“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!

This week’s “essential travel phrase” is actually quite useful for those traveling, say, to a remote island or to a glorified hamster cage with the hopes of winning lots of money and becoming famous (not necessarily in that order).

“I have no regrets.”

我毫無遺憾.
Wo3 hao2 wu2 yi2 han4.

私は残念だと思いません。
Watashi wa zannen da to omoimasen.

The Chinese is easy. 我 = I, 毫無 = don’t have any (literally, “in the least, don’t have”), 遺憾 = regret. Chinese doesn’t really have a plural form.

The Japanese…confuses me. I think it’s because I hardly know any Japanese and not because the sentence is somehow wrong. 私 = I, は = subject marker. That’s the easy part. My dictionary says 残念に思う (zannen ni omou) is “to feel bad” (literally “‘hard luck!’ [adverb marker] to feel”), so I think 残念に思いません (zannen ni omoimasen) should be “to not feel bad”. But the phrasebook has 残念だと思いません (zannen da to omoimasen), and I’m not quite sure what function the だと in the middle serves.

Google Translate defines だと as “if it’s the case”. EnglishJapaneseOnlineDictionary.com gives an example sentence using だと: そうだと思います (sō dato omoimasu), “I guess so”, which I guess literally translates to “yes, if that’s the case, I feel it.” If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck! If that’s the case, I don’t feel it.”

On the other hand, it might be that だ and と are supposed to be separate, and I think the audio suggests this. My dictionary defines だ as “be”, and と思う as “to regard as”. If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck it be!, I don’t regard it as.”

If you know which interpretation is right (or if neither interpretation is right, or if it’s six of one, half dozen of the other), please leave a comment and let me know!

The beauty of learning through immersion is that you really don’t have to fret this much about the specifics of the grammar. Just learn the sentence (and many, many others) and your brain will figure out the patterns of correct usage.

A former linguistics classmate posted a link to this article from the BBC News website on her Facebook. Turns out “superior language skills” in your 20s may be an indicator against dementia.

The study looked at 38 Catholic nuns and analyzed their brains post-mortem. Analysis of sample essays written in their 20s for complex language skills and grammar was also done.

The women who had better memory in their later years scored higher in language skills.

Superior grammar skills, however, showed no correlation.

I’d be curious to see a more extensive study, given that this study was only done on a group of 38 nuns. I’m especially curious to see one that includes men, given the preconception that men are more linguistically challenged than women.

If anything you can have fun being a polyglot by asking the nursing home staff for water in eight different languages, provided you remember them.