Practice Your Japanese Through Conversation

[Bueller_007]

what does imi mean? i know ima means now... is it similar?

意味 ("imi") = "meaning"/"definition"

To ask "What does goshusshin mean?" you say:
ご出身ってどう言う意味ですか。
"goshusshin-tte dou iu imi desu ka."

[Jason]

I get what you're saying, but how do the "sonna" and "nante" fit in there? My dictionary says "sonna" means "like, that sort of", and "nante" is "how ... !" or "that kind of thing". So in this case the "nante" makes it into an exclamation? Or is it just a "how?" Or am I overanalysing? I keep looking for a one-to-one correspondence when it probably doesn't exist.

Literally is your sentence something like:
"How much easier it is to understand romaji than kana! I'm surprised."

Your litteral translation and understanding of nante are spot on. While "sonna" does mean "that kind", etc., "sonna ni" means "to that extent." Odoroku can also mean "to be amazed."

Neko no shashin (nyaan):
http://www.petster.com/cgi/profile.cgi?pet_id=23028
http://www.petster.com/cgi/profile.cgi?pet_id=23027

Kawaii neko-san-tachi desu ne? =^_^=

[Jason]

To ask "What does goshusshin mean?" you say:
ご出身ってどう言う意味ですか。
"goshusshin-tte dou iu imi desu ka."

However, she should be aware that "-tte" here is a bit on the casual side. It's short for "to iu no wa."

[metablue]

Your litteral translation and understanding of nante are spot on. While "sonna" does mean "that kind", etc., "sonna ni" means "to that extent." Odoroku can also mean "to be amazed."

どうもありがとう。おせわになております。

Kawaii neko-san-tachi desu ne? =^_^=

sou desu ne. kawaii neko ga dai suki desu. nani yori mo ウイスカー ga dai suki desu. neko no ウイスカー, namazu no ウイスカー, senkoutei no ウイスカー. doremo ウイスカー ga suteki desu.

[Jason]

ウイスカーマニアですか。はっはっは！それは初耳です。あれ？どんな潜航艇はウイスカーが付いていますか。ま、そんな物はあれば、きっとかわいいでしょう？猫耳潜航艇が見たいなあ。

Kanji wa wakarinikui nara, Firefox no "rikaichan" o tsukatte kudasai.

[metablue]

(グッドラック！)

そうですね　。。。 テレビのショウに見ます。空想的な潜航艇でしょう；；

でも、魚を追討しますように、海豹はウイスカーをつかいます。さいきんはっけんです。水流のじょうらんを探知します。
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... skers.html

いまロボット潜航艇のウイスカーをかんがえだします。
http://ai-lab.cs.uu.nl/research/projects/whisker/

でもこの潜航艇は猫耳をありません。かなしみです。

フュー！つかれたね。

I just installed Firefox and Rikaichan. Nice!

[Alan]

ウイスカーマニアですか。はっはっは！それは初耳です。あれ？どんな潜航艇はウイスカーが付いていますか。ま、そんな物はあれば、きっとかわいいでしょう？猫耳潜航艇が見たいなあ。

潜航艇はナマズですか。
猫耳潜航艇って分かれません。
猫耳は英語で　cat ear ですか。髭でしょ。

楽しくて難しでした。

アラン

[metablue]

I don't completely understand what Alan-san is saying, as my brain burned itself out earlier this evening. But I think I get the gist. 潜航艇 = submarine. I translated 猫耳潜航艇 as "a cat-eared submarine".

I wasn't sure about the kanji for whisker because there were 3 kanji in the dictionary and all of the translations mentioned male facial hair.

楽しくて難しでした。= "fun and difficult"? はいはい! Indeed.

Sorry for English, now I will sleep.

[Alan]

I don't completely understand what Alan-san is saying, as my brain burned itself out earlier this evening. But I think I get the gist. 潜航艇 = submarine. I translated 猫耳潜航艇 as "a cat-eared submarine".

It's more likely that you didn't understand because I made a spelling mistake. My English spelling isn't great. Now I mis-spell in Japanese
I intended 'wakarimasen' but typed 'wakaremasen' (able to become divided).

I also translated 猫耳潜航艇 as "a cat-eared submarine", but wondered whether Jason had mean't "hige" rather than "mimi". However I take your point about male whiskers. I remembered "hige" because I had to do a 'what did i did today' essay for my Japanese evening class & included 'shaving my whiskers', (hige o soru).

I wasn't sure about the kanji for whisker because there were 3 kanji in the dictionary and all of the translations mentioned male facial hair.

Can't find anything other than 髭 that looks promising.
I typed 猫の髭 into google & got lots of results from japanese sites, so I think it's ok.

楽しくて難しでした。= "fun and difficult"? はいはい! Indeed.

Sorry for English, now I will sleep.

Oops, there's an 'i' missing. I mean't 楽しくて難しいでした。

そうですね。

アラン

[Jason]

I translated 猫耳潜航艇 as "a cat-eared submarine".

はい、大当たり！ =^_^= だから、潜航艇は猫耳が付いたら、猫のウイスカーも付いているでしょう？

Oops, there's an 'i' missing. I mean't 楽しくて難しいでした。

いや、これも違います。丁寧語で「い-形容詞」を過去形にすると、「～いでした」じゃなくて、「～かったです」となります。「難しかったです」は正しいです。

そして、問題はもうひとつあります。「楽しい」という言葉は、「いい」意味してるでしょう？逆に、「難しい」という言葉は、ちょっといやな感じでしょう？こんな反対の感じしている言葉は「て-form」で繋がってはなりません。こうして正しくします：

楽しかったが難しかったです。 = "It was fun but difficult."

それとも：

楽しくても、難しかったです。 = "Even though it was fun, it was difficult."

いいですか。わかりましたか。

[metablue]

It's more likely that you didn't understand because I made a spelling mistake. My English spelling isn't great. Now I mis-spell in Japanese
I intended 'wakarimasen' but typed 'wakaremasen' (able to become divided).

I know what you mean! My "wrong-looking-word" detector just can't handle kana yet. =/
I did get the wakarimasen in the end - it's funny, I used the translator and got "able to become divided" and was trying to make sense of that and then I glanced at the word again and realized "of course! wakarimasen".

This is the one that threw me off:
潜航艇はナマズですか。

ナマズ isn't in my dictionary, but if it was in hiragana it could mean "catfish". So I thought you could be saying "Does 潜航艇 mean catfish?". In which case the rest of that block would mean the same thing, but for a slightly different reason:
"I don't understand 猫耳潜航艇"
"The English for 猫耳 is cat ears, right? Wouldn't it be whiskers?"

Because a catfish certainly doesn't have cat ears. lol. That would be very cute. I figured Jason-san meant that if a submarine had whiskers then it might also have cat ears, and that would be a sight to see.

I think we should start translating each other's posts as we answer. So someone writes in Japanese, then the next person translates that post into English and then writes more in Japanese. Then we get practice in translating, and we get to see what people think we're writing, which will help us fix our mistakes, and we can all keep on the same page. Otherwise errors creep in and soon we're all talking about different things. It happened when I tried posting on the "let's practice Nihongo" forum ... I just totally confused everyone, including myself.

[metablue]

Here's what we have so far:

sou desu ne. kawaii neko ga dai suki desu. nani yori mo ウイスカー ga dai suki desu. neko no ウイスカー, namazu no ウイスカー, senkoutei no ウイスカー. doremo ウイスカー ga suteki desu.

Yes. I love cute cats. Most of all I love whiskers. Cat whiskers, catfish whiskers, submarine whiskers. All whiskers are cool.

ウイスカーマニアですか。はっはっは！それは初耳です。あれ？どんな潜航艇はウイスカーが付いていますか。ま、そんな物はあれば、きっとかわいいでしょう？猫耳潜航艇が見たいなあ。

Kanji wa wakarinikui nara, Firefox no "rikaichan" o tsukatte kudasai.

Whisker mania? Ha ha ha! I've never heard of that before. Does it exist? What kind of submarine has whiskers attached? If there is such a thing, it would certainly be cute, don't you think? I'd like to see a cat-eared submarine.

If you have trouble understanding kanji, please use Firefox's rikaichan.

????

I'll leave that to someone else.

潜航艇はナマズですか。
猫耳潜航艇って分かれません。
猫耳は英語で　cat ear ですか。髭でしょ。

楽しくて難しでした。

Does 潜航艇 mean catfish?" (not sure about this)
I don't understand 猫耳潜航艇.
The English for 猫耳 is cat ear, right? Wouldn't it be whiskers?

This was both fun and difficult.


And I haven't read Jason's yet. About to.

[metablue]

My attempt at translating Jason-san's post:

はい、大当たり！ =^_^= だから、潜航艇は猫耳が付いたら、猫のウイスカーも付いているでしょう？

Yes, right on the mark! Because a submarine with cat ears attached would also have cat whiskers attached, right?

いや、これも違います。丁寧語で「い-形容詞」を過去形にすると、「～いでした」じゃなくて、「～かったです」となります。「難しかったです」は正しいです。

そして、問題はもうひとつあります。「楽しい」という言葉は、「いい」意味してるでしょう？逆に、「難しい」という言葉は、ちょっといやな感じでしょう？こんな反対の感じしている言葉は「て-form」で繋がってはなりません。こうして正しくします：

楽しかったが難しかったです。 = "It was fun but difficult."

それとも：

楽しくても、難しかったです。 = "Even though it was fun, it was difficult."

いいですか。わかりましたか。

No, that's different too. In polite speech, the way to get the past tense of i-adjectives isn't "～いでした" but "～かったです". (I don't really get this last line. It seems to say "... to get the past tense of i-adjectives, not "～いでした" and "～かったです" is close.)

<edit>
I just realized I misparsed. It's not "となり　and a strange ます", but　"と　なります ". So "... it becomes not ～いでした but ～かったです".
</edit>


"難しかったです" is the correct way.

And there is another problem. Saying "it was fun" means "it was good", right? Conversely, saying "it was difficult" gives a bit of an impression of unpleasantness. To convey this kind of contrasting impression, you need to link the words together using the -te form. (The "linking together" word is negative and I couldn't get it to fit, so I threw my attempt at a literal translation to the wind.)

So the correct way is:
楽しかったが難しかったです。 = "It was fun but difficult."
or:
楽しくても、難しかったです。 = "Even though it was fun, it was difficult."

Is it good? Do you understand?

[Alan]

Firstly, thanks for the long reply Jason. I decided to translate it manually, but it took a while, as there were quite a few kanji I didn't know. I got stuck on "繋" & had to use the computer.

ジャソンさん、どうも有難うございます。

アラn

This has certainly become interesting. I worked my way through Jason's reply to my error-prone sentence myself. I haven't made much of an effort to improve the english translation, so it's fairly literal (and probably wrong in places)

Yes, bulls eye. That's why when a cat's ear is attached to a submarine, a cat's whisker is probably also attached.

Oh dear. This is also incorrect. Politely, regarding "i-adjective" in the past tense "-i deshita" is not used and becomes "-katta desu". "muzukashikatta desu" is correct.

And then there is already one problem. Saying "tanoshii" in the speech is probably signifying "good". Saying "muzukashii" in the speech is probably a strange feeling. It is doing the opposite feeling. The words don't (shouldn't?) become connected with the "Te form".

Do it correctly like this:

I'm kicking myself. I knew the adjectives took the past tense and not the verb, but was interested in trying to string several adjectives together using the adjectival Te-form.

Now the question I'm asking myself is "is there an equivalent for "-kute" ending, but in the past tense. Back to the grammar book

Alan

[Jason]

いい考えですね、メタブルーさん。 ^_^

メタブルーさんとアランさんの翻訳はどちらもほとんど正しかったが、ちょっと違います。私は翻訳してあげます。

そして、問題はもうひとつあります。「楽しい」という言葉は、「いい」意味してるでしょう？逆に、「難しい」という言葉は、ちょっといやな感じでしょう？こんな反対の感じしている言葉は「て-form」で繋がってはなりません。こうして正しくします：

(note that this isn't a strictly literal translation)
"But there's still another problem. "楽しい" has a "good" implication, doesn't it? On the other hand, "難しい" has kind of an unpleasent feel. You can't connect words with opposing "feelings" with the te-form. This is how you do it correctly:'

お疲れ様でした。これからがんばっていきましょう。