Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook: Astrology
July 20th, 2009 | View Comments
“Do you believe in horoscopes?”
你相信星座嗎?
Ni3 xiang1 xin4 xing1 zuo4 ma1?
あんたは星座を信じますか。
Anata wa seiza wo shinjimasuka.
Straightforward sentence structures this week! Because you need to spend all your mental energy trying to figure out how to work this sentence into the conversation. It’s not even “What’s your sign?”
In Chinese: 你 = you, 相信 = believe, 星座 = zodiac signs (though the dictionary defines it as “constellation”), 嗎 = question marker.
In Japanese: あんた = you, は = subject marker, 星座 = zodiac signs, を = object marker, 信じます = believe, か = question marker.
Note that “Do you believe in zodiac signs?” seems to be a slightly better English translation.
People learning both Chinese and Japanese get a double bonus this week: easy sentences and the same characters in both languages!
Yvonne posted this on July 20th, 2009 @ 12:00pm in Chinese, Grandma's Crazy Phrasebook, Japanese | Permalink to "Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook: Astrology"
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American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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