translation question.

[ggenglish]

my friend and i are trying to gradually introduce more japanese phrases in our im conversations.

i wrote:
kyou, john-san wa zekkouchou desu, ne?

as in [today, you are doing amazing eh?]

i'm thinking that a particple or something should be between kyou and john. however it seems weird to say "kyou wa john-san wa...". or maybe i'm totally wrong with the order of kyou and john.

thx for the help.

[QuackingShoe]

First, you can mark kyou with ni, because it's a time expression (which makes it an adverb). But there's no reason to do that here, because in this sentence you're trying to say that as for today, compared to other days, John is doing great. Kyou is the topic that grounds the sentence. So you want to mark it with wa.

Second, John can be marked with ga. He's the subject of the sentence.

Third, you don't necessarily need to mention John at all, because you're speaking right to him and presumably it's already established that you're talking about each other's health/attitude/whatever.

As a last bit of information, wa throws attention forward while ga throws attention backward. So for example,
ii <-- neutral sentence. John's good.
john wa ii <-- emphasis on ii. John is what? John is good.
john ga ii <-- emphasis on john. Who is good? John is good.
I'd like to reemphasize that a neutral sentence doesn't mention John at all.

Anyway, that's all I got. Good luck. Learn the kana

[Javizy]

First, you can mark kyou with ni, because it's a time expression (which makes it an adverb).

As far as I'm aware, 'ni' should never be used with relative time expressions. You come across these rules without any particular logic from time to time.

The question itself doesn't sound very natural though. Japanese tends to be a little less direct, so there'd probably be a 'sou' at the end somewhere, but if you're still a beginner, I wouldn't worry so much. I'd put learning kana ahead of new grammar at this point

[ggenglish]

thanks for the replies. i really like that は vs. が explanation quakingshoe. i've never had it explained like that before. hopefully it helps for future disection of setences. I know it's said all the time to dropped implied components but wouldn't dropping john lose the focus of what i'm saying? if anything i would expect for you to tell me to drop 今日. given the present is implied. yet, if i'm adding it, it must be because i'm wanting to stress that there must be something special about today.

common speech patterns aside could i have used the following sentence then based on your explanation?

今日　は　あなた　が　ぜっこうちょう　です、ね。

(i know various languages like to drop implied components (i.e. in italian io(I), tu(you) are rarely used because the verb conjigation usually tells all)... but i think when its noob on noob talk there is nothing wrong with keeping them in so a conversation has a chance of moving forward.)

[gerald_ford]

i wrote:
kyou, john-san wa zekkouchou desu, ne?

as in [today, you are doing amazing eh?]

i'm thinking that a particple or something should be between kyou and john. however it seems weird to say "kyou wa john-san wa...". or maybe i'm totally wrong with the order of kyou and john.

Hello,

Japanese seems to work by the principle of "less is more", so unless you have a reason to mention today, then you can just omit it. Also, I am wondering about you the rest of the sentence. Are you confirmingn that John-san is "zekkouchou" or are you asking how he's doing?

[ggenglish]

mmm, ok, maybe i should set the scene and have you guys give suggestion at what could be said.

my friend who usually ignores most of my comments on msn and is rarely excited about anything was really responsive and very focused on what technology stuff we wanted to tackle.

in english i would have said:
you are feeling pretty good today eh?

however we try to use japanese when we can so i tried to express the same feeling in a japanese sentence. what would you do if you were me?

[gerald_ford]

my friend who usually ignores most of my comments on msn and is rarely excited about anything was really responsive and very focused on what technology stuff we wanted to tackle.

in english i would have said:
you are feeling pretty good today eh?

however we try to use japanese when we can so i tried to express the same feeling in a japanese sentence. what would you do if you were me?

zekkouchou is a bit strong in this context. You really, really, really have to be excited in that case. I have heard it in Japan maybe once in my limited time there. The word "genki" on the other hand gets used a lot in such contexts.

Since he seems "genki" today, you can say:

[name] wa kyou ni genki sou desu ne?

That's too wordy though in Japanese (less is more), so you can trim out the name and maybe the time, unless you really want to emphasize today (as opposed to other days) he's "genki":

kyou genki sou desu ne?

But "desu" is still kind of formal and distant. If you're buddies, change it to "da", or just drop it entirely, as in:

kyou genki sou [da] ne?

That's my take on it. Best of luck!

[ggenglish]

i like that 'kyou genki sou desu ne?' the addition of sou desu gives it a nice way to put it with vocab that my friend and i are used to. i wish i could think it up on my own. i guess like many things in life, the answer seems to simple once presented. why isn't easier to arrive at it all by ones self.

thx gerald_ford for the help and the options you presented.

[wccrawford]

i like that 'kyou genki sou desu ne?' the addition of sou desu gives it a nice way to put it with vocab that my friend and i are used to. i wish i could think it up on my own. i guess like many things in life, the answer seems to simple once presented. why isn't easier to arrive at it all by ones self.

thx gerald_ford for the help and the options you presented.

I think the reason you can't come up with natural sentences yet is just lack of exposure. The Japanese say things differently than we do and it's not something you can do logically. You just have to feel it. The only way to learn that is exposure.

At this point in my studies, I won't attempt to make new sentences at all. I will just repeat things verbatim, or maybe change 1 or 2 words to fit the situation. Once I've had more exposure and get a good feel for it, then I'll probably try to make new sentences.

I think it's worth noting that this is how you learned English, too, with a few mistakes here and there while you were trying new sentences.

Mistakes are good, and are part of learning... But only if someone fluent is there to correct you.