Saturday, September 3, 2011

Could somebody translate these 3 short Japanese sentences for me?

Question:


Normally, my penpal writes to me in hiragana and katakana, but today she used lots of kanji. Usually, if I don't understand what somebody's message says, I'll ask them about it... But her English isn't very good...

(Before the following 3 sentences, I'm pretty sure she was talking about how much sleep she gets in a night. Then, she corrected some mistakes in a sentence I wrote in Japanese.)

1. 青・・・日本語での慣用句(2つ以上の言葉で1つの意味を言うもの)があります。
2. 顔が青ざめる と使います。えっと、英語ではどのような言い方になりますか?
3. 普通にface blue って言うのかな・・・?

Geez look at all that kanji... In my last message, I told her about some of the new kanji I learned. 青 was one of the new ones I had learned. From what I can read, I think she is saying something about 青 having another meaning other than blue (a pale face?). Could you please translate the rest for me?

Answer:


She is saying that in Japanese there are idioms (慣用句 [kanyouku]) using 青 [blue] and explains what an idiom is in the parenthesis.

顔が青ざめる is one such idiom, which she then says she wonders how people say it in English.

She finishes by guessing how to say it in English... "face blue"

( You can answer her by picking a correct translation from here: http://eow.alc.co.jp/顔が青ざめる/UTF-8/ )

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