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@Biblio@d4zai@Belerith I am shamelessly tagging you because you registered on Natively that you own this book (back in 2022-2023 even!). Do you want to read it with us?
Thx for the tag, yes, indeed, I would like to read it with you guys. It’s relatively short, so I am happy to squeeze it in between some other stuff I should be reading.
I’m also starting next week. Was thinking to go with an “informal schedule” of reading 1 chapter per week, but let’s see, I guess it depends on how difficult or easy it will feel!
I will start next month as well - still need to buy the book but want to push the purchase into April, plus I want to finish one other book before starting (for a change ).
Alright it’s rough right from the start @bungakushoujo what do you think of having a vocabulary spreadsheet? Or a wiki post?
Thinking I’m going to try to collect the Tohoku terms somewhere, so might as well share them
First ones:
何如 = どうしようか
おら=わたし
おめ=お前
Good idea!! I made the first post into a wiki so we can start a table there. I am going to start this evening!
I noticed the audiobook is included in the audiobook.jp 聴き放題 right now so I will listen to the audio as I read. That usually kind of helps me with dialects…
Thanks! I’ve added a simple table for now, feel free to change it move it if there’s a more appropriate place! We’ll see how it goes, the first sentences are pretty scary, not sure if I can handle the whole book if it will always be like that :x (also I’ve tried internet searching but not finding any good resource with examples so I’m just guessing from context / machine translation, there might be mistakes)
I definitely thought the very first pages were the hardest since there was a lot of 東北弁 all at once and I was kind of confused about who was speaking. I will say that reading along with the audiobook is very helpful so far. The voice actress does different voices depending on the speaker, and when I hear the 東北弁 it helps my brain to gloss over it and interpret it based on the intonation and context. I tried reading a page without the audio and definitely struggled way more.
So far it’s hard to say anything about the story but it does feel a little lonely.
I thought 薬屋のひとりごと was the hardest thing I tried to read but this one is definitely way harder for me, due to 東北弁 but also due to the protagonist having borderline dementia and hearing voices in her head, wasn’t expecting that . not sure how many pages I’ve read, just have a percent to go with, but I’m about two third of the first chapter. It’s tough but I feel like I always have a hard time with new books too, willing to push through it anyway! (even though I have to admit I am using machine translation a lot)
I can see how the audiobook must be helping a lot!
Yes!! That is making the book more difficult that I expected too… I am wondering if the voices are different versions of her past self, because they are different ages? I’m not sure yet…
If there is anything you can’t figure out, feel free to ask and we can combine our brain power to figure it out!
I think it’s a mix between versions of herself and people who have had an influence on her life, like her grandma, or there was a young man too at one point (but not sure either
Thanks, will try to keep that in mind. Would be more if there is a section that is unclear though, I think I’m giving up on trying to understand exactly 100% of each sentence with this book
).
