real quick question
 

what does this mean?

私にあなたの部屋を示しなさい

show me your room

not 100% sure, might wanna check w/ native japanese speaker also

Who wrote that sentence?

You have the correct translation. However, that Japanese sentence is so unnatural and textbook that we would never say it in real life.

yeah it even sounded kinda weird to me too... o_O *shrugs*

oh lol thanks!

(my friend sent IMed it to me... 'show me your room' is an inside joke that i won't bother explaining. i guess its her way of being supportive of me taking Japanese in college :D )

LOL I noticed that many times the phrases that we use to learn Japanese are defined by native speakers "unnatural and never used"...we really have great text books (sarcastic).
Tho still puzzles me that unnatural seldom I read in forums...why unnatural?

「私にあなたの部屋を示しなさい」

This sentence has huge problems if you ask me. If you see two pronouns in such a short sentence, 99.9% of the time you can be sure it's not something a native speaker would say. Many Japanese would have to write at least a page if they were to use a pronoun twice in a proper manner. (Not using pronouns IS the proper manner in Japanese if you want to know the truth.)

The choice of verb 示す is also plain wrong in this context. We would use 見せる to say 'to show'.

You can see excellent examples in seishin's posts in the last few pages of this thread.

http://www.japanforum.com/forum/japa...tions-285.html

She shows the emails she receives from her Japanese friend. Go and check how many watashi's and anata's are used in a total of several email messages. :)

So a Japanese speaker would have said that phrase only 部屋を見せてください? I can see how 私 can be easily understood, but how can you understand the meaning of the phrase if you get rid of both pronouns?

Don`t feel bad - the English text books used in Japan are pretty much the same way. It`s hard to find a page that doesn`t have a phrase that leaves me thinking "Yes, you COULD say such and such like that, but no one ever WOULD."

Context. In most cases, it`s going to be obvious. Chances are, you aren`t going to just walk up to someone and randomly ask them to do something or other. There is going to be conversation, and the context is going to be fairly clear.
If it`s not, that`s what pronouns are for. It`s not wrong to use them when they`re needed.

I understand. So for you native speakers is very hard when someone on a forum asks to translate a phrase without having the whole context. Your translation would be different according the whole context even tho it is the same phrase you are translating.
Good lesson learnt, thank you very much.

That is a good observation.