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Setsubun (Offline)
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falling more in Love: 恋してる?愛してる? - 12-08-2010, 04:03 AM

Pardon my extremely cheesy post, but I'm suddenly worried that what I'm about to send to my boyfriend for our one year anniversary doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't need to be perfect, because he knows that I am still learning, but please tell me if anything is completely embarrassingly wrong.

In particular, should I use 恋 or 愛 for the verb in sentence number 3? Perhaps there is a better way to say "I've fallen more and more in love with you" ?

-------------------------------------------------------------
私は世界の反対側に入ても、ずっとあなたについて思っ てる。
Even though I am at the other end of the world, I am always thinking of you.

一年の前にあなたは私の心を盗んでよかったよ!
I'm glad that one year ago you stole my heart!

今年の12ヶ月の間にますますあなたの事を愛してた。
In these past twelve months I have ***come to love*** you more and more.

私たちの冒険はめっちゃ好きだと、将来の冒険を楽しみ にしてるよ!
I like our adventures, and I look forward to our future ones!

何時か私達は同じ国に住むつもり。
One day we will live in the same country.

でもその前に私はあなたの織姫だ。
But until then I am your Orihime.

あなたをあいしてる!
I love you!

恋しいよ!
I miss you!
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masaegu (Offline)
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Location: Central Tokyo
12-08-2010, 10:42 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Setsubun View Post
Pardon my extremely cheesy post, but I'm suddenly worried that what I'm about to send to my boyfriend for our one year anniversary doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't need to be perfect, because he knows that I am still learning, but please tell me if anything is completely embarrassingly wrong.

In particular, should I use 恋 or 愛 for the verb in sentence number 3? Perhaps there is a better way to say "I've fallen more and more in love with you" ?

-------------------------------------------------------------
私は世界の反対側に入ても、ずっとあなたについて思っ てる。
Even though I am at the other end of the world, I am always thinking of you.

一年の前にあなたは私の心を盗んでよかったよ!
I'm glad that one year ago you stole my heart!

今年の12ヶ月の間にますますあなたの事を愛してた。
In these past twelve months I have ***come to love*** you more and more.

私たちの冒険はめっちゃ好きだと、将来の冒険を楽しみ にしてるよ!
I like our adventures, and I look forward to our future ones!

何時か私達は同じ国に住むつもり。
One day we will live in the same country.

でもその前に私はあなたの織姫だ。
But until then I am your Orihime.

あなたをあいしてる!
I love you!

恋しいよ!
I miss you!
There is very little Japanese-ness in this letter naturally as you translated directly from another language. At the same time, though, I don't see any point in "correcting" it to make it sound like it was written by a Japanese girl.
He would only find that corrected letter funny because he is the one who knows exactly what your Japanese is like at the moment.

Unlike what you appear to think, it isn't even sentence #3 that strikes me, a Japanese-speaker, as "strange". It's your over-use of あなた's and よ's, especially the former.
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Setsubun (Offline)
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12-09-2010, 02:45 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by masaegu View Post
There is very little Japanese-ness in this letter naturally as you translated directly from another language. At the same time, though, I don't see any point in "correcting" it to make it sound like it was written by a Japanese girl.
He would only find that corrected letter funny because he is the one who knows exactly what your Japanese is like at the moment.
Yeah, that's for the most part what I was thinking. I know it's rather right-to-the-point, even for me, but he and I have been together for a while now. He is the one who is always pouring his heart out to me, telling me kind eloquent words, and leaving me completely speechless. I've never been with a person that cared so much about me, and I wish I could tell him. Besides, I want to express how I feel in my own words, not using some phrases I looked up in Making out in Japanese. Being that I did not grow up in Japan, and don't eavesdrop on my female Japanese friends while they're talking to their boyfriends, I have no idea what sort of "Japanese-ness" is used in this sort of situation anyway.

As I said in the original post, I mostly wanted to find out if it was intelligible or not. This is because matters of the heart are something I don't feel confident discussing in my native tongue sometimes, much less my second.

Quote:
Unlike what you appear to think, it isn't even sentence #3 that strikes me, a Japanese-speaker, as "strange". It's your over-use of あなた's and よ's, especially the former.
Yes, I agree. The original used 50% his name and 50% あなた. I just changed them all to あなた for this thread because I don't want to use our real names anywhere. Is あなた an inappropriate pronoun in this situation or was it just my overuse that struck you as strange?

As for よ that's an easy fix. I'll just take them out.
Thank you for your help!
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masaegu (Offline)
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12-09-2010, 03:37 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Setsubun View Post
As I said in the original post, I mostly wanted to find out if it was intelligible or not. This is because matters of the heart are something I don't feel confident discussing in my native tongue sometimes, much less my second.
Let's just focus on the intelligibleness for now, then. Remember I will be making more corrections than I would really like to. Honestly, how intelligible the letter looks to him would for a large part depend on how familiar he is with English.

入ても > いても mistake
あなたについて思っ てる > あなたのことを思ってる better word choice
一年の前に > 1年前 mistake
盗んでよかったよ > 盗んでくれてよかった mistake
今年の12ヶ月 > この1年 better phrase choice. "12 months" is rarely said here.
好きだと > 好きだし mistake
でもその前に > それまでは mistake
織姫だ > 織姫でいるわ better phrase + tense
あいしてる > 愛してる looks better this way

Quote:
Yes, I agree. The original used 50% his name and 50% あなた. I just changed them all to あなた for this thread because I don't want to use our real names anywhere. Is あなた an inappropriate pronoun in this situation or was it just my overuse that struck you as strange?
As for よ that's an easy fix. I'll just take them out.
Thank you for your help!
あなた is OK because this is a love letter but like you said, it would sound much better if you replaced about a third of them with the guy's name or nickname that you always address him with and delete another third without any replacement.

I would delete at least one of the よ's. The first one for sure and maybe the second as well.
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Setsubun (Offline)
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12-13-2010, 04:03 PM

Thank you so much! That is exactly what I was looking for. I use all of those grammar points all the time, so I don't think he'll find it weird, but like you said if I changed everything he'd probably think it was strangely lacking in it's usual amount of error.

The one single correction I don't understand has to do with the Orihime section. What is the meaning of the suffix でいるわ as opposed to だ in this context? And for that matter, what does just わ mean? I heard my room mates when I was living in Japan use it all the time, but they said they couldn't exactly explain it to me. My boyfriend said girls use it more often, but that's all I know. So it's something I've wondered about for a while now.
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masaegu (Offline)
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12-13-2010, 04:53 PM

~~でいるわ = ~~でいます = I will stay as ~~.

We just don't use だ nearly as often as they appear to teach you outside of Japan that we do. If you said 織姫だ, it would sound to a Japanese-speaker like you're being either too manga-influenced or too aggresive.

These little sentence-enders can give your sentences so much character, which is why they are useful and at the same time why you cannot choose the wrong one. In other words, they can cause you to end up sounding like a different person.

わ is a nice-sounding assertive sentence-ender. You can use it quite often but not repeatedly. Use it repeatedly and you will sound like a very self-centered person. For that matter, do not use any single sentence-ender repeatedly or you will sound like an anime character.

Girls may use わ more often but men use it quite often as well. I'm male and I use it pretty often in casual speech.
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