Reading Club

[AJBryant]

きわめてホルン的な身の上話をした

Not as interesting as

きわめてポルン的な身の上話をした　:D


Tony

[richvh]

AJBryant wrote:

きわめてホルン的な身の上話をした

Not as interesting as

きわめてポルン的な身の上話をした　:D

Jeez. Tony, when are you going to grow up and get your mind out of the gutter? You're almost as old as I am!

[AJBryant]

Jeez. Tony, when are you going to grow up and get your mind out of the gutter? You're almost as old as I am! :p

But it's so comfortable in the gutter.

Tony

[clay]

Do you think it may be better to use a mail group like Yahoo Groups for this study? That way, everyone would get an email whenever anyone replies.

Or does anyone have an idea how to best organize things?

[zengargoyle]

yay! my book came this morning. and what a cute little book it is..

[Frumious Boojum]

Mine finally came in yesterday.

clay wrote:
Do you think it may be better to use a mail group like Yahoo Groups for this study? That way, everyone would get an email whenever anyone replies.

Or does anyone have an idea how to best organize things?

As for Yahoo! Groups... could be a possibility. It would keep the forums cleaned up a bit, at least.

One thing I was thinking was to use the chat to have big weekly meetups to discuss progress -- or even maybe, if you can, create a permanent Book Club room in the chat, where we can go every day to have smaller daily discussions. Because everybody's all around the world, I wouldn't make this the focus, but more of a good addition to it.

[Mukade]

Shirley Sia wrote:
3) スキー ...... (sukii ??) ------ ??

Ski, like the sport.

Shirley Sia wrote:
4) ブラームスのピアノ・コンチェルト.....(bute-musu no piano.konchuruto ??) ..... ??? piano concert

Brahms Piano Concerto

Shirley Sia wrote:
Y) Are these sentences translated correctly ?

「バイオリンやフルートのことはおいらにはよｋわかんないな」とホルンは気の枝で地面をほじくりながら語ったのかもしれない。......
"I don't know anything about the violin and flute " The horn said

You forgot this part:
とホルンは気の枝で地面をほじくりながら (that 気 should be 木)
'the horn said as he poked at the ground with a tree branch'

and this part:
語ったのかもしれない。
Remember that the narrator and the horn are two different characters. The narrator is imagining a hypothetical scene in his mind, and so the full sentence would be:

"'I don't know anything about the violin or the flute,' the horn would probably say as he pokes at the ground with a stick."

Shirley Sia wrote:
それを解けば人生が何もかもぱらりとわかってしまうような謎が。

By reading the texts, I can tell some of the words like musical instrument, professional, horn player, confused, mystery, perfect, combination, concert, ..... But I still can’t get the whole concept.....

Then this will be a great learning experience for you!

Taking this sentence as an example, try translating each part of a sentence first:
それを解けば人間が - if people figure that out, they (with that referring to the previous sentence)
何もかも - anything and everything
ぱらりとわかってしまう - understand everything in a flash
ような謎が - a kind of mystery (note we don't really translate the が here, as it's here just to infer that he's still talking about the same mystery mentioned in the previous sentence)

Now, to put it all together:
It's the kind of mystery where, if people were to figure that out, they would understand anything and everything in a flash.

Shirley Sia wrote:
I read the whole essay and still don’t know why 何故（なぜ）それはホルンでなくてはならなかったのか Why should it be a horn ?

Don't take it too literally. The author is musing - and existentially, at that. It's like he's asking himself "Why is it a horn? Why did he become a horn player, and not me?"

[tanuki]

Yay, I got the book today! It looks very nice, I can't wait to start trying to read it!(oops, I think I used too many verbs together hehe).

I'll have to make a lot of kanji lookup and stuff, but I'm expecting it to be fun . I'm going to need help from you guys, so you'll hear from me hehe.

[richvh]

Mukade wrote:

Shirley Sia wrote:
それを解けば人生が何もかもぱらりとわかってしまうような謎が。

By reading the texts, I can tell some of the words like musical instrument, professional, horn player, confused, mystery, perfect, combination, concert, ..... But I still can’t get the whole concept.....

Then this will be a great learning experience for you!

Taking this sentence as an example, try translating each part of a sentence first:
それを解けば人間が - if people figure that out, they (with that referring to the previous sentence)
何もかも - anything and everything
ぱらりとわかってしまう - understand everything in a flash
ような謎が - a kind of mystery (note we don't really translate the が here, as it's here just to infer that he's still talking about the same mystery mentioned in the previous sentence)

Now, to put it all together:
It's the kind of mystery where, if people were to figure that out, they would understand anything and everything in a flash.

I'd been reading that as "If I could understand that, I would be able to understand the riddle of Life, the Universe, and Everything*."

*The answer to this riddle is, of course, 42, but the reason why it is 42 seems to me to be comprised of some deep mystery, which if I could understand it, I would instantly be able to understand how someone could become a horn player rather than a writer.

Mukade wrote:

Shirley Sia wrote:
I read the whole essay and still don’t know why 何故（なぜ）それはホルンでなくてはならなかったのか Why should it be a horn ?

Don't take it too literally. The author is musing - and existentially, at that. It's like he's asking himself "Why is it a horn? Why did he become a horn player, and not me?"

How about "Why must there be such a thing as a horn?"

[tanuki]

By the way:

AJBryant wrote:

きわめてホルン的な身の上話をした

Not as interesting as

きわめてポルン的な身の上話をした　:D


Tony

Wouldn't ホルン的 be "horny"?

Oops, sorry, is there still space in the gutter for me, Tony-san?

[nihongozuki]

clay wrote:
Do you think it may be better to use a mail group like Yahoo Groups for this study? That way, everyone would get an email whenever anyone replies.

Yes, but can Yahoo Groups handle Japanese? I know Yahoo Asia Groups can. However, posters and readers may have trouble with 文字化け。　See http://www.fumizuki.com/mojibake.html .

[Paul De Stefano]

I am a new member. Iwas attracted to this forum by Clay's April Newsletter. I ordered the book from WhiteRabbit. Is there still room to join the Reading Club? I will try reading the Horn story from Harisenbon's post.

By the way is Horn what might be called Jazz horn or saxophone or is this a French Horn as figures in Wagnerian orchestral music?

[richvh]

Paul De Stefano wrote:
By the way is Horn what might be called Jazz horn or saxophone or is this a French Horn as figures in Wagnerian orchestral music?

The story isn't specific, but I think it's more likely to be something like a French horn than a sax. The illustration that follows the story shows a tuba (or, at least, something that looks more like a tuba than anything else I'm familiar with.)

[keith712]

Hi. Like Paul I saw Clay's plug in the April e-newsletter. I ordered the book and am catching up on the history of this thread. I was reading one of Shirley's posts (slowly with dictionary in lap) when I got stuck at:

...気の枝...

I did a lot of page leafing and head scratching until it dawned on me that maybe she made a typo and it was originally 木の枝! Looking forward to talking to you all! Keith

[richvh]

keith712 wrote:
Hi. Like Paul I saw Clay's plug in the April e-newsletter. I ordered the book and am catching up on the history of this thread. I was reading one of Shirley's posts (slowly with dictionary in lap) when I got stuck at:

...気の枝...

I did a lot of page leafing and head scratching until it dawned on me that maybe she made a typo and it was originally 木の枝! Looking forward to talking to you all! Keith

Yes, it was definitely a typo, and you correctly guessed the correct text.