deciphering mangaka handwriting

July 18, 2010 8:38 AM

does anyone know what this japanese squiggle is? i'm usually good with kanji (or could it be really messed up hiragana?), but this is someone's handwriting, and i'm not native.

Image uploaded here: http://i.imgur.com/NEeGw.jpg

The bit I'm trying to figure out is in the bottom-right of the page, below the big question mark next to the boy: みんなにあたしが＿＿っておくから

It's been bugging me for a while, and my kanji dictionary doesn't seem to have something that looks like that. It'd be awesome if anyone from MeFi knew what it was!

posted by swimmingly to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Not much help, but it looks more like hiragana than kanji.
posted by joyeuxamelie at 8:57 AM on July 18, 2010

Best answer: It's 言 (いう). She's saying something like "I'm gonna tell you all something..."
posted by spacewrench at 9:05 AM on July 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hopefully I'm looking at the right section! My Japanese is somewhat rusty, but it looks to me like the first character is 今, which means "now" as I recall. The next two look like katakana - the first is プ but I can't tell what the next two characters are. So I think it's "...今 プ__ __ くから!"
posted by photo guy at 9:26 AM on July 18, 2010

spacewrench has it, it's あたしが言っておくから
posted by emmling at 9:44 AM on July 18, 2010

Thirding 言. Here's a handwritten example, which is much cleaner, but the shapes are very similar.
posted by clearlydemon at 11:01 AM on July 18, 2010

Best answer: Yes, it's 言っておくから and it means "I'll tell the others." in this context. The girl's giving permission to the boy to take the day off because she thinks he's tired, and is offering to tell the other people in their group for him.
posted by misozaki at 5:30 PM on July 18, 2010

Everyone got there before I did, but spacewrench, emmling, clearlydemon and misozaki are all correct.
posted by armage at 5:39 PM on July 18, 2010