よつばと discussion (Beginner) April 2024

Book Clubs
#184

Good morning (or good evening) everyone! Starting this 7th day early, I went a bit ahead, up until page 41-42. First of all, what did よつば smoke? She is on something else haha. Probably foreshadowing the dynamics of this manga in the next chapters, I can’t help but love these

wild scenes.

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And this here.

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I just love it :joy: :joy:

Now, I had just a few questions regarding the reading.

p. 36

When Yotsuba says いていつちゃだめ、she probably says いてくるだめ. But what exactly is that casual form? I have never seen it. Also, the ぞ at the end, it is similar to よ?

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p.39

Here Fuuka replies to the old lady with a から at the end. In this situation, is it something like " since nothing happened at all, don’t worry"? Like the から putting emphasis on 何でもありません?

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#185

This looks so nice!

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#186

Someone else can chime in if I’m missing something here, but…

pg 36

I think what that speech bubble says is いいか (listen) よつば しらないひと (people you don’t know) について (on the topic of) いっ (to go?) ちゃだめだ (must not, short form of nakute dame) ぞ (similar to yo?)
So basically, don’t go with strangers.

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#187

I was also wondering about this, also please correct me if I’m wrong. I believe いっちゃ is the colloquial form of いってしまう, implying that going with strangers is something that should be avoided because it might lead to unwanted consequences or regret?

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#188

I think they emphasise also that I can’t read hiragana for crap Lolol (I find it very hard to guess what word it could be). Get’s easier with practice I guess :sweat_smile:

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#189

My take on this is that いっちゃ is a colloquial form of いっては, based on the rule that ては/では turns into ちゃ/じゃ respectively, as described in

Then, だめ is used instead of いけない (as described in the “caution” section of this grammar point.

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#190

Perchance, may I interest you in the phrase ついていく (to follow, to go along with, etc)?

This is correct.

The Japanese is pretty close to “real” speech, there are a lot of cultural lessons we learn alongside Yotsuba, it is actually an alright manga, the difficult parts are just because it is not “textbook” Japanese but they aren’t in themselves difficult bits of grammar or anything, the story is easy to follow and dip in and out of even with low comprehension, extensive online discussion and resources aimed at the series (now). In the scheme of things it is still amongst the easiest non-obscure things aimed at native speakers that most learners can get their hands on even if it isn’t technically the easiest.

8 Likes
#191

Blockquote
Here Fuuka replies to the old lady with a から at the end. In this situation, is it something like " since nothing happened at all, don’t worry"? Like the から putting emphasis on 何でもありません?

yeah thats right.
In this scene, it does (in my opinion) not really have a meaning on its own, my take would be:
いえ！なんでもっ → no！Nothing
なんでもありませんから → its nothing/nothing happened/nothing at all

3 Likes
#192

Thank you! :slight_smile:

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#193

I’m not terribly shure what page we collectively are but I think I’m caught up. I read the first chapter which can’t be far off. Very pleasant read, I like the exclamations the child says.

I’m still critical on the whole 5 pages a day concept though. Because currently I don’t know what day or page the goal is. Surely we couldn’t come up with a better system using the chapters or something? Such as 2 chapters a week. Either way I’m caught up, so I’m just in time to get left behind again!

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#194

I’d second the above. It’s only been a week and I’m already lost as to where the group is supposed to be due to a combination of reading ahead some days and deciding whether or not a page should be included in the 5 pages, as the amount of text varies wildly between pages.

Great examples of this are pages 32, 40, 42. Should those be included or not?

Based on the current rate of 5 pages per day it’ll take around a week to finish each chapter:

  • Chapter 1: 10 Days
  • Chapter 2: 7 Days
  • Chapter 3: 6 Days
  • Chapter 4: 5 Days
  • Chapter 5: 6 Days
  • Chapter 6: 6 Days
  • Chapter 7: 4 Days

That’s pretty in line with the original goal of 5 pages a day + a day off.

I understand that not everyone has a ton of time to read/study every day, but hopefully over the span of a week most people will be able to average out enough time to get through a chapter. Plus, there’s a day of buffer for most weeks if people miss a day or two.

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#195

I third that. I also think that would be more beneficial. To begin with, and as far as I’ve understood, five page a day was just a proposal, which can change if the majority here agrees.

I think, following the reasoning of you two, it would be easier on the long term, if we would read Yotsuba chapter by chapter. I personally also found difficult to decide where to stop each time. And while I also understand that many of you (and that includes me) are busy with other things, so far this reading seems pretty straighforward and “easy” enough, at least comparatively speaking.

With that being said, we could set something like a 1 or 2 chapters per week schedule.

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#196

Hey all! Just a notification that the よつばと deck has been altered/improved significantly. We have now added all grammar that appears in the manga so that everyone can also study grammar that appears if it is their first exposure to it. Note that if you have already studied something, the deck will simply show you your current SRS level of that grammar.

Grammar points appear in order of when they first appear in the book.

In related news, many of you will have noticed that there are quite a few casual or manga-ish grammar structures that appear in よつばと that do not actually appear on Bunpro. For example ぜ, ぞ, る abbreviation to ん in verbs, ない becoming ね etc. We will be adding all of these grammar points to Bunpro as a priority over the next week so that they can be studied alongside the relevant content :partying_face:.

There is also the possibility that we will be doing something similar to this for many beginner manga (creating accurate vocab and grammar decks), seeing as there seems to be quite a lack within the Japanese learning space, despite manga being some of the first native content that a lot of people attempt. If people want this to happen (let us know!), then we will likely do all the most prominent titles such as ドラえもん, ポケモン, よつばと, ドラゴンボール, etc. Pending popularity, we may then continue investing further time into it on a wider variety of titles. These decks will all be getting made by native speakers that are familiar with the Bunpro grammar and interface, so would be very comprehensive/ideal for group or individual learning.

16 Likes
#197

Sorry for possible offtop, but is there any way to study only vocab part of these new decks without adding each item manually?

I’m quite scared of flooding my review queue with more grammar points than I can reasonably handle and spawn an army of ghosts as a result :sweat_smile: Vocab items are much easier to learn and master.

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#198

Hi!

Indeed it has, it gets better and better.

I have a question about an exclamation: what does とりや or とりゃ in page 42 upper frame mean? I’ve been unable to trace it either in Jisho (鳥屋?) or in the brand-new onomatopoeia deck.

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#199

Caught up after the weekend break, continuing at 5 pages a day I stopped at 45 today (Yotsuba sees her dad again), meaning I will read until the end of chapter 1 tomorrow. The chase sequence was fun

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#200

My books finally arrived and I finished the first chapter.

I also think a chapter a week is a more sensible system. The time to read 5 pages can highly fluctuate if there is a lot to lookup.

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#201

Although a lot of grammar structures themselves can be thought of in a similar way to simple vocab, there are definitely some that take a little bit longer to click than others. It is possible we could have some kind of ‘skip’ feature in the decks in future.

とりゃ is not exactly a word, but some may consider it similar to onomatopoeia. It is an expression used when performing a swift physical act to indicate exerting effort. It’s similar to other words like よっしゃ or せぃや, etc. Perhaps similar to something like ‘hi-ya’ in English which would indicate striking but not actually be a word.

Edit - There is a very limited amount of these in Japanese, so we could possibly add them in the onomatopoeia deck under a subcategory of like ‘exertion noises’ or something if we make it clear that they are not actually onomatopoeia.

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#202

Was a bit busy the past couple days! Just finished up the chapter and didn’t have any particular grammar troubles for the last pages, but I did learn some fun new things hehe

Also, I don’t personally mind the current setup we have for the reading (a daily limit and a weekly goal) - I feel like the people who can do five pages a day can more consistently post questions and the people who don’t have as much time can utilise that resource in the forum to read more efficiently and focus on questions that didn’t come up throughout the week. My two cents :yum:

New words

全力疾走 - run with all one’s might and 遣っ付ける - to attack/to beat someone

I only knew about よっしゃ as an exertion phrase, so neat to see that there are a few more like these (とりゃ）

5 Likes
#203

I would love more manga decks (especially for ポケモン and ドラゴンボール). It would be a big help when making the leap to reading native material. It’s usually recommended to do that at the N4 level, so a deck to fill in the vocab knowledge and the odd higher-level grammar point is great. Book club threads are helpful, but after the fact it’d be easier to study off a deck then try and dig through the thread to see if someone asked the same question you had when the thread is months or years old.

For the daily goals, though, if a grammar point is in both the よつばと deck and the grammar deck I’m studying (N3 in my case) comes up when I’m doing my studying from one deck, would it be possible to get credit for studying it under both decks? For instance, I got two N3 grammar points from the Yotsuba deck today that I hadn’t studied yet in the N3 grammar deck (the other deck I have active), but it’s still showing as having done my studying from the よつばと deck but nothing from the N3 Grammar deck.

That said, got to page 45 today since I got caught up in the chase scene.

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