Japanese Help Questions/Translations

[Amnell]

I know this has been discussed before, but I wasn't real happy with the answers I recieved.

This about writing a gaijin name with Kanji.

We've been over trying to write names phonetically with kanji. It can't (rather, shouldn't) be done. Right?

What about translating the etymological meaning of a name? I.e., "Frederick" comes from German roots meaning "peaceful ruler". So you take that and write it in kanji.

¿Qué piensan? Nanni o omoimasu ka?

[MMM]

I think you run into the same problem because you are taking a word, and now saying it's a name.

It would be like a Japanese guy named "Kenji" coming to an English speaking country and saying "My name is 'second son'."

[Amnell]

What about simply finding an equivelant name in Japanese and using it as a pseudonym?

[MMM]

So a white person named "Kazuko" or "Kahori"?

I guess I have heard of stranger things...

[Amnell]

Okay, I have a better question, now:

In trying to translate a graphic I found online that contains Japanese writing, I found that 愛 ai (love) comes in a few different packages.

First, "ai" isn't the only reading for 愛 . That being beside the point, however, the problem I'm having is it's usage as a verb. The word on the graphic is を愛しています wo aishiteimasu. My problem is that I can't find any indication as to whether it's "aishite imasu" or "aishiteimasu". This is also what googletranslate spits out if you put in "to love" as your query, where "love" gets you 愛です, which doesn't quite fit with what I know of how Japanese verbs conjugate (which is limited).

The other bit I'm having trouble with is a kanji compound: 子猫. I tried looking up the compound, but got nothing. All I know is that the first means child and the second means cat.

I'm sure someone will want to see the whole sentence?

私は子猫を愛しています。

At first glance, it looks like there are some ungrammatical elements... But I can't know until I can translate it :P .

[Amnell]

Originally Posted by MMM

So a white person named "Kazuko" or "Kahori"?

I guess I have heard of stranger things...

Lol, why not? It's just a pseudonym

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by Amnell

Okay, I have a better question, now:

In trying to translate a graphic I found online that contains Japanese writing, I found that 愛 ai (love) comes in a few different packages.

First, "ai" isn't the only reading for 愛 . That being beside the point, however, the problem I'm having is it's usage as a verb. The word on the graphic is を愛しています wo aishiteimasu. My problem is that I can't find any indication as to whether it's "aishite imasu" or "aishiteimasu". This is also what googletranslate spits out if you put in "to love" as your query, where "love" gets you 愛です, which doesn't quite fit with what I know of how Japanese verbs conjugate (which is limited).

The other bit I'm having trouble with is a kanji compound: 子猫. I tried looking up the compound, but got nothing. All I know is that the first means child and the second means cat.

I'm sure someone will want to see the whole sentence?

私は子猫を愛しています。

At first glance, it looks like there are some ungrammatical elements... But I can't know until I can translate it :P .

愛する is the verb, to love. without going into detailed information about grammar basically to be doing something either habitually or at that moment the verb is in て form and いる is added to that. simple example:
食べる - to eat and 食べている - to be eating

so your 愛しています is the 丁寧語 (polite form) of 愛している so it bascially means 'to be loving' or if you like to be in the action of loving someone/something but in english we simply say to love. so then putting this together with your full sentence

私は子猫を愛しています - I love kittens/i love the kitten

子猫 - koneko - means a kitten, child cat.


As for the names thing, there is no problem with having your name written in Kanji however i suggest you do so by phonetical spelling of your name. using a pseudonym, as MMM said, would be pretty damn strange.

[Amnell]

Okay, that helps! Thanks!! ^_^

[emiluvsjmusic]

question: how is this pronounced? 月光花

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by emiluvsjmusic

question: how is this pronounced? 月光花

I assume you are talking about this song: Janne Da Arc

I talked about this with my japanese friend and we are both unsure of how it is pronounced because as far as we can see it is not an actual word and we both don't know the song. Luckily wikipedia is our friend which gave the answer.
月光花 - Wikipedia

月光花　ー　げっこうか　ー　gekkouka

月光 - moonlight, moonbeam
花 - flower