It’s the ほう that is used in comparisons: のはXの方だ, より～のほうが. かた is a rather polite, or maybe mature, way of addressing a person (if I understand correctly that this is the meaning you are referring to), so I agree it doesn’t fit Yotsuba, however in this case Yotsuba is trying to figure out who is the father referring to as しっかりあいさつできる based on their characteristics, or what she knows about them. She is choosing one of the two. So finally, しっかりあいさつできるのはきれいじゃないほうだ.
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Of course you are right!
The constant dropping of particles (the の in the の方 in this case) really baffles me. I’m glad we chose this book, it really shows the clear separation between the formal Japanese we learn and the Japanese spoken daily. Less is indeed more.
This added to ending particles like ろ when トーちゃん isn’t sure if there are two big (older) sisters (ほら大きいお姉さん二人いたろ). It seems that this ろ is a colloquial abbreviation of だろう used after the past forms of verbs. Apart from the other particles missing in that sentence…
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I’m pretty confused about the pages/chapters thingy; i guess today is until page 59?
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I think a small clarification is needed, the の is not dropped on page 59, because い adjectives and verbs attach to nouns (ほう) directly, without の.
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Finished chapter 1 off today, so starting tomorrow I’ll be joining the chapter two people. <3
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Oh I would love that — there are a lot of them that are in my head from watching anime (I get a little thrill every time I recognize one written down) but this exact one, for example, I couldn’t determine if it was one of those, or a really slang way of saying something that’s, like, two verbs smashed together, abbreviated, and then pronounced a little differently. 
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I know there are a number of people proposing different ways of pacing the reading, but until that’s resolved (and I’m ambivalent — I’m ok using the 5pg/day as a rough pace guide), I can at least make this easy for us.
As of today you should have read through page 50, or the exact end of Chapter 1.
- 9 days of reading (we started on April 1)
- x 5 pages per day = 45 pages
- not including the first 5, silent, pages
Here’s the breakdown of pages for Chapter 2, starting on page 54, the first page with written Japanese. Read through these pages:
4/10: pg. 58
4/11: pg. 63
4/12: pg. 68
4/13: pg. 73 (page 69 only contains a single word, and it’s a sound effect, but hey, that should count, right?)
4/14: pg. 78
4/15: pg. 83
4/16: pg. 88
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This rules. Thanks for this!
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yeah like for me, i really dont think i know enough japenese to read this book. ive really REALLY focused on kanji for about to 2 months and like vaguely on vocab, before bunpro i knew maybe ~35-40 vocab words just from like duolingo, genki, anime and hololive 
before i found out about bunpro so now im doing grammar and learning the grammer for yotsubato. but, i actually find it really sad that i dont know a lot of the vocab for the book since i actually have been learning japenese off and on for about 3 years now. at the start i learned hiragana then i just forgot about japenese LOL but, now im like really giving it my all this year and it just makes me so exicted when i see a kanji out in the world that i can regonize or i see even a few words in the book that i know.
tbh, in the book ive proabaly read like 15-16 pages (I cheated and used a translator)
so im realllyy behind. but planning on catching up this week if I can understand. 
im really excited though because this will be the first ever book I’ve read in japenese, one step closer to anime without subtitles and to talking to jp natives LMAO
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i love you btw, thank you for making this chart /p
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Hi,
I am a bit late on my reading, I just finished the first chapter today.
I have a question for page 48 :
とーちゃん says : ここいつ何にもわかってなかったのか！！
I am not really sure of the breakdown, so if someone could confirm :
- ここ / here
- いつ / when
- 何にも / anything, not at all
- わかってなかった = わかっていなかった？“did not understood”
- のか => in fact
I guess that the meaning is something like “You didn’t understood what we are doing here in fact”
but not sure about the “ここいつ” part.
Thanks !
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The first こ is him stuttering, so it’s “こ… こいつ” and not “ここ いつ”
I think it’s supposed to be a very colloquial way of referring to Yotsuba, something like “this kid”
→ “D-Didn’t this kid understand anything at all!?”
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Thanks for making this, starting on 4/13 you’re off by 10 though
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Took a much closer look at pg. 58 today and good thing! lots going on here hehe
Notable stuff
I didn’t know 一緒 could be used to mean ‘the same’, i’d only ever seen it used in 一緒に 0_0
Good review of the imperative today with 言え,ちゃんとあいさつしろ, and みならえ
I’m assuming the small text in the panel where he’s talking about the neighbor girl, he’s saying なんだっけ but it’s really hard to read with the handwriting lol
The hardest sentence here for me was いっつも返事はいいんだよな which I am interpreting in a literal sense as ‘Your response is always affirmative (but)…’ or more naturally ‘You always say you will’ but this phrase is really not clicking in my brain lol
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I read until page 58 according today. I have a question about the last panel on that page, where the dad says to himself " なんつったっけ" (or at least that’s what I’m reading it as).
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to mean “What are their names again?”, but can somebody break down the “つっ” part for me? Is there any difference to saying “なまえなんだっけ”?
edit: oh, Gacee also mentioned this point right now
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UPDATE - Here is a rough pace guide, assuming that we read one chapter each week. It may be better to aim for chapters rather than pages with manga, as it’s something easier to keep track of for everyone.
Note that this is just the physical page count, and does not take into consideration empty pages, or pages with little to no dialogue.
Feel free to discuss content from within any chapter within any of the weeks, but again please be conscious of spoilers for people that come in toward the end of the week.
This chart can also be found in the main post!
| Week | Start and End Dates | Chapter(s) | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 4/1/2024 - 4/7/2024 | Chapter 1 | 47 |
| Week 2 | 4/8/2024 - 4/14/2024 | Chapter 2 | 36 |
| Week 3 | 4/15/2024 - 4/21/2024 | Chapter 3 | 26 |
| Week 4 | 4/22/2024 - 4/28/2024 | Chapter 4 | 26 |
| Week 5 | 4/29/2024 - 5/5/2024 | Chapter 5 | 27 |
| Week 6 | 5/6/2024 - 5/12/2024 | Chapter 6 | 32 |
| Week 7 | 5/13/2024 - 5/19/2024 | Chapter 7 | 20 |
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Fixed!
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つ is the slang form of という. We do not have this grammar explanation on Bunpro yet, but we’ll be adding pretty much all slang next week! 
In the meantime, here is this great explanation from Tae Kim’s guide.
「いう」 serves many more functions than the equivalent English verb, “to say”. It is used all the time and therefore, it’s not too surprising that a number of variations and slang have developed. Here’s one more that I felt was too “slangy” to cover so early at that point of the guide.
This may sound hard to believe but if you really slur 「という」 together, it becomes something resembling 「つ」. Or least, that’s what somebody thought when he or she began replacing 「という」 with 「つ」 or in some case 「つう」.
Now, in my opinion, 「つ」 is a lot harder to say than 「という」 so using it like a native might take a bit of practice. Rather than making things easier to say, as is usually the case, the real purpose of this substitution is to sound rougher because 「つ」 has a harder, hissing sound. This is ideal for when you’re pissed or for that young and rough image you’ve always wanted. As you might expect, this type of speech is usually used by males or very tough females.
Examples
-
つうか、なんでお前がここにいんのよ！
Or rather, why are you here?! - 宿題で時間がないつってんのに、みきちゃんとデートしにいったと聞いたよ。
Although he’s saying he doesn’t have time due to homework, I heard he went on a date with Miki-chan. - 明日は試験だぞ。つっても、勉強はしてないだろうな。
Yo, tomorrow’s the test. Even if I say that, you probably didn’t study anyway, huh? - だから、違うんだつうの！
Like I said, you’re wrong!
If you want even more emphasis, you can even add a small 「つ」. This usually means you are really at the brink of your patience.
- だから、違うんだっつうの！
Like I said, you’re wrong!
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This is incredible omg, I never would have even guessed that this would be the explanation lol.
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I’m pretty certain you must mean to the Yotsuba deck but I’m holding out hope for a drop of 3000 grammar points covering “pretty much all slang” lol
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