Commentary Transcript

This dialogue focuses on Toby and Manami, but actually almost every single character has at least one line. So let’s get started.

At the beginning, Toby asks Manami…

• Hobbies
• And such
• Have
• [genuine question marker]?

We saw とか in the last dialogue, where I explained that it means “and such” or “such as.” Here in this dialogue, I’m translating is as “…or anything.” Almost like he’s saying “Hobbies or anything, have?” Which we can translate more naturally as: “Do you have any hobbies or anything?”

Manami responds with…

• Hobbies?
• Hmm…
• Especially
• Don’t have
• I guess

Let's look at this phrase 特にないかな

特に means “especially.” However, it’s really common to see this with ない, in the formation 特にない, which we could translate to “Not especially.” But in this dialogue, I translated it to “Not really.”

Some of you may remember way back in the first video when Toby said 別(べつ)に, and it got translated to “Nothing.” Well, when I first wrote this line, I wrote 別にない, but my editor told me to change it to 特にない. I want to explain why… but, I’m not totally confident that I’ll be able to. The thing is, if this sentence had said 別にない, I might have still translated it exactly the same in English: Not really. I was told that saying 特にない here sounds a little more friendly and soft than saying 別にない. Let’s take a stab at why. Let’s say we have the question, “Do you have any hobbies or anything?” And then we have four possible answers, with the most positive at the top and the least positive at the bottom:

• Yes. I love soccer!
• Yeah, I’m kind of into soccer.
• No, nothing really.
• No, nothing.

特にない would probably be somewhere around here, just above “No, nothing really.” We might even translate it to, “No, nothing really in particular.” But if we were to say 別にない, then it would probably be just a little bit further down, just before “No, nothing really.” Maybe we could translate it to just “Not really.” You can compare both of these to just saying ない, for example, which would be down here and probably translate to just “No.”

At least, that’s my understanding of the difference between 特にない and 別にない… although I’m still not 100% confident in this explanation, even though I came to this conclusion after consulting with some native Japanese pros.

Anyways, Toby asks another question, apparently trying to keep this conversation alive:

• Books
• [topic marker]
• Liking?

This sentence is about as simple as they get, and I translated it to “Do you like books?”

Manami responds with…

• Manga
• More so
• Liking

I think the first time I learned the のほうが construction in grammar, my teacher made me memorize some long, horrible sentence like: 私は本より漫画のほうが好きです. “As for me, I prefer manga over books.” Ironically, now that I’m much better at Japanese, I speak in much simpler, shorter sentences, just saying stuff like 漫画のほうが好きだ. “I like manga more (than books).” I usually add だ to the end of my 好き, by the way, because I’m a guy, and it sounds a bit more masculine.

If we translated Xのほう directly, it would mean “in the direction of X.” This is cool, because it can help us to understand why this sentence is getting translated to “I prefer manga” or “I like manga more.” Rather than pointing in the direction of 本, books, we can point in the direction of 漫画 using のほう “in the direction of” and が which is the “pointer particle,” yeah. So we’re pointing in the direction of manga and saying 好き: [漫画のほうが好き] “I prefer manga.”

By the way, if you don’t already know, manga are just Japanese comic books.

This is where Kanako butts into the conversation and says…

• Manami-chan
• [topic]
• (night)club
• の
• Queen
• Is (of explanation)
• [assertion]

If we translated this directly, it would be something like “Manami-chan is queen of the nightclubs.” But, uh, yeah…

I changed the English from “queen” to “princess,” because that seemed a little more accurate to what Kanako might say if she were speaking English. From my point of view, Manami looks like anything but a queen, after all.

By the way, it’s not like a common thing to call someone the queen of a nightclub. However, I have heard this exact sentence before (although it was not about a girl named Manami), so I can say that it is some valid Japanese.

We can also take note that Kanako is saying なんだよ at the end. We have なんだ for explanations, right? So Kanako is “explaining” to Toby that Manami’s hobby is going to clubs.

Manami does not seem to be very happy about this label, though, and she says…

• That kind of
• Thing
• Is not
• [assertion]

This word そんな is actually really common when someone is shocked about or disgusted with something. Sometimes, in Japanese, when someone hears something horrible and shocking, they’ll just say そんな！ We could literally translate this to “That kind of thing!” But its full meaning would be like “I can’t believe that kind of horrible thing happened! Or was done or whatever.” Maybe in English we could just say “Unbelievable.” Or, “That’s horrible.”

This sentence that Manami is saying, though, isn’t quite so extreme. Rather, it’s just a way to say two things: (1) That’s not true, and (2) Nothing like that is true. This makes sense if we look at a literal translation of そんなことないよ, which would be something like “That kind of thing is not (true).” I just translated it to “No I’m not!” in the dialogue, though.

Toby obviously believes Kanako, though, and he asks Manami…

• Dancing
• [identifier]
• Liking
• Means

I translated this to “So you like dancing?”

The only thing we haven’t seen here is ってこと. This whole thing is actually an abbreviation of ということ, which is a combination of と (marking quotation… we usually see this as って in the dialogue), 言(い)う (which is the verb “to say”) and こと, which means “thing.”

So all together we have “quote to say thing,” but it usually just gets translated to “that” in English. “That” is a pretty vague word, though, right? Instead, it might help to think of it as “(is) that” or “(means) that.”

In the example form the dialogue, Toby is responding to Kanako’s statement about Manami being a club princess, right? So he says [踊るのが好きってこと]. If we think of ってこと as “(is) that” or “(means) that,” then it’s kind of like he’s saying “So (it means that) you like dancing?”

I could give you about 100 more bad explanations, but instead just trust that we’ll see this construction a lot in the future, and you’ll get a feel for it in no time.

Manami responds with…

• Yeah
• Loving!

So this I translated to, “Yeah, I love dancing.” Also, like I said before, as a guy I would probably say 大好きだ over 大好き, as the だ, which sounds a little rougher, a little more emphatic, comes across as more masculine in Japanese. Most girls would just say 大好き, though.

Manami then continues by asking Toby about his hobbies…

• Tobi-kun’s hobby
• [topic marker]

Like we’ve seen quite a few times now, some of this sentence is actually getting dropped because of context. In particular, she is dropping the question word 何, what? If Manami were to say everything, it would be トビ君の趣味は何(なに)？ Or, in a polite situation, she would say トビ君の趣味は何(なん)ですか

I think that saying Noun ＋ は？ while using the intonation of a question is such an awesome way to form questions in Japanese, because it’s something that beginners can pretty much do from day one. One especially easy way to do this is to ask someone the same question they asked you, by just saying their name, plus は in the tone of a question. For example, if Toby and Manami’s conversation had gone like this…

[趣味とかあるの？]

[特にないかな] Manami could follow this sentence by just saying トビは? (literally, “As for Toby?”) And it would mean トビは趣味とかあるの？ (“As for Toby, do you have any hobbies or anything?”) and the natural English for this would just be “How about you?” Or we could even just say “You?”

Unlike Manami, Toby does have an answer for this question, and he says…

• Cooking
• I guess

I translated this to “I’d probably say cooking,” but a direct translation would be “Cooking I guess.” As we’ve seen before, か is a particle for questions, right? And な is kind of like ね, only we use it when we’re saying something to ourselves. If you think about the phrase “I guess,” in English, it’s pretty similar. So we could translate this as “Cooking, I guess.” Toby is speculating that “cooking” is probably his “hobby,” but he’s not super sure about it. I translated it in the dialogue as “I’d probably say cooking.”

We can stick かな onto the end of sentences anytime we’re not totally sure about something, and we’re thinking “maybe” or “I guess.” We’ll be sure to see this again in the future, and at that time we can look into it in a little more depth.

Hearing that Toby’s hobby is cooking (well, probably)… she responds by saying…

• Cooking
• [identifier]
• Skilled
• [genuine question]

So it’s like, “Cooking, skilled?”

We’ve seen all of the words and grammar that are present in this sentence, and based on the information presented up until now, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with your own translation of this sentence. I went with… “Are you good at cooking?”

Next we have what is quite possibly the most difficult sentence we’ve seen so far…

• By oneself
• To say
• Also
• Strange
• Is
• But
• By everyone
• Often
• Delicious
• [quote marker]
• Am told

First, let’s take the first half of this sentence only. 自分で means “by oneself.” So if we add 言う, which means “to say” to this, then it means “to say by oneself.” In English, we would say, “to say myself.” Next we have の, which is turning 自分で言う into a noun so that it can act as a sort of “subject” of our sentence, if you will. Then after that we have , も, which means “also.” So with 自分で言うのも, we have “Also saying (so) myself.” Then he says 変, which means “strange.” だ means, more or less “is.” So 自分で言うのも変だ “Also saying so myself is strange.” In the dialogues translation, I wrote “I can’t really speak for myself.” Or, for a more literal spin, we could say, “It’d be strange to say so myself.”

Then we have　けど, “but,” connecting this to the second half of the compound sentence: みんなによく美味しいって言われる. This is a bit less complicated than the first half, which had a somewhat confusing usage of the particles の and も. The core of this sentence is actually the outer parts: みんなに言われる “am told by everyone.” 言われる is the passive form of the verb 言う. I will talk more about passive verbs in the Bunkai Beast PDF guide, but for now we can just know that for passive Group 1 verbas, the final ‘u’ sound gets changed to an ‘a’ sound (and in the case of う it becomes わ), and then we stick ～れる onto it.

So 言う is “to say,” and 言われるis “to be told”

Likwise 殴(なぐ)る is “to hit,” and 殴(なぐ)られる is “to be hit/punched”

噛(か)む is “to bite,” and 噛(か)まれる is “to be bitten.”

In a passive sentence, we mark the agent of the action (the one doing the action) with に. I could make up some story about how we do this, because the agent of the action in a passive sentence cannot be the subject, but using は or が could cause the misunderstanding that the one performing the action is the subject. That all sounds pretty confusing to me though, so instead I’ll just say that the performer of an action in a passive sentence is always marked by に, and we can just remember it that way. For example…

Saying “to be told by Miki” would be ミキに言われる

“to be hit by my girlfriend” would be 彼女(かのじょ)に殴られる

“to be bitten by a dog” would be 犬(いぬ)に噛まれる

So in the dialogue, when Toby says みんなに言われる it means “to be told by everyone.” The contents of what he is being told by everyone is found smashed into the middle of that sentence: 美味しいって. As we know, 美味しい means “delicious,” (or just “good”), and って is a kind of casual, spoken quotation mark. So if we said みんなに美味しいって言われる it would mean “(I am) told by everyone that (it’s) delicious.” Toby also includes the word , よく, which could mean “well” or “often.” In this case, it means often. So altogether it’s: [みんなによく美味(おい)しいって言(い)われる], “often told by everyone (it’s) delicious,” or perhaps just slightly more naturally, “I am often told by everyone that my cooking is good.” Finally, we have (I hope) an ever more natural translation, which is the one I used for the dialogue: “People (often) tell me my cooking’s good.”

So here’s what the full sentence and translation look like together:

[自分で言うのも変だけど、みんなによく美味しいって言われる。]
[じぶん　で　いう　のも　へん　だけど、　みんな　に　よく　おいしい　って　いわれる。]

I can’t really speak for myself, but people tell me my cooking’s good.

It’s pretty obvious that Toby’s just being modest, though, and Manami responds accordingly by saying…

• Wow
• Amazing
• [agree?]

This is one of those weird cases where a literal translation actually words: Wow. Amazing. Yeah? The translation I used in the dialogue was “Wow, cool.” Since everything in this sentence is super common, I highly recommend checking out the shadow looping track for this line of dialogue. It sounds like this:

[insert shadow looping track]

Manami then continues…

• Next time
• Everyone (together)
• Cooking party
• Let’s do

Looking at each word, “Next time / Everyone (together) / cooking party / let’s do,” it’s not too hard to guess why the translation for this dialogue was: “Next time, we should all have a cooking party.”

今度 is one of those words in Japanese that I have a lot of problems with. Technically it means “this time,” but then sometimes it means “next time,” and it mostly just depends on the context of the sentence, so I don’t really have any cool tips on how to use this properly. Once a get a better grip on it, though, I’ll be sure to share.

Toby then answers with…

• Good
• [assertion]

As we’ve saw in Diego’s self-intro, いいですよ can mean “That’s fine.” This is simply a more casual version, which I’ve translated to “Sounds good to me.” However, translating to just “sounds good” would be fine, too.

He then calls out to Diego, saying…

• Hey
• Diego
• Next time
• Cooking party
• Let’s do

If you haven’t already guessed so, we can translate this to, “Hey, Diego. Let’s all have a cooking party next time.”

The only new word we have here is おーい, which is just a way to call for someone’s attention. I translated it to “Hey.”

Although nobody was talking to her, Miki then butts in by saying…

• What
• Make?

I translated this to “What kind of food?!” But it literally just means “What make?!” The way that she says it makes it sound like the party has already been decided and now they’re moving onto the discussion of what they’re going to make.

Toby comes back with…

• Anything
• Good
• But

It would probably be fine if Toby just said なんでもいい, “Anything’s fine,” but he also added けど. This is probably just to indicate that it’s not totally his decision and/or it could allude to the fact that they haven’t actually decided if they’re having a cooking party yet. With lots of exposure to Japanese, you shouldn’t have too many problems getting a sense of the nuance of putting けど onto the end of your sentences in order to hint at other unspoken content, which is something we’ve already see multiple times in these first few videos.

I translated this whole line to “Anything’s fine with me.” [なんでもいいけど]

Miki then suggests…

• Niku-jaga?

Niku-jaga is a super traditional Japanese dish. 肉(にく) is “meat,” and じゃが is short for ジャガイモ, which means “potato,” so as you might have guessed, 肉じゃが is a kind of beef-potato stew, and it looks like this: [insert photo].

Toby, not Japanese himself, comes back with…

• (traditional) Japanese food
• [topic marker]
• (not) very
• Skillful
• Am not
• Is (of explanation)
• [you feel me?]

First, for those that don’t know, 和食 means “(traditional) Japanese food” or “Japanese home cooking,” if you will. If you look it up online, you can find lots of stuff about it, because it’s actually listed as a UNESCO cultural heritage (I know, because I had to write about it for a job once). This comes from the characters 和, which technically means something like “harmony,” but often also means “Japanese.” Then we have 食, which is just the on-yomi reading of this kanji, which you probably know best in the word 食べる, “to eat.”

Next we have あまり. This means “much” or “very,” but always in a negative way. It commonly (though not always) appears with negative verbs, where we might translate it to “(not) much” or “(not) very.”

The “not” that we’re looking at in this sentence is coming from 得意じゃない, “Not good at.” Since we’ve already seen 上手(じょうず) before, which means “skilled,” you might be wondering what the difference is between 上手 and 得意, which is often commonly translated as “skilled” or “good at.” This is kind of tricky, but there are some easy tricks to remembering the difference between 上手 and 得意.

1)You cannot say 上手 about yourself, but you can say 得意

2)上手 is for talking about an action or a product of an action, whereas 得意 is talking about a skill level. For example, I could say パスタを上手に作る, which would mean “to make pasta well,” but we cannot say ✘得意にパスタを作る, because we can’t use 得意 for the action of making pasta. However, we could say something like 私は料理が得意だ, “I’m good at cooking,” Literally: “I have a high cooking skill.” But I could not say 私は料理が上手だ, “I cook well” à I’m good at cooking. However, someone else could tell me something like “You’re good at cooking” using 上手: あなたは料理が上手だ！ You are good at cooking!

3)You will learn the difference naturally.

I picked up the different uses of these two words naturally, and I hadn’t even really thought about how they’re used differently until I had to explain their difference here. This is great news, because it means that even if nothing that I just said made sense, you can still learn the difference between these two words naturally.

Long story short, when Toby says 和食はあまり得意じゃない it means “I’m not very good at making Japanese food.” He also adds んだ at the end, because he is saying this as an explanation for why he can’t (or doesn’t want to) cook Niku-jaga, per Miki’s suggestion: [和食(わしょく)はあまり得意(とくい)じゃないんだよね] / I’m not really good at making Japanese food (so let’s not have Niku-jaga).

Miki quickly jumps to her next suggestion…

• Then
• Italian
• [topic]?

For this one I wrote, “How about Italian?”

Toby responds with…

• Good
• [assertion]

“Yeah, sure.”

Then Miki says…

• Yes!

やった is actually the past tense of the verb やる, which is a casual form of する, “to do.” However, we can use it in the past tense, like in this example, to say something like “Yes!” or “Score!” It might also be a good word for practicing the little つ in Japanese, which usually gets written as a double consonant in roman letters: Yatta! Two T’s. The linguistic term for this is a “glottal stop,” which refers to obstructing the flow of air as you say a consonant. We could also call it a “geminated consonant,” which just means a consonant pronounced for longer. Lastly, we could also call it a “blah blah blah.”

It’s really easy to pick up if you just listen for it. Here’s a sample from the shadow track:

[insert shadow for やった]

After saying やった～！, “Yes!” Miki says…

• When
• Do?
• Tomorrow?

There are actually quite a few ways to use the phrase ～にする, but in this phrase, it means “to decide on (something).” For example, if you asked me how my vacation planning it going, I might say: ロンドンにした, “I decided on (going to) London.” Or if we’re sitting at a restaurant, looking at the menu, I might say ステーキにする, “I’m going to have the steak,” Literally: “I’m deciding on the steak.” So when Miki says いつにする it literally means “When are we deciding on?” But I translated it to “When are we having it?” Or “When should we have it” probably would have been fine, too.

明日？ Tomorrow?

Then Diego speaks up, saying…

• Tomorrow
• [topic]
• Impossible
• Right?

In dictionaries, I usually see the word 無理 being translated as “unreasonable” or “impossible.” Those are… accurate, but I think they give off a slightly different nuance than 無理, which is an extremely common word in Japanese. For example, if you and I went to a restaurant together, and I asked you to eat a live snake, you could say 無理 無理 無理, which would be like saying “No way!” in English, or “Nope,” or “No, no, no.” Although maybe next time someone asks you to do something that sounds horrible, you could say “Unreasonable unreasonable unreasonable!” Haha. Sorry, that’s a lame joke.

Also at the end here, we have Diego saying だろ. We saw でしょ earlier, right? It’s a shortened version of でしょう, which is a speculative word in Japanese. Well, だろ is the shortened version of だろう, and it’s almost the same thing as でしょう. Almost. Because でしょう can be a moderately high level of certainty or a high level of certainty. For example, we could say something like 明日も雨でしょう, and it sounds like “It’ll probably rain tomorrow, too.” Moderate certainty.

Or, we could say something like 無理でしょう？ With a rising intonation at the end, or the shortened 無理でしょ for higher levels of certainty. Well, だろう and だろ are for this second type of high-certainty でしょう and でしょ, the difference being that it sounds quit masculine, and it’s usually used by males.

That’s why I translated [明日(あした)は無理(むり)だろ] to “We can’t tomorrow, obviously.” High certainty (masculine and casual).

Miki then suggests…

• Then
• Next week?

Literally, “Then / Next week?” Which is pretty much the same as my translation: “Next week, then?”

Toby says…

• Yeah
• Everyone
• [identifier]
• OK
• If

This is a pretty simple sentence, and we’ve seen all of its parts before. I translated it to “Sure, if everyone else is OK with it.”

Miki then reassures him…

• Completely
• No problem
• [assertion]

Which, in more natural English we can translate to “Yeah, no problem at all.”

She then turns to the rest of the group and says…

• That is so
• [assertion]
• [you feel me?]
• Everyone

The way Miki says this makes it sound like she has already consulted with the rest of the group, and they have told her that next week is no problem. That is obviously not the case, though, which is why it’s kind of a strange thing to say here. I translated it simply to “Right, everyone?”

Wow, that was a long, involved video. Hope it wasn’t too confusing! See you next time…