Q:Sometimes I hear/read that Japanese say stuff like, for example, "anime mitai (ni)" or something along the lines of that, which means "like/similar to an anime". But how do you differentiate the meanings of 映画見たい and 映画みたい? If that makes any sense?

Anonymous

Yo sorry for the late reply!

映画見たい - This one if I read it I am going to assume that it means you “want to see a movie”. This is because the kanji being used and something like a particle being omitted isn’t exactly the biggest deal.

映画みたい - This one I would read “movie like”. Also this meaning can change if you follow it is な, に, or neither of those lol. For instance,

みたいな = adjective
as in: ふしぎみたいなこと - a thing like a miracle/mystery

みたいに　= adverb
as in: かれみたいにしたい - I want to do it like him

このけしきはゆめいみたい - This scenery looks like　a dream

**IMPORTANT**
Context is pretty important too, as in the first one it is entirely possible that they accidentally put the Kanji and didn’t intend to but the context would allow me to understand that. Similarly for the other one too. I hope I answered this fully and again sorry for the 2 day late reply :/

Artist - Base Ball Bear

Song - 旅人イン　ザ　ダック (Traveler in the Dark)

Artist - WISE

Song - I Loved You feat. Hiroko

Artist - andymori

Song - モンゴロイドブルース (Mongoloid Blues)

So I am pretty sure this song whooped my ass because I was so baffled at first lol - it is pretty out there. I think it is about race mixing so you can assume the ice coffee is black people, vanilla shake being white people etc. The “dylalala” parts I think are almost like a “relax” noise. Anyways, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions :)

Friendly Reminder

To all of my followers new and old, I generally only have updates if there is a request for translation. So my updates may not come as regularly as you may hope… In a sense you dictate the rate and type of content on this blog - I would prefer to translate things you would like to see rather than blast you with my tastes :P Well take care and I am here if anything~

Artist - モンゴル８００ (Mongol 800)
Song - 小さな恋の歌 (Chisa na Koi no Uta/ A ‘Small Love’ Song)
Album - Message

I did not think the word 響く would be so tough to translate but Japanese music says different… lol. Well I hope you enjoy my first post back with a song that I really like!

皆、めっちゃひさびさだね

Quite honestly I did not expect to still have followers at this point, let alone people still liking/reblogging my posts! I suppose a lot of you may have been too lazy to just unfollow :P I want to say thanks for that! lol

I’ll cut to the chase and just say I am back. I want to only focus on what the blog was originally for - translation requests. That doesn’t mean I wont answer questions if you send them to me, but I’m not looking to write out full length educational posts like I have in the past (I am sure there are blogs right now that do a fine job at this).

So for those who do not really know how this all works I’ll fill you in: you find some random commercial, music video/song, etc. that you want to see translated because no one else bothers to, then you send me a message about it and I translate it because you now have me at your disposal and all for free! Because of my past troubles with youtube and still being banned on my main account -_- video posts will be restricted to here. I hope the tumblr video player still doesn’t suck… 

For the new peoples, よろしくお願いします！

Q:Hello! I was wondering if you could answer a quick question. How would one say in Japanese,"You look familiar. Have we met?" "I've heard that before." or "That sounds very familiar." Thank you :D

Anonymous

“You look familiar. Have we met?”
There is no reall good way to say “you look familiar” without sounding too crass and straightforward. But, have we met would probably be どこかでお会いしましたか, this kind of implies that “you look familiar” as well. If you wanted to say “he looks familiar”, this means you are not talking directly to the person in question you could say 彼に見覚えがある (kare ni mioboe ga aru), but this is more casual


“I’ve heard that before.”
聞いたことがある (kiita koto ga aru)


“That sounds very familiar.”
For this I would suggest just using the same as above. Reason being, some little nuances of English sayings don’t translate well into Japanese

Question and Answer - Cool Lesson BTW ;)

—Question

Thank you for responding! But I really did mean の-adj! For example, 緑の～, 紫の～. (I think those colors use の… @_@;) I see it in rikaikun, it says “adj-no” as opposed to “adj-na”, so I’m guessing it is an adjective where you use の instead of な, but no word for の-adj exists and I got a bit confused…

—Answer

Ahh okay now I understand your question, before I get to answering it I’ll give a little history lesson that will help explain the answer :)

A long long time ago in a country far far away… Back in the day in Japan, there were originally only 4 official colors  - Red (あかい), Blue (あおい), White(しろい), and Black(くろい). All of which are considered い adjectives when you study today. So even a shade of orange would be considered red, and green was blue. You still experience the whole “green is blue” thing today when you hear a Japanese person tell you the traffic signal is blue when that shit is clearly green. So, flash forward some years and you start to get new colors like purple(むらさき), green(みどり), yellow(きいろ), and brown （ちゃいろ). These last few colors though are not considered adjectives they are in fact nouns as crazy as that seems. But, there is reason for this, back then you would put ～色　to signify a color so if you wanted a shade of yellow you would say 黄色  where 黄 is actually amber, if you wanted brown 茶色 (tea color), 紫 (purple) comes from a flower’s name that is actually purple and so on and so forth. The reason for brown and yellow having 色 attached and the others not having it is because it was (no joke) deemed awkward to say something like 茶の本 (cha no hon) when describing a book’s color in this case. So that brings us to answering the question~

It is understandable to think these are adjectives in the sense of how English thinks of them. But, in Japanese that is not really the case. So rikai-chan/rickai-kun calls them “no-adj” because when you go to use them you use them as an adjective, but grammar rules mean that because they are a noun they must behave like a noun. As a result you get a の-adjective, but it’s not really an adjective it is just our way of understanding it in English with conjugation and such. To go back to my first example about 「ポールさんの本」, the same rule will apply here because it is a noun. Let’s take a purple book and a red book as an example -

「むらさきの本」 lit. “The book of purple color”
「赤い本」　lit. “The red book.”

The key here is that it is not really an adjective, but a noun describing what this book’s properties are. Also notice the differences in translation. Of course you would still translate the first one to “the purple book”, I put the literal version to help you understand the difference.

I hope I didn’t rock your world too hard and confuse you a ton lol. Most Japanese people don’t even know this history so don’t worry. Let me know if you are still iffy about it.

Questions and Answers

—Question

hi! I saw your post saying you are busy lately but I hope asking a quick question is ok? if not, no prob but hopefully this is easy. I am just wondering the actual difference between　－らしい、ーみたい、and －っぽい　It was never really explained to me, and I don’t really understand the nuance there. :-/

—Answer


Quick questions are always fine! :) I try to keep the explanations short and not too confusing. There may be certain other ways to use them, but usually these are the usual/easiest ways to use or remember.

－らしい - This is sort of equivalent to our “it seems that/like~” or even “I heard that~”
ex. 京子さんは一郎さんが好きらしい (It seems like Kyoko likes Ichiro)

ーみたい - This is like our -like/similar to
ex. お前たちが子供みたいだ　(You guys are like a bunch of children/ You guys are acting child-like)

－っぽい - This is a more casual term and it is best used like out “-ish”
ex. 一郎さんがちょっと女の子っぽい (Ichiro is acts a little girly/girl-ish)
このTシャツがおとこっぽい　(This T shirt is boy-ish/manly)

If you need me to go further please let me know, I think it sucks to be left still wondering or even more confused lol.

Questions and Answers

—Question

Hello! Do you have a post that explains the difference/distinction between な-adjectives and の-adjectives? I’m looking but I don’t see one >_< Also, the word for a な-adj is 「形容動詞」 right? Is there a word for の-adj?

—Answer

No I do not have a post, but I will now~ ;)  and yes な-adjective is 「形容動詞」 and the word for an い-adjective is 形容詞

The two types of adjectives are actually divided into い-adjectives and な-adjectives. If you see の it is normally classifying “possession” as in ポールさんの本 (Paul’s book)

The first and simple way to determine what adjective it is, is to see what it ends in!

Take a look at some examples for an い adjective. Notice how they end in い
かわいい (cute)
あつい (hot [temp])
さむい (cold [weather])
おいしい (tasty)
かっこいい (cool)
たのしい (fun)
おもしろい (interesting)

Now let’s look at some な adjectives. The な can sometimes be omitted in sentences so really what you are looking for can be an adjective that does not end in い

ばか（な）(stupid)
まじめ（な）(serious)
しずか（な） (quiet)
ハンサム（な） (handsome)
ひま（な） (free[not busy])

EXCEPTION~ Unfortunately this rule is not always 100%, so memorization of some exceptions is required. Let’s take a look at some.

きれい（な） - Technically it may appear to end in　い sometimes, but fully it is きれいな
きらい（な） - Again same rule applies

NOTE THAT CONJUGATION OF THESE ADJECTIVES IS DIFFERENT!　If you would like me to elaborate on that let me know please and I’ll be glad to help. For now I hope this helps

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