@Asher it does seem a little sparse in this topic at the moment, but all the same, would you update the top post with a schedule?
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Schedule updated 
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Chapter 9 notes
This chapter had me in stitches laughing. I just love how immediately Yotsuba’s father and Jumbo jump right into the make-believe with her, too.
Pg. 35 the rough language coming from the tv:
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Great example of rough language “きさまがやった事はお見通しだ”. At first I mistook X for an example of お〜する (JLPT N4) | Bunpro, but the definition I looked up for お見通し — seeing through (a trick, someone’s mind, etc.) — only calls it a noun, which is less confusing than きさまand humble speech going together.
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Kanji for “hell” was hard to read, but camera text recognition (FTW) got the second line of dialogue for me: “いいわけは地獄で聞く”. (I didn’t know Yotsuba was going to repeat it in kana a page later :p). I struggled to parse this at first, but the visual context clues really kept me on track until I got: “They’ll listen to your great excuse in hell!” Then I looked at the vocab in the deck and saw that it’s not いいas in the colloquial of 良い, but rather as in 言う, making it just “listen to your excuse…” I suppose if I was going for something more idiomatically English, I might do “Give them your excuses in hell”, or “They can hear your excuses in hell”.
pg. 37
- Yotsuba’s “いのちをたいせつに” is a really great phrase to exercise how to fill in the blanks when sentences leave out things… this one doesn’t even have a verb! I really puzzled over it, and what finally helped me work it out was writing out the literal sentence translation with all implied missing components: “(implied subject) carefully (implied verb) (implied pronoun) life”. That leaves a lot of possible interpretations, but we know it’s a badass thing you say to someone you’re about to shoot. And based on an example sentence or two from JMDict, like “どうぞお体を大切に。” / “Please take good care of yourself. “ and “彼女は夫の思い出を大切に胸に秘めている。” / “She cherishes the memory of her husband.” I can reason it’s “(you) carefully (live) (your) life”, or, “you should value your life.” My translation: “You shoulda valued your life! (BLAM)” or less literally but more idiomatically: “you coulda chosen to live.”
pg. 39
- @Asher the vocab for かたきuses furigana for あだ. JMDict says it’s used as a suffix and generally written がたき, so maybe Yotsuba’s mis-using it, and it does’t make a ton of sense to have a vocab term for it?
pg. 41
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よつば：「もうようじはない」is another fun idiom to tease the nuance out of. Literally “already tasks are gone”, since ようじ means tasks in the sense of things to do, and もうhas the meaning of “already complete”, it feels like saying a person has nothing more to accomplish in their life (because they’re about to die). Maybe we’d translate it as “that’s the last thing you’ll ever do”?
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よつば：「はんぶん生きてた」 in context I expect something that means“you’re still half alive”, but I think that would be 「まだ半分生きている」. She’s actually saying “half living (past tense continuative)”. Can I understand this more like “you were still half alive (after I shot you)”?
pg. 45
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I just love that Yotsuba is going around saying badass sounding stuff without caring too much about whether it’s precisely accurate, so she’s like “I don’t kill women and children” and Ena’s like “you totally did!!”
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I also love the shot of the magazine Fuuka is reading with the big summer fashion survey… is she taking Miura’s insult from last chapter to heart?
pg. 46
- Yotsuba’s murder face. I was reading that page on the subway and started laughing uproariously when I got to that.
pg. 47
- よつば：「ふうかはなからみずでた」 It still takes me some time to recognize that in Japanese, 出る often has a meaning of giving or providing something. I’m starting to get it, but for me it was really counter-intuitive to learn the root meaning of “to leave/exit” and then associate it with giving and receiving. For that reason, I was staring at でたfor a while trying to make it be two particles. Then I remembered Fuuka telling Yotsuba that the “香” in “風香” is like a flower’s fragrance, so Yotsuba’s basically saying “Fuuka’s a flower so she got watered!” What a jerk!
Pg. 49
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よつば：「だしつ」Squinted at that for a long while before consulting the deck and finding “脱出”. Does anyone know if that’s a common elision? Or just Yotsuba mispronouncing?
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よつば：「のこりあさぎだ」 By now I’m picking up some of the expectations in this series, and one of them is that Asagi always wins, so of course I’m already giggling with anticipation about how this is going to go.
Pg. 52
- あさぎ：「うんほんじゃねー」First I tried “Yes, it’s not a book”, then I looked up ほんじゃ,found 本社, and tried “oh, the headquarters, eh?”, and then finally, noticing that she hangs up in the next panel, decided that at the very least, “うん” and “じゃねー” has to just be her saying “yeah, ok then, bye”, and now I want to know how “ほん” fits into it. ChatGPT suggests that it’s a shortening of the Kansai dialect “ほんなら” or “ほなら” for “well then”, but can anyone human corroborate that?
pg. 56
- ジャンボ：「なー復讐は何もうまねーよなー」 Obviously it means “yeah, nothing good comes from seeking revenge”, but I really cannot figure out what the うまねーpart here is 生む (JLPT N2) | Bunpro is what’s in the deck, but if he was saying “何も生まれる” (nothing is born), it’s hard for me to imagine him shortening that to “うまねー”. Thoughts?
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It’s been quite a while since I’ve read the series, but I remember this chapter well, so I did a quick reread just for fun 
This construction, when you end with just に and omit the rest usually means advice or wishes (see also: お大事に). E.g. you could finish the sentence with してください. It could mean “you should value your life” personally, or in general “people should value their lives”.
A native speaker should double-check me on this, but I personally wouldn’t think of finishing this sentence with した方がよかった to mean “should’ve”.
It’s more like “I don’t have business (with you) anymore”. So she shoots to leave no witnesses.
“You half survived” might be a better translation, but basically yeah.
I think you misunderstood the sentence. はな here is not 花, but 鼻. The sentence is just “Fuuka, water came out of your nose”.
Just mispronouncing (or a typo). It’s the first time ever I’ve seen it this way, but I also can’t think of anything else and it makes sense in context.
Why ChatGPT when the word is literally in the dictionary?
As usual, it was almost correct. It’s Kansai-ben, but for それでは, and the ねー is just your standard ね sentence ending.
Remember your double negatives. It’s not 何も生まれる, it would be 何も生まれない.
But actually, here it’s 何も生まない. Unlike in English, this sentence is more natural when it’s “active”, i.e. “Revenge does not give birth to anything”.
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Awesome, thanks for the feedback!
Another great example where I’m having trouble because I’m unconsciously assuming the omitted subject is the person being spoken to, not the speaker.
Gah! and here I thought I had figured out something clever!
Oh, that’s frustrating — I have been using an app on my iPad (Shirabe Jisho) that also pulls content from JMdict, but for whatever reason that second definition wasn’t there in the app.
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To nitpick about a technicality, the subject is stated: it’s 用事, and the predicate is ない. So it’s “business does not exist anymore”. The unstated part is whose business are we talking about.
If you think about gangster movies, “(my) business (with you)” is the most straightforward interpretation. If you tried to interpret it as “(you) don’t have any business anymore (in life)”, that requires a bigger leap of logic to fill in the blanks, thus less likely.
Tangent about unstated/omitted stuff
If there’s no other context at all, statements usually refer to yourself, and questions refer to the listener. E.g.
- 妹がいる。 - I have a sister.
- 妹がいる？ - Do you have a sister?
So unless it’s very obvious from context that it’s the other person’s 用事, it’s safe to assume that we’re talking about ours.
However, an author might play with these expectations intentionally. E.g. see the world’s most infuriating dialogue from an imaginary romcom:
During the ice-cream date, the main character gathers all their courage to confess:
「好き！」
Implied target of affection: あなたのこと, because who else would they be talking about?
The airheaded love interest’s reply:
「私も、アイスが好き！一口欲しい？」
Reader's reaction: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
ちゃぶ台返し, that’s a very important word
I like nitpicking, it’s great when it’s the actual important thing being picked on, and not just a distraction. I very much appreciate the coaching.
So, delving deeper, from my current standpoint, the only thing I could say about the 用事 in that sentence is that it’s the topic, not necessarily the subject performing a verb. Can you say more here?
That reminds me of a scene in Kaguya-Sama, where Hayase is coaching Kaguya on how to confess, which makes basically no sense unless you know that that kind of ambiguity is feasible. I watched that show with English subtitles, but I would have been completely lost there if I didn’t know this about Japanese.
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I’ve fallen a bit behind in my pace this past week with a lot of chores and a birthday, but it also seems like I’m the main participant right now… sound off if you’re still reading!
I’ve read a bit of chapter 10 already, but I haven’t written anything up yet. In accordance with the principle of progress being more important than perfection, I may skip some of that.
I do love the expression on Mrs. Ayase’s face when she makes it clear that they absolutely ARE going to get cake.
Because “topic” is not a grammatical function in the same way that subject, object etc. are. Instead, the は particle can combine with or replace other particles to change the meaning of the sentence without changing the grammatical role of the words.
公園 に 行きません。 → 公園 には 行きません。 (combination of に+は)
公園 で 遊べません。 → 公園 では 遊べません。 (combination of で+は)
魚 を 食べた。 → 魚 は 食べた。 (は replaces を)
アイス が 好き。 → アイス は 好き。 (は replaces が)
今日、学校に行く。 → 今日は、学校に行く。 (no particle in the original, so just add it)
Of course, the actual meaning/nuance will change, but not the grammatical role.
There’s another particle that you should already know that behaves the same way: も.
魚も食べた, the も replaces を, but the fish is still the object of the sentence.
They are a class of particles that the Japanese call “binding particles” (係助詞). There are a few others that you might already know (or will learn later on), e.g. こそ、しか、さえ、でも
Anyways, since the original sentence only had は without any other particles, our only options are subject, object and none. Object and none make no sense in 用事はない, so subject it is.
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I’ve read up to chapter 11 a couple of weeks ago!
Haven’t been keeping up with my Japanese lately, but I’ll follow along with the schedule.
I am still with you! I am all caught up, and planning on reading this weeks chapter today. I feel as though chapter 11 was a lot easier than the previous few, and I really appreciate your notes. I am just getting to the spot where I know enough words to really pay attention to the grammar, so your notes are very helpful!
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I’ve fallen behind with the holidays. I’m trying to catch up this week and finish strong with you all for the last couple chapters.
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Finished chapter 13. I think I understood most of it, but does someone know why Yotsuba calls frogs でっけえの? The only thing that made sense to me is this some kind of change for でかい but it wasn’t in the bunpro vocab list for this chapter… So she is looking for ‘big things’ or ‘big ones’?
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When you use の instead of the specific noun, you assume the other party knows what you’re talking about (you told about it before, context etc.), or you’re ambiguous, maybe intentionally.
In this case, Yotsuba assumed it’s obvious. It wasn’t, so Miura asked what the “でっけーの” refers to (なに？ザリガニ？), and Yotsuba clarified that she’s talking about frogs. You cannot just assume it’s a general もの, so “big ones” would be the proper translation.
I couldn’t find a bunpro lesson for this usage of の, but if you have the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, look at page 315 (the 2nd entry for “no”).
And yes, でっけー is just でかい.
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I had done the lesson on ‘no’ usage for that, but wasn’t sure it applied here. Thanks!
Nope. The lesson you linked is about the possessive use and noun omission, the pattern is “noun + の”.
@thworthwar is asking about an “adj. + の / verb + の” pattern, with noun replacement. Sounds similar at first, but the usage/implication is a bit different. To quote a complete example:
どんな車がほしいですか？ (What kind of car do you want?)
小さい の がほしいです。 (A small one.)
I looked at the lesson closely, and at the bottom, it says “This example shows noun replacement, rather than noun omission, another common use of の which we will cover in another lesson.”
After a bit of searching:
- That lesson seems to be this one: Adjective + の(は) (JLPT N5) | Bunpro
Keep in mind, that the pattern there is really common, but the limitations written there are not actually true, の is a bit more general than that (see the linked lesson and DoJG) – I guess that’s because it’s an N5 lesson. EDIT: see the next few comments for clarification. - I found an online lesson with some examples (the keyword was “indefinite pronoun”).
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Would you mind expanding on this? I’m not sure what you’re referring to so I’m curious in case there is something obvious I’m missing
Stuff that you probably already know intuitively
The lesson says that it follows an adjective, but in reality it can follow any relative clause. EDIT: see @CursedKitsune 's comment below for the lesson about the verb/rel. clause usage.
It also says that it will be followed by は, が or も, but actually it can be used basically anywhere where a noun is valid. The example/study sentences follow this very rigid pattern, for some reason.
Take this example from Maggie-sensei’s lesson:
「お肉がはいっている の を下さい。」 Please give me the one with meat.
It’s the same の with the same meaning, but follows a rel. clause, and is followed by を.
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I rather meant what in the lesson isn’t true; the grammar itself isn’t an issue.
The usage with verbs is covered in a separate lesson (here).
Hhmm I see what you mean with this one. I suppose this is simplification for N5. Based on the wording of the lesson I would say this is more of a beginner friendly bit of misdirection than something that isn’t actually true.
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