Page 1 of 1

Problems figuring out Japanese symbols in sentences

Posted: Jul 29, 2007 7:59pm
by Chrono Paladin
Now I have a real problem with understanding a Japanese sentence with only symbols. Now I use google to translate certain liners and when I type in an English sentence, There's a Japanese version of the sentence. But it's hard for me to say them ot making them sound like english version of the symbolic names. Now I know what a Japanese version of a word is if you say them in english versions of the symbols but sentences I'm not good at. Does anyone know the symbols in this Japanese sentence together. I know what this sentence in English is but I'm not good with the symbols.

この日本文が日本の特性なしで言うことを知っているか。

Re: Problems figuring out Japanese symbols in sentences

Posted: Jul 30, 2007 12:02pm
by Dreams
I'm sorry... I really have no idea what you mean. Japanese sentences are ALWAYS written in "symbols"... that's the Japanese language.

Hiragana (ひらがな) + Kanji (漢字) + Katakana (カタカナ) = Japanese.

Online translators are a bad choice, especially for Japanese. They cannot take into account many things about the sentence - gender, tone, formality, word order... the list goes on and on. Online translators usually give you nice butchered translations.

この日本文が日本の特性なしで言うことを知っているか。
Kono "Nihon-bun" ga Nihon no tokusei nashi de iu koto o shitte iru ka?
"Do you know how to say this [Japanese] sentence without special [Japanese] characteristics?"

...It doesn't really make sense.

Nihon-bun = not a word. It actually says "Japan-sentence". "Japanese sentence" would be 日本語の文 or 日本語で文.

The "Nihon no tokusei nashi de" part... what was that supposed to mean? Again, this is referring to 'special qualities from Japan', not from the Japanese language, which is NihonGO (日本語).