Gollum using ebay.

[reetpleat]

Just thought this was kind of funny. I got a message from a potential buyer on ebay. Not to make fun of someone using a second language, but this message made me laugh.

Hi.
Does it still have this court?
Could you sell it if it has it?

 

[frussell]

Or Farah from Out of Africa

This lion is hungry. He does not have this ox.
This wagon is heavy. It does not have this ox.

 

[reetpleat]

Or Buffalo Bill from Silence of The Lambs. i better sell him the coat or I might get the hose again.

 

[frussell]

It takes the lotion out of the basket

And puts it on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. Nicely done sir.

 

[vintage68]

PRECIOUS!!!

 

[LaMedicine]

Well, it goes both ways.
It kinda looks like Japanese translated into English through an online translator first, then posted--the syntax seems typical of Japanese translated into English automatically
I've played around with online translators both ways--English into Japanese and Japanese into English, both originally written by me--just for the heck of it, and to find out how accurate the translations actually are. You get some really quirky ones lol lol lol
Just this afternoon, I translated some info from CDC that I needed for our staff education into Japanese. I never really trust online translators, so I always translate on my own, but this time, just to see how it would turn out, I used the online translator first. It needed some major editing--pretty funny Japanese, and would have been faster if I'd done it on my own from the beginning. lol

 

[reetpleat]

Well, it goes both ways.
It kinda looks like Japanese translated into English through an online translator first, then posted--the syntax seems typical of Japanese translated into English automatically
I've played around with online translators both ways--English into Japanese and Japanese into English, both originally written by me--just for the heck of it, and to find out how accurate the translations actually are. You get some really quirky ones lol lol lol
Just this afternoon, I translated some info from CDC that I needed for our staff education into Japanese. I never really trust online translators, so I always translate on my own, but this time, just to see how it would turn out, I used the online translator first. It needed some major editing--pretty funny Japanese, and would have been faster if I'd done it on my own from the beginning. lol

Good call. It was a japanese buyer. And of course, I must remind myself that many japanese may be good in two or three languages, and surely speak japanese as well as I do english. In fact, the fact that you could tell this was from japanese tells me that you are quite skilled in both languages.

A funny story about transaltion programs. Back in the early days, someone put a phrase into a translation to Russian, and got an interesting response. The phrase was "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" which comes from the bible. IT was translated into russian and back again. It came back as "The vodka is good, but the meat is bad."

 

[BellyTank]

I could tell that it was Japanese and I don't speak Japanese at all.
I do eBay a lot, though...


B
T

 

[WideBrimm]

A funny story about transaltion programs. Back in the early days, someone put a phrase into a translation to Russian, and got an interesting response. The phrase was "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" which comes from the bible. IT was translated into russian and back again. It came back as "The vodka is good, but the meat is bad."

Funny lol Now that takes the cake :eusa_clap

 

[pretty faythe]

Funny lol Now that takes the cake :eusa_clap

No, the cake is prob bad too lol

 

[LaMedicine]

I could tell that it was Japanese and I don't speak Japanese at all.

The syntax is a dead give away. Japanese syntax is different from most languages, and the linguists are still undecided over the origin of Japanese lol
The basic syntax of most languages, as far as I know, including Chinese, is SVO. Japanese syntax is SOV, and are often considered complete phrases with just OV, in which case, the dropped S is usually "I". Sometimes, even the O is dropped and you get just a V phrase, in which it usuallly means I and you.
Plus, the number of verbs in the Japanese language is much less than English, but Japanese has a system of adding the verb "do" to a noun as a suffix to turn the word into a verb, and in certain cases, tacking the "be" verb onto it to express state.

Case in point, the simple phrase, "I love you."
In Chinese, "wo ai nii", wo=I ai=love nii=you. (And no, I don't speak Chinese, but this is one of the few phrases that I do know. )
In Japanese, "aishiteru" which in fact, is just the verb, plus it's a combination verb. Aishiteru can be broken down into ai=love shite=do(original form "suru") ru(abbreviation of "iru")=be, so the direct translation would be "love do be" without either I or you
If this were to be expressed in a full sentence, it would be watashi wa anata wo ai shite imasu. Watashi=I, anata=you, wa and wo are propositional particles to indicate order, imasu is a polite form of iru. Because "you" and "I" are tacked onto the phrase, the balance of the phrase is better with the polite form, hence imasu instead of iru.

Even just the simple "I love you" becomes soooo complicated, no wonder more complex phrases become such a turned about paragraph lol lol lol

I could go on and on, but time now to change and run out to the gym, which in Japanese is, gym to go must lol lol lol

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

The syntax is a dead give away. Japanese syntax is different from most languages, and the linguists are still undecided over the origin of Japanese lol

I speak a little,...maybe just enough to embarrass myself if I were to visit Japan. But, as to the subject/object/verb structure of the language, I remember that there are 2 other languages that have that same structure. Turkish and Mongolian. In looking at the world map one can draw a straight line east from Turkey,through Mongolia, and finally to Japan. So I wonder if it maybe originated there and was brought east? [huh]

 

[LaMedicine]

In looking at the world map one can draw a straight line east from Turkey,through Mongolia, and finally to Japan. So I wonder if it maybe originated there and was brought east? [huh]

Or it could have been the other way around, from the East to the West lol
Turkey..now I lived there for a few years a a kid, but that's where I picked up my English, not Turkish :eusa_doh: In fact, the best Turkish speaker at that time in my family was my kid brother who was too little to go to school, so got to toddle around with the local kids lol
What stumps the scholars is that it's so obviously clear that ancient China had the biggest influence on Japanese culture and language, including the letters, vocabulary, and classic Chinese literature incorporated into classic Japanese literature, but the grammar and syntax is a whole 'nother story. Mongolia may have the same syntax, but the basic vocabulary and the traditional Mongolian letters are quite different. Another language that seems to be closely related is Korean, as Korean also is SOV, but there are crucial differences, there too.
So, at the moment, the scholars are undecided as to the origin of Japanese.

 

[WideBrimm]

What? No German speakers here? I studied German only one year in college. That was more than enough to learn that most German sentences seem to end with a verb

 

[LaMedicine]

"I love you" in German is "Ich liebe dich", isn't it? SVO.
Come to think of it, in French, it's "je t'aime", but in the third person, it's Jean aime Marie. SVO