Quote:
Originally Posted by dustfire
Not sure if this is the right section, if so it can be moved.
Anyway I was in a store skimmed through some books/novels in Japanese out of curiosity. My knowledge in the language is pretty much rudimentary, so perhaps that is it. Aside from the obvious top to bottom and right to left reading. I was confused about something else.
In languages I have encountered before, novels usually have something like
"I am so angry" said character X
However as I skim through one book I did not notice anything like that. There were some [] here and there. It may have been the novel I picked up but do Japanese novels in general avoid identifying who ever is talking or was it the book I glimpse at just unique in that way?
If not how does one follow the story?
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Most English novels do not identify the speaker often, either. It's considered quite poor literary writing.
Here's the first chapter of Tom Sawyer:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
You'll see that practically nothing has "X said, 'YYY'" or "'YYY,' said X."