Nani mo Wakaranai - Vol. 1 Ch. 11 - Numbers and Letters

[Teasday]

Yeah, as much as I like this translation, frankly I don't think it's the best idea to try to romanize the author's "furigana" using an approximation of Hepburn for the script, because it's clearly the author's own approximation of the language within the confines of the Japanese syllabary. Obviously it's our only canonical source for it at the moment, but since the author gave their own romanization for the numbers, romanizing the kana as-is instead of following their style makes for some fairly bizarre reading sometimes. This way it's twice removed from what it's apparently supposed to sound like to the reader.

It'd require some creative thinking that could unfortunately be contradicted later in the series, but technically this is already contradicting stuff like wot by spelling it uoto on the same page. Tyuyoioi doesn't really describe the insanity of てゅょいぉい, Ryuu clearly has trouble coming up with a representation for it in hiragana. Uotoouu could instead be something like wotwouh, doou and douu could be dwoh and duh - still weird, and despite my own suggestion I'm really not a huge fan of denoting long ending vowels with h, but in my opinion it's at least a bit more readable.

Anyway that's why I think Miyamtuh fits better for her name than Miyamutuu. Might ruin the Miyamoto joke a bit.

 

[Carn109]

Huge findings for Myanese
Maybe we can start scribing now

 

[YamiryuuZero]

Him being called "Dioota" is specially funny to Portuguese speakers because it is way too close to "idiota" (idiot, as you may have guessed).

 

[nathan67003]

...nobody give them the idea of prefixing that with an I.

 

[fiveboxes]

"Yamu" being special is a bit of a surprise, though, honestly. The main place I remember seeing it was when she was giving her name, "mi yamu tuu." My original guess was that it was the word for "name," but I guess that's probably not it, huh? (Based on this chapter, I might actually say that that's "mejii," due to the panel where the chief asks for Ryouta's name.)

Could also be a difference of what they are called vs their actual name as they say it.

ie:
I am Fi of tribe Ve
vs
My name is Fi-Ve

And with their naming convention, if they really do only have one syllable names (minus whatever they tack onto it), they might assume that the name Ryoota implies that he is Ryo of Ta.
So Myaa calling him Ryuu instead of Ryuuta can be explained by that... or she just likes sounding out Ryuu.

Also, there's a chance Myaa comes from a place with an entirely different language, she's a mage elf in a human tribe afterall. That might be why she has access to a different phonetic writing.

She might have even studied this tribe's language herself before meeting Ryuu and she had an easier time learning it because it sounds closer to her own compared to his.

 

[Jayinator]

Am I gonna have to learn a new language? English as a native language is already difficult for me as it is. I don't have the mental energy to learn a new language where the lettering is not even similar, just for one manga.

 

[Arcenciel]

Magnificent name? Was that a JOJO reference?

DIO DA!

 

[megaguil]

All these chapters are adorable. Such a great character art style for a manga like this.

Thanks for the translation!

 

[thegentelman]

I'm curious on why nobody is suprised he comes from another world, is it like a normal occurence for them?

Wait do they know he comes from another universe, or they just think he's a foreginer from another country in their own world?

 

[vofli]

absolutely love this manga ty for tl

 

[Lohengrin]

Cant help but feel author set the premise difficulty to 11 for themselves.

 

[chrno_12]

Yeah, as much as I like this translation, frankly I don't think it's the best idea to try to romanize the author's "furigana" using an approximation of Hepburn for the script, because it's clearly the author's own approximation of the language within the confines of the Japanese syllabary. Obviously it's our only canonical source for it at the moment, but since the author gave their own romanization for the numbers, romanizing the kana as-is instead of following their style makes for some fairly bizarre reading sometimes. This way it's twice removed from what it's apparently supposed to sound like to the reader.

It'd require some creative thinking that could unfortunately be contradicted later in the series, but technically this is already contradicting stuff like wot by spelling it uoto on the same page. Tyuyoioi doesn't really describe the insanity of てゅょいぉい, Ryuu clearly has trouble coming up with a representation for it in hiragana. Uotoouu could instead be something like wotwouh, doou and douu could be dwoh and duh - still weird, and despite my own suggestion I'm really not a huge fan of denoting long ending vowels with h, but in my opinion it's at least a bit more readable.

Anyway that's why I think Miyamtuh fits better for her name than Miyamutuu. Might ruin the Miyamoto joke a bit.

I came across this pretty interesting video of the manga on YouTube where they kinda “dubbed” it. Not sure if it’s official or just fan-made, but if it is official, it could be a good reference for the romanization.

 

[Arkuses]

Only advantage he has is being slightly tougher than the average person
Other than that he's completely normal LOL

Hopefully someday someone will translate the previous chapters when it's figured out

 

[MrMichael]

It's not an alphabet, it's a syllabary, just like Japanese kana. Which could tell us a lot about the world he's in if the author put some thought into the worldbuilding, since syllabaries are extremely rare on modern day Earth and Japanese is the only major world language that has syllabic writing.

Or it could also just be the author being lazy about the language he created by making it similar-ish to Japanese, who knows.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it "lazy" as much as at worst "sticking to what you know".

Besides, it's easy to call syllabaries rare on modern earth but you look at the Bronze Age and suddenly they're more common than alphabets. If you add in the fact that syllabaries are older than alphabets and the technology level here seems old as hell, suddenly a syllabary isn't out of place at all.

And, if I had to speculate my personal guess: The author is writing a manga aimed at a Japanese audience who can read Japanese and so would have an easier time understanding a syllabary.

 

[jorgelotr]

Just to add to the former comment, if we check Earth's history and leave aside writing systems made by people with at least passing knowledge of other writing systems (at least how they work, not necessarily their values), the most common evolutionary path is logographic->ideographic->syllabary->abjad->alphabeth. Sometimes writing systems mix and match several types and sometimes they reach a quasi-alphabeth stage where they use a syllabary with "components" representing sounds.

To tha, I must add that Japanese is relatively unique in the fact that they have adapted the language to a syllabary writing system, getting rid (or half-rid) of all lone consonants with the excetion of base nasals, instead of following any of the three paths for languages written with syllabaries (doubling of the preceding vowel, omission of the lone consonant or modification of the character for the lone consonant, for example, mirroring it).

 

[nailbudday]

Probably reading way into it because this isnt really a thing people think about, but the fact that they have a distinct character for zero and are treating it as an actual number implies a pretty high level of mathematic sophistication. Also, base 10, which is not SUPER notable, but it is positional structure (ten is 1 with a 0 after it rather than 1, 10, 100 being unique characters) and that combo of attributes is like basically a bronze age invention afaik

Only advantage he has is being slightly tougher than the average person
Other than that he's completely normal LOL

Hopefully someday someone will translate the previous chapters when it's figured out

I mean... we just watched him blow a watermelon sized hole in a stone wall with a thrown pebble. He's pretty far removed from "a little tougher than average"

 

[suica]

Probably reading way into it because this isnt really a thing people think about, but the fact that they have a distinct character for zero and are treating it as an actual number implies a pretty high level of mathematic sophistication. Also, base 10, which is not SUPER notable, but it is positional structure (ten is 1 with a 0 after it rather than 1, 10, 100 being unique characters) and that combo of attributes is like basically a bronze age invention afaik

That lends credence to the theory that their numbers come from a more developed civilization.

 

[Phantommemorial]

Oh, they have a concept of "0".
Is it laziness or is there a hidden meaning for that.
And we are lucky that we even have a base-10 math structure here.
I sure hope that they don't have different counts for different things like with Japanese.
Interested to see if we have basic NESW directions or do we have "to-from home" or something else like what some island settlements had that were just "to-from shore".

 

[Figtree22]

Love how its an actual full on conlang

 

[cksn]

yeah calling ten "one zero" seems very unnatural unless you're inheriting from a more sophisticated tradition

tfw no elf gf with no common language