時をかける少女: Week 1 Discussion (Chapter 1)

Yeah, かい is definitely for yes/no questions. Whereas だい is for interrogative sentences :).

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Kadokawa Page 9:
実験室といっても満足に理科の実験ができるようなスペースはほとんどない。
Okay, so I’ve got the gist that although it’s called a lab, there’s barely enough room to be able to do experiments, but the ような is stumping me. Genki has のような, and assuming it’s the same form, just with a verb in this case, then it’s “the space that you can do experiments and the like”.

Genki has it listed as “B, with similar characteristics to A”, so “space with similar characteristics of being able to do experiments”? It goes on to talk about the jumble of stuff in the lab so it kinda makes sense?

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Ah, I know what りきむ means :sweat_smile: I just do not know a good way to express that in English.
But in this case, no, the two sentence aren’t related like that. Note also that both verbs aren’t conjugated in the same tense. いった (past, happening at the time) versus 見える (present, because usual).

The second one just says that the way his face looks makes it often appear as if he is straining (well, doing some kind of strong physical exertion). It’s funny to juxtapose that to him acting all high and mighty (胸を反らす).

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Ahh, I didn’t notice the tenses. That makes sense now :slight_smile: Thank you

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Took me a while to get there and had to look quite a few things to look up but I made it through.

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We are on day one. You had a whole week :stuck_out_tongue:
Hard to call it “taking a lot of time”

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よう is appearance, likeness, similarity, seemingness, etc.
できるよう(だ) = seems possible
I’d say that the part of the phrase I quoted above means “space that seems like (enough for) science experiments to be doable” or something along those lines.

Standard disclaimer: I could be wrong, I’m still learning too!

It’s 11:30 pm on the 23rd in California :sweat_smile:

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please do not speak like the kids in the book. かい isn’t “male”, it used to be “asking friendly” and is “asking friendly when you’re a nice uncle” nowadays.
i can use it as a guy in his 40s, fits me okay. if you’re not older than me, then don’t.

same for kazuko’s わ and ですもの、だもの
ending a sentence like that sounds either like rich, arrogant doctor’s wife (ですもの), childish (だもん、だもの), obasan in her 50s desperately trying to express her femininity (わ、わ、わ、わ).

わ is okay, if you don’t overuse it.
だもん is okay if you’re joking with kids, spouse, friends.
どーしたんだい?腹減ったかい?- nice uncle.don’t overdo.
なになにもの - 1960s language. don’t.

also, dont use something like 待ちたまえ, unless you’re a bigshot.

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I think I got the gist too, but I confess I’m not entirely sure my brain isn’t just picking out the nouns and verbs and inventing everything else in between out of whole cloth. :stuck_out_tongue:

On a side note, I bought the English translation a few years back, and I decided to give it a look alongside the Japanese one. It seems to skip entire paragraphs of text…

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Hmm, I don’t think よう on it’s own is a na-adjective though, not according to Jisho. The only one that seems to fit is ような referring to characteristics, but I think it’d get translated the same way. I think, having taken a break, it’s referring to a space that has the equipment to be able to do experiments.

In one way, that’s a shame, but it’s also extra motivation to learn Japanese, I guess :slightly_smiling_face:

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This is SO much easier to read than 夏目の友人帳!:smile:

Just one query at this point
p8 (Kadokawa) The boys refer to their classmate as 芳山くん, but when I was on student exchange I only ever heard くん used for boys’ names, although I heard both boys and girls use it. For girls, everyone used さん or ちゃん. Is this use of くん for a girl’s name common?

Also, I’m not sure of the etiquette so please pardon me if I’ve done the wrong thing, but I overwrote a couple of words in the vocab list. e.g. I’m pretty sure 剥製 (はくせい) refers to stuffed animals rather than just “stuffing” in this case.

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I’ve seen it used after girls’ names a few times, but not as much as boys, so I guess it’s less common. Also, this book was written a few decades ago, so maybe it was more common then. This is just a guess, though.

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I have another question for page 9 of Kadokawa (I’m getting there!)
I don’t understand the use of ばかり in あまり気持のよくないものばかりなのである. I get the “not very pleasant objects” bit. I assume the ので refers to the fact that everything is jumbled up in the room? Is that ばかり the regular ‘only’? “Everything is in a jumble because there’s only biology samples… and not very pleasant things”?

Sometimes as I type these out, things start clicking so I apologise if my logic is a bit of a mess :sweat:

we call girls くん, too. ちゃん is for when you’re friends or they’re vastly below you, social-status-wise.

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ばかり in this case is used to express that “there’s nothing but” あまり気持のよくないもの.

である is basically a more literary way of saying だ.

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あまり not much/many
気持のよくないもの things that feel bad
ばかり nothing but / all around
なのである. because.

because there were lots of things that didn’t feel good / felt bad.

i’d like to see the whole sentence, meaning is flexible, could be slightly off in certain cases.

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Isn’t that usually in a work setting or something like that? Do students often use くん for other female students?

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both work and at school. i don’t use it for girls, i use ちゃん (as teacher), but it wouldn’t be strange if i used くん instead.

まるで物置きべやのように、いろんなものがごちゃごちゃに並べてあるだけだ。しかも、それが、いろんな生物の標本だとか、骨格の模型だとか、剥製だとか、薬品戸だなだとか、あまり気持ちのよくないものばかりなのである。

So that の is explanatory and just looks like ので? :exploding_head:

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