Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #13: Mosquito Bites
June 29th, 2009 | View Comments
“I’ve got a mosquito bite on my face.”
我的臉被蚊子咬.
Wo3 de5 lian3 bei4 wen2 zi5 yao3.
顔を蚊に刺されました。
Kao wo ka ni sasaremashita.
The 被 construction, which we first saw last week, rears its head again. Otherwise, the Chinese is about as simple as it gets. 我的 = my; 臉 = face; 被 = marker to indicate the subject of the sentence is the recipient of some action; 蚊子 = mosquito; 咬 = bite.
Note that the character for “face” looks kind of like a face!
lian3
The left side of the character, 月, means moon by itself, but is often used as a radical for person-things. I’m not really sure why that is, but you can see 月-as-radical in a few of the 奇先生，妙小姐 titles.
The Japanese is also just about as simple as it gets. 顔 = face (note: not the same character as the Chinese); を = object marker; 蚊 = mosquito (note: the same character as the Chinese); に = to; 刺されました = bite, past tense.
Yvonne posted this on June 29th, 2009 @ 12:00pm in Chinese, Grandma's Crazy Phrasebook, Japanese | Permalink to "Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #13: Mosquito Bites"
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