffee”. :slight_smile:

This leaves us in…

Mrs 一本松, while preparing tea…

カポネをみて = looked at カポネ
わらった = and smiled

Mrs 一本松, while preparing tea, looked at カポネ and smiled.

Hope the stem thingy is useful for somebody ^^.

7 Likes

Wow! That is amazing! Thank you so much!

Thank you so much for that! What a brilliant breakdown of the sentence and the grammar! Thank you!