Ah good to know, I’ll give that a try. I use a tablet with a pen (Samsung) and that lets me use Google OCR to select text from manga which is awesome. It’s just a bit more fiddly with longer prose because the autoselect normally grabs a longer blurb than I want. I wonder if Bookwalker could integrate with Deepl instead of Google Translate… but by the sound of it, the integration with Google translate is already good enough to copy it somewhere else and make it usable without too much fiddling.
I am catching up w this book and there’s a lot that is going over my head (mostly the abstract concepts). I wish I had some easy way of marking up questionable grammar in ttsu since I’ve been reading this on public transit Other than remembering to go back to stuff later I guess.
Regarding なりに and the surrounding context
Sorry if I accidentally repeat anything that’s already been said in the thread btw, lots of good discussion here!
I think I get the gist of it? I took a look at Bunpro’s entry on なりに and one of the meanings is basically “Do one’s best in one’s own way”, as @Jiell mentioned earlier.
One of their example sentences is:
彼は下手なりに 頑張ってラブレターを書いた。 For all of his lack of skill, he did the best that he could to write a love letter.
The context is that Nanoka read 星の王子さま on おばあちゃん’s recommendation. She found it difficult, おばあちゃん replies with the thing about it being better if you know that you don’t know things, etc.
My interpretation of the confusing sentence is that おばあちゃん is continuing the conversation about the book. She asks Nanoka, “For all that you didn’t understand, was there anything that you found memorable (about the book)?”
(somehow with the implication of trying her best to understand? still don’t quite get the nuance)
Then, Nanoka’s reply:
「そうね、私には箱に入った大人しい羊より、一緒に散歩をしてくれる猫の方が似合ってそう」
At first, I was like “where did this sheep come from??” but after revisiting the section I realized this sounds like something that would happen in The Little Prince so I looked up 星の王子さま (sure enough, they are the same book). It’s been a while since I read the book so I looked up the plot.
The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator’s surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a crate, claiming the sheep is inside. This turns out to be the exact drawing the prince wanted.
So, I think Nanoka’s reply is that she would rather be like her cat friend, freely wandering around, than the well-behaved sheep in the box. Precocious I see…
Still haven’t finished the whole chapter yet… soon…
I finished the reading for this week. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty difficult at times. Sometimes I would understand a sentence without any effort, and other times I would have to look up almost every word to understand it (sort of). I can’t say it’s pleasant to be at this level again, this time in Korean, so I’m glad to have the book club to motivate me to push through.
That aside, content-wise, I’m enjoying the story. I like Nanoka’s friends and am curious to learn more about them, as well as her home life. Based on what’s been revealed so far, I think that she needs to talk to her parents about how she’s feeling, since she seems rather lonely. I also hope that she makes friends at school like her teacher wants.
Can someone help me with this sentence on page 25:
二階までしかないアパートの最後の一軒
My understanding:
二階 - second floor; two floors
まで - until
しかない - there’s only; nothing but
アパート - apartment
最後 - last; final
一軒 - one building
I get that the last part is “the final unit in the apartment complex” but I can’t quite parse the first part. When I try to put the whole thing together, I get something like “There’s only the final unit left until the second floor.”
I just finished week 2 hopefully I can catch up and read week 3 this week. Vocab wise, things are getting easier I’d say, as I’ve already learned some of the vocab from week 1. I’ve accumulated a total of 395 LingQs, which is not that bad considering I already had over 250 for week 1.
Comprehension wise however, while I wasn’t completely stuck on sentences this week, unlike last week, many parts were pretty unclear to me. I was particularly confused by the timeline of events. If I understood correctly, we got to see how she met the cat, 아바즈레 씨 and the grandma, so that was the past.
Another time related sentence: “그러면 아바즈레 씨에게도 앞을 내다보는 능력이 있겠네요". Is this meant to be litteral, as in being able to see the future, or is there another meaning?
That’s the context I was looking for! I’d gotten the litteral meaning of the sentence, but I couldn’t understand the reference to the sheep in the box.
I completely missed this in the Korean version. Anyone who read that knows if it’s also referenced there?
Weirdly, I also completely misunderstood the gender of this character, I was picturing an old man. Not sure if I missed something again or if the way to figure that out was through the name.
Oh, right I found that part. I forgot about that, and for a while I thought that was another character. But then I was reading the first half of week 2 as I was falling asleep, so I’ll just try not to do that again. My reading comprehension when sleep deprived is clearly much lower than my usual level.
Is that Nanoka talking about 아바즈레 씨’s ability to see ahead in the context of the game? (I read the Japanese version and can’t read Korean, so I had to make do putting it into DeepL and guessing where it came from.)
If so, that’s (probably? ) not meant as a supernatural, but as the normal “thinking several moves ahead” that experienced players do. Planning your moves while anticipating what your opponent would do, and how you’d answer, instead of just reacting to the current state of the board only.
(Grandma then plays with that, saying that unlike children adults are more focussed on the past than the future, which could be a general remark… or maybe it could mean that she thinks that 아바즈레 씨 doesn’t cleverly plan ahead by coming up with new strategies, but instead remembers similar situations she had faced in the past and reacts based on that. Not sure!)
Verbatim response:
So なりに in this context is like although you don’t fully understand,
it’s that although part
But, like, different form from what you probably know.
so not like ‘in your way’ なりに？
Yeah bit different from in your way
It’s asking, like, in a very rude mean way, it’s saying with your limited understanding, what did you feel
Yeah so that makes sense to me I think, it’s just a bit weird for eng speakers, but it fits with the base meaning of なりに as ‘in your way’ as I understand it, just have to turn my head sideways a bit
I think that’s what my brain was mostly trying to get it to mean, but I couldn’t quite get there puzzling it out myself. Yay for native speaker friends
Finished the reading! Tbh I wasn’t too engaged in the story after reading Week 1, but I like how Week 2 had more about the 3 characters’ backgrounds and the loneliness they share as they’re all outcasts in different ways.
I wasn’t familiar with the term 節を売る but perhaps you can also see 季節を売る as a play on words with the more frequently used 売春, which if you split it up, it’s sell + spring (a season).
Other than remembering to go back to stuff later I guess.
) not meant as a supernatural, but as the normal “thinking several moves ahead” that experienced players do. Planning your moves while anticipating what your opponent would do, and how you’d answer, instead of just reacting to the current state of the board only.