How do you say 'How do I say this/what is this in Japanese?'

[indy138]

Hello,

I went to Japan in September last year and made a little survival phrase cheat sheet for myself, but when I got there I had to realize that there was a very important one missing: I couldn't ask people about how certain things were called in Japanese.

People were very-very friendly and helpful, wherever I went, it was just this one thing where everything got problematic and confusing...

In one shop I even had a little group of people around me all desperately trying to figure out what I wanted

Basically I wanted to somehow ask how certain things are called or how one says certain things in Japanese.

Due to my limited Japanese the best I could come up with as question was:

これはにほんごなんですか。

I also tried some other ways I think, but no use. I can only guess that the above sentence is very silly ^_^

[Javizy]

これはにほんごでなんといいますですか。
What do you call/how do you say this in Japanese?
で marks the means of the action; to say by use of Japanese.

I think you hear「これはにほんごでなんですか」more often, and I'm sure if you just said「これはなんですか」they would answer in Japanese.

[indy138]

Aha!

So I was missing the で, but the question was roughly alright...

I think the confusion arose from the fact that I probably looked confident in speaking Japanese at first, so they tried to explain to me also what the object does or what it's for and not just what it is (called), where I lost the plot completely ^_^

The biggest confusion was in a BIC camera shop, about some lenses...

Thanks Javizy!

[Psy]

これはにほんごでなんといいますですか。

Umm, mate? Surely that's a typo. You've got one too many verbs there :

これは日本語でなんといいますか？

[Javizy]

これはにほんごでなんといいますですか。

Umm, mate? Surely that's a typo. You've got one too many verbs there :

これは日本語でなんといいますか？

I typed the shorter version first and copied and pasted for the other two. I should really take more care with the proofreading

[markystar]

another variation is:

日本語で、これは何と言うんですか？