Neko no Otera no Chion-san - Vol. 3 Ch. 21 - Miss Chion and hide-and-seek

[MangaDex]

 

[tickub]

Aww Gen, you wrote her name, you little rascal you.

 

[Kaiofficialone]

Thank you

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@tickub Ah! "The thing you love the most", huh?

 

[havelmom]

A S ...

 

[Whiterunight]

Iloveass2

 

[magma6]

Godamn that butt

 

[Kaarme]

The Japanese, still learning how to read and write in the university. In the West, many know how to do that even before they go to elementary school. At least the Japanese can make better art out of calligraphy. If you consider the sacrifice worth it.

 

[Miriable]

@Kaarme That's a bit like chiding English speakers for not knowing every word in the language. Japanese has 46 hiragana, 46 katakana, and about 50,000 kanji characters (of which about 2,000 make up the basic set that allow people to call themselves 'literate'). So, yeah, learning how to read is a lifelong thing in Japan.

 

[Kaarme]

@Miriable It's not the same. The same would be a Japanese person not knowing every word in Japanese, not just how they are written in kanji, but what they mean. And that's of course guaranteed. All decent, developed languages have plenty of words all native speakers don't know. Most of them would be specialist words, but there would also be more rarely used words that are out of fashion or otherwise out of use due to their meaningfulness having become obsolete (like some agricultural tool from the 19th century, for example). However, even if they have no idea what it is, a Western person would either know perfectly how to write the word or at least approximately, depending on the language. A Japanese person would know how to write it in hiragana but not in kanji. Conversely, if it's an unknown kanji, they might not have any idea whatsoever how to pronounce it, whereas a Western person could utter aloud a written word despite having no idea of what it means. This is the difference.

It's also pretty funny that when a Japanese person sees a Japanese name written properly in kanji, they might not know how to say that name aloud! So, when filling forms, it could be necessary to write the name twice, so that whoever reads the form will be able to call for the person in question (such as in a hospital).

 

[xXPenisXx]

Yeah that was definitely the second kanji in Chion's name.

 

[Straborvsky]

Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla Pls stay vanilla

Let Gen marry Cion, amitaba amitaba

Let the man got that thicc ass booty kami sama!!!!! Uooohhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!1!1!1!

 

[Silvaray88]

That's an ass worth fighting for.

 

[Tcof]

MANGAKA. can you fucking not

Spoiler

 

[twinklecake]

Guys, I'm starting to think that the mangaka is an ass man...

 

[ThePaulBunyanTrophy]

@twinklecake

She's a woman so...

 

[ThePaulBunyanTrophy]

As to why Chion asked how to read what Gen wrote...

Gen wrote 因心 which isn't Japanese. It's actually Chinese and pronounced yīn xīn. And since it's not one of words she recognized, she asked how you read it, since people are still making new words and kanji can have several different ways to pronounce it, and maybe if she hears it pronouced, she might recognize it. Nevertheless, the meaning you can still kind of make out by interpolating from the meaning of each words but you might end up with something like, "From the heart" which is pretty close to the Chinese meaning, "goodwill/love."

If you look at the panels, Gen kind of looks around first and writes the word, and then gets super surprised when Chion shows up, so that's a clue to what he was feeling. He wants to write down how he felt about Chion and she basically walked in on him doing it.

 

[Laserman]

@ThePaulBunyanTrophy Isn't it 恩? A kanji the children here simply haven't learned yet and the first part of Chion's name. That's why Gen gets flustered when Chion comes in.

 

[juicius]

@Laserman

Ah, that's certainly possible! But then I'm not sure why she asked him how to read it, unless it was one of the kids asking. Looking at the panel again, I think it was one of the kids now... And I was so happy about my interpretation...

 

[tanooki]

Chion's tight jeans would probably give her thrush...