Nani mo Wakaranai - Vol. 1 Ch. 16.5 - Bonus

[Ironclad]

I was sure "Mi Yamu Tuu" was "My name is Tuu".

 

[mrboxeater]

no alcohol or tobacco for a native n indigenous inspired tribe seems sad

 

[suica]

Look, I don't even like thinking about some modern bathrooms that I've used and those at least had running water (a couple didn't have soap). But pre-modern bathrooms were even more disgusting, you don't really need to cover them. For example, Roman public bathrooms had a sponge on a stick that they used to wipe with. They'd stick it in running water or vinegar and leave it for the next person to use.

 

[jvlg]

I was sure "Mi Yamu Tuu" was "My name is Tuu".

But that'd be faux-spanish ("Me llamo Tuu"), not faux-japanese!

Reminds me of watching Heroes, and Hiro proclaiming "yatta!" the first time he successfully teleports (which sounds just like "Ya está!", meaning the same thing in that context).
Language is often funny with coincidences like that, guess conlangs aren't exempt.

 

[itmealice]

this is a true gem

 

[detarameMangadex]

Thanks for the chapter :D

Oh my goodness, I'm crying tears of joy right now. This chapter is a goldmine of information...

First of all, I guess I should start calling Myaasanese "the Dodado language." That is what Japanese readers have called it, and the author clearly agrees.

More importantly, this chapter confirms several hypotheses.

To begin, on page 3, glasses Miyamutuu explains to us that "nimai" does indeed mean "come," and "suimu" means "to/with me" – as we suspected. We also see 'nimai' broken down to "nima" and "-i," conclusively demonstrating verb conjugation of an imperative from a verb root and a suffix.

In the next panel, we learn that "imu sui" is equivalent to "watashi wa" in Japanese – "I [+ particle]" or "as for me." Again, this was decently obvious. Miyamutuu also explains that this is omitted or flexible in some cases because of flubs or regional dialects, and that the mangaka themselves do not follow a completely concrete ruleset. This has certainly caused me quite a bit of pain; being a speaker of English, though, I know very well that languages do not always make sense.

Anyway, now we can analyze new information!

On page 2, we see a list of Dodado words and phrases; I put them through the syllabary chart we got in Chapter 11. Interestingly, this list of words does not match with the "early literary table" shown on page 2 of this Chapter, meaning the mangaka went through several versions of the table of Dodado characters.

• "Yai:" doodle of a single person. I previously thought that "yai sui" is either a plural first-person pronoun ('we') or a singular third-person pronoun (he/him, she/her, they/them). It seems like the latter is the case. So, "yai" means "he/him."
• "Yaou:" doodle of a person with huge ears / feathers; possibly an elf or a tribe leader? My guess is that this is also a pronoun, but with a bit of respect. Sort of like 'vous' in French, but third-person singular. This is new, because we have not yet seen anyone refer to someone in a high social position in the third person.
• "Jupe:" doodle of a house. Probably meaning "home" or "house."
• "Pauu:" doodle of a person entering a house. Maybe the verb "to enter?" I doubt that, though, because it isn't formatted like other verb stems we have seen so far. I'm inclined to believe that this is the noun "entrance."
• "Jaii:" doodle of a person exiting a house. Maybe the noun "exit."
• "Nima:" doodle of a person with an arrow in one direction. We know that this is the verb "to proceed / go / move."
• "Naoupu:" doodle of a person with a crossed-out arrow. We know that this is "stop / don't go."
• "Oupu・de oupu!:" A doodle with a bunch of crosses and things going on. We know that "de oupu!" is something Miyamutuu shouted in Chapter 1, meaning "do not!" and "oupu" means "no/not." I imagine this is meant to distinguish the two cases.
• "Imu・ta imu:" A doodle of an OK hand gesture. We know that "imu" means "yes," but what does "ta imu" mean? Maybe "all right / go ahead?"

Lastly, the final page teaches us how to say "thank you" in Dodado! 'Jeta'ei' is the word. Notice that this is a conjugated verb of the "-a" verb group, which we have previously seen with "goma'ei," which is a conjugated form of "to understand." This makes the existence of verb groups in Dodado very likely, and also establishes a conjugation pattern for them: add the suffix "-ei".

To allow people to go through everything I have written thus far: here is my analysis of Chapter 16. Jeta'ei for reading!

 

[pir0zhki]

Neat! Love this series. I picked up the first volume when I was in Japan back in March, will have to look out for the second volume on my next visit.

 

[Carn109]

Miyamutuu speaking the common tongue jumpscare

 

[Beregorn]

Impressive to go this far. not bad. even Tolkien would nod at this. (he did create a whole language with grammar included for his book.)
and it means the author did finish a volume so far?

"A" language? 😂 He made up more than 15 only for the elves!
The guy was a philologist and was inventing languages as a hobby way before he even started working on the legendarium.

 

[asdfgh1111]

For example, Roman public bathrooms had a sponge on a stick that they used to wipe with. They'd stick it in running water or vinegar and leave it for the next person to use.

These isn't any real evidence of that. The Xylospongium (sponge on a stick) was likely a toilet brush, not a shared ass wiper. Like with most misconceptions about history, you can blame the Victorians for just making this shit up.

 

[tigerstar186]

Really not a fan of this... I don't feel like extra and behind-the-scenes content should be revealing anything about the core mysteries, especially the language. That's literally the whole point of the series.

I don't know if spoilers is the right term, but you're writing about a mystery that you want fans to try to puzzle out and solve. Why are you pulling the curtain back before we've solved it?? It feels like they don't have the confidence in their own writing to get us there.

These kind of development details should be saved for when the series is actually over.

 

[Matikkkii]

Revealing important information in the out of character "thanks for playing" bonus chapter? What is this, Umineko?

Nice to have confirmation on the level of thought the author put into the setting, though. To a certain extent, we could already tell that the language was decently in-depth, but with the comments about clothing, for example, I'm more confident now that Ryouta's belt being the same design as the villagers' belts is intentional.

Anyways, the thing about Mi Yamu Tuu being confused with Miyamoto kinda reminds of names like Sara, Anna, Naomi, &c., which independently developed as both English and Japanese names, leading to some translators having to clarify "this character is Japanese." Art imitates life.

Hi, thanks for playing Umineko no naku koro ni?

 

[LordZero]

Impressive to go this far. not bad. even Tolkien would nod at this. (he did create a whole language with grammar included for his book.)
and it means the author did finish a volume so far?

As far as i understand it, he first made a new language for nerd fun as a literature academic, and then later he created a world to justify the existance of said language.

Many such cases, like people creating an alien setting or a magic system and then writing a story that takes place there just to be able to share the fun.

 

[LordZero]

Hi, thanks for playing Umineko no naku koro ni?

A gathering of the males of the story discussing the attractiveness of the girls and their fetishes and praising the cultured loli school swimsuit maid cafe.

 

[nathan67003]

So what I got from this is that both author and artist are cosmic-level gran autismo turbonerds and I am SO here for it.

 

[Strela]

It is funny how many isekai completely avoid talking about bathrooms. I feel like if you're suddenly dropped into a premodern setting, figuring out where and how to shit hygienically is like a top five problem.

And it's not like the omission makes the series any worse, but just once I would like to see drugs depicted in a manga in a grounded way. It's always either an over the top joke or some Reefer Madness nonsense. We've been using natural intoxicants for tens of thousands of years, it'd be reasonable to have them here in a story that's partly a light anthropological exploration.

Because it's not really fun to think and write, Isekai Ten'i Jirai Tsuki did mention this issue a little bit but after that initial hiccup, nobody ever mentioned it ever again. Not even when they went to dungeons which usually where you explain this things.

 

[jubuttib]

(he did create a whole language with grammar included for his book.)

Several languages, really. Elves and men got a couple each, at least, and dwarves and ents their own ones.

Edit: Oh and black speech.

 

[Diamond_Coal]

First of

OH GOD SHE TALKS IN ENGLISH

Now we can talk about the rest.

I feel like this bonus chapter is kind of a misfire. Don't get me wrong, it makes me happy and interested, but at the same time I feel like I would have more fun without it.

Now let's talk about the actual content... Well it was obvious, that the made up language is in fact Japanese coded. If no one realized, they probably don't really speak Japanese. But the name mix-up is actually quite popular thing in languages. I think we see here not the author remaking a Japenese name, but Japanese audience japanising foreign language. We in fact see cases like that en-masse in english, for instance, Piotr changes to Peter, Michael to Michel, Anastasia to Anna and many more. In fact I think it happens in French a lot too. People just seem to change names from other languages and make them easier to pronounce in theirs, or take the closest sounding name from their region and swap the strangers name with it. That's where the strange never understood by me idea of "asians english name" idea comes from. They just assume english speaking people will englify their names anyways, so they pick some popular english name themselves. It's just something that happens, and which I find kind of strange.

This bonus confirms I was right about my way of aproaching the language tho. It is not entirely rigid, author isn't really 100% grammaticaly correct all the time, which means translating it off vibes is probably the most efficient way to do so at the time.

Amnesia plotline still annoys me. Mostly cuz mc is just so... plain. Maybe I would be intersed in his past or memories, if he was interesting, but so far he is just another japanese manga protagonist, that is super strong, and that's it.

The toilet part is actually not strange, if you notice... Almost no stories really describe bathrooms or time in bathrooms, unless there's a poblem, or unless mc or side character gets ambushed there. It's just that visiting bathrooms is fundamentaly boring. Even if you want to describe a bathroom once, because of the unhygenic reasons or something, it will be just that once, because there is no real benefit to make the readers go to the bathroom with your characters over and over again, it would bore them. The grossnes isn't even the important part as you can see, it's that emptying your bowels is fundamentally a tedious and boring task, no one really wants to speak about, beacuse everyone knows how boring and tedious it is. (Unless you ate a burrito or something, then it's terryfing).

Someone here pointed out that we don't really get realistic drugs/alcohol depictions, especially in thus type of manga. And, his right. Author really missed out here. I think maybe village chief casually smoking a pipe would add a lot to the liveliness of the world, wouldn't even feel out of place, DUH, would feel so in place no one would probably notice.

Meanwhile I think I'm personally more intersted in whatever @detarameMangadex is typing and discussing, than in the actual continuation of the plot... He just seems so interesting about it and analyzing with such passion.

Oh well, I guess we'll be back with more language next time
Jetaei for reading.

Or would you write it Je ta ei on a keyborad? Jeta'ei? JeTaEi? Jeta ei?
Also, this doesn't relly comes up, but pronounciation... Porbably everyone reads it in a different way than me, for instance I
would say "dżitaej", I think, just sound right.

Or since we're here the NiMa word, I would probably just say it as written, but for some reason I want to make the "a" a bit longer, so like "NiMa~", I guess.

And I think SuiMu would be pronounced "Sujmu"?
I could go on and on, but let's be honest, no one really cares about how it's prounounced besides me....