What are you trying to say?
"Here is, in the garden, mother and Hanako and Masao with me looking at a picture"? "Mother, Hanako, Masao are looking at a picture with me in the garden"? "Mother, Hanako, Masao, and I are looking at this picture in the garden"? Do you even mean to mention "I" at all? Because you are implying it by saying 〜と〜と〜といっしょに as opposed to 〜と〜と〜はいっしょに.

I can, no matter what you're trying to say, tell you that you have をみています incorrect because you wrote みてをいます.

I'm trying to say, "Here in the garden, mother, Hanako, and Masao are looking at a book together."

Can you tell me where I erred badly and implied I am there too? Should I have written が instead of は? Also, it's をみています, not みてをいます？

I already told you where you erred with your implication. 〜と means "with." So 〜と〜と〜と一緒に means "together with ~, ~, and ~." So you were saying a fourth person, along with mother, Hanako, and Masao, read. Here, I assumed it was you who is the fourth person. If you had been talking about your father before uttering this sentence, it could have been "my father, along with my mother, Hanako, and Masao..."

And yes, the present progressive is ている, not てをいる.

And finally, who is mother? Your mother? If so, in English, you capitalize it as "Mother" (and thus I'm guessing you're not a native English speaker). If not, whose mother? The word is different depending on this. Finally, who are you talking to? Someone else in your family?

And you probably want to say that they were reading the book, not looking at it. よむ, not みる. Unless they were like "oh this is a pretty book in appearance but we're totally not reading it."

Assuming it is your mother and you are the brother of the other two people and you are talking to, say, your father,
にわにはおかあさんとはなこちゃんとまさおちゃんはい っしょにほんをよんでいます。
庭にはお母さんとハナコちゃんと正雄ちゃんは一緒に本 を読んでいます。

If you're talking to someone not in the family, you'd say はは, not おかあさん. If you're talking about someone else's mother to one of her kids, you'd say おかあさん. Etc. And that's not even getting into whether you should use the plain or polite form いる vs います at the end, etc.

This is precisely why so many of us say "give us context" for questions on this board. Japanese is highly context-dependent.

Should you not use 庭で here instead of 庭に, since they are reading in the garden?

Also I see why JohnBraden thought of using 見る as the verb, since he was talking about 絵本, not 本.
In Japanese, do you still have to use 読む with 絵本？
When I read JohnBraden's sentence I wondered whether 見る was correct or not since 絵本 is a word I have never really used, and have only really seen used with 見る as 絵本で見る～.

I mean, I would assume you can both look at and read a picture book (depending on whether the book has any text or not) but since I have never heard anyone say it, and have never said it in Japanese myself, I feel unsure.

I apologize if I wasn't very clear and I wasn't aware, until now, just how much context has to do with the way the sentence is written.

As an exercise, I was given a picture that had Hanako and her brother Masao sittting in the garden with their mother. They were all looking at a picture book. I was given a few words, such as "here", "garden", "okaasan" (current computer doesn't have Japanese characters-work terminal), both kids' names, "together", "picture book", "look" and finally "is/are-imasu". I was to write a full sentence, using all those words, to fit the context of the aforementioned picture. I understand it to be an exercise primarily in particle usage. None of the subjects in the picture are related to me in any way, but they all are related to each other. By that description, how badly did I goof?

Hey guys,

My friend saw a tattoo in Japanese today and when he asked what it said, the person replied "What's life without magic?"

He later asked me to write it down for him.. but my Japanese is terrible and my guess was 奇術が無い生活は何？

But as I was writing, he recognised the 無 character, saying that this came first?

What's JF's take on this?

He didn't just confuse the 魔 in 魔法 with 無 did he?
I can't think of any way that 無い would come first in that sentence unless it was broken Japanese, since as far as I know "Life without ~" can be written as ～のない生活 or ～のない人生.

Unless of course it is ok to say 無魔法 or 無奇術, in the same way that you can say 無意味...
I don't really have much experience using 無 as a prefix so I can't say for sure if that is ok.

I love 'elping you more than hanging out with my lassie at the chippy but this one, I sure ain't got no clue. Matter of fact, I ain't even got no clue what a chippy is, laddie!

If you start it with 無, you won't have a phrase in a "normal" word order.
無意味だよ、魔法のない人生なんて
無意味だよ、マジックのない人生なんて
I could go on without a hit. There is no way of verifying this, is there?

You used 奇術 but that means magic as in illusions or magic show.

It is not OK, I am afraid. We cannot place random nouns right after 無.

I thought as much.
Thank you for clarification! :)

You're right. に／で is still sometimes a careless mistake I make.

That's a good point; I don't know the answer. I didn't notice the え before ほん, which is why my "corrections" all just said ほん.[/quote]

Could anyone tell me the meaning of these, please? I know it's Katakana and maybe it sounds like chiwija, anyone have an idea?

Thanks

It says "Chijira"
チ
ジ
ラ
It's not in my Japanese dictionary so I don't know what it means though... Maybe it's a foreign (non-Japanese) word just written in Katakana?

Thank you very much. Could you tell me about the meaning? It was supposed to be my name that is Itziar, but sounds like Ichiar...

I would phonetically spell your name in Katakana as；
イチアー
Which is pronounced "Ichiaa" (elongated "a" to act as the final 'r', if that makes sense.)

Ok thank you! Now I have a tattoo I don't know what means hopefully nobody knows too much about katakana in my country. Damn teen crazyness. Thank you for your info!

Haha. No problem ;) I'd wait to get another opinion before you go inking your body though! :D

No, it's late i got inked my back with this. Maybe a nonsense word, am i wrong? lol

That clears alot of things up! Another case of broken japanese then? This one really baffled me. As always, your help and that of the forum is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Translation needed
 

Hello,

I need a translation (I think it's japanese)
Take a look at the picture below:

It reads: My boyfriend has mentioned that I should write to you.

Thank you for translating. -Can You translate te 2nd sentence too (the sentence with the questionmark at the end) ?

-Can you translate this sentence (with the question mark at the end) ?

It reads: What is that?

Ok I have a sort of personal question, I've googled it several times, but I found no convincing words.

How bad is it to forget a few ( no more than 10) kanji in a given group? (e.g. of 400 or 500).

I sometimes forget a few characters... and I honestly hate this, my question is, how often does it happen to native speakers? how often does it happen to people that practice calligraphy?

My goal isn't to be perfect on writing the kanji, but I would like to compare my statistics with those more involved with the language.

Some people even claim that it's pointless to learn written kanji, Kanji Amnesia And Why It's Okay To Forget Your Kanji and that people should focus on reading and recognizing them....

However I would like to see more opinions on the subject...

It's not very important for someone not living in Japan remember how to write all the kanji IMO. And natives, especially young people, forget how to write a bunch by the end of college anyhow. Because they don't have to write them.

Hell, I think my professors (at least the TAs I had) would occasionally forget how to write a kanji mid-blackboard-writing and have to pause for a moment and try to remember.

I probably have the most experience out of all the foreigners on this forum in writing them by hand, as I do it everyday for few hours for past 10 years. Also, I use the correct written form and not the computer fornt that you have in the text books (which, by the way, are not always written in the same way by hand) It is simple, if you do not write them, you forget them.

Also, Kyle has a point, that if you do not need them as I do for calligrahy, there are not many instances that you will actually have to write them. Perhaps except for some documents in kuyakusho, or a bank, but that is usually your address and name.

How often do the people that study calligraphy forget them? My teacher has been studying it for 50-60 years, and I reckon he knows about 20-30k or even more kanji. Even he sometimes looks up the dictionary. You must also remember, that you guys use only one form of given character, where in calligraphy we use much more (to give one example, the kanji for a tiger (虎) has like 7 forms). One character may have 7 -8 diferent forms, and those are further multiplied by styles. So, lol, you can study all you want, you will forget some anyway.

I write approximately 3000-4000 characters a month by hand (brush), and this is not even close to how many more I would want to write, if i had the bloody time to do it.

That is what worries me the most, since I am a foreigner, living in a country were the Japanese language holds little relevance, I ought to find a way to keep practicing them...
The only way I can think of is calligraphy and maybe writing a lot (e.g. books).

I will make even greater efforts not to forget them, your replies relieve me anyway, at least I am not the only one...

Quick question doing some review again. I'm trying to say. lee do you usually play tennis on saturday?? Is that right 
リーさんはたいてい土曜日にテニスをしますか。

I am jolly sleepy but I think it should be リーさんは土曜日にたいていテニスしてますか？, though it will have a slightly different meaning. (Lee, on sat. you do mostly tenins?)

you could use いつも instead of たいてい as it would sound better in this case.

リーさんはいつもの土曜日にテニスやってますか？

But wait for our forum's native speakers to confirm this.

You don't need to say いる form here. Just する is OK for a habitual action.

I usually watch TV on Fridays. = 普通、金曜日にテレビを見る。
I usually bring medicines, syringes, latex gloves and a microscope. = 通常は、薬、注射器、ゴム手袋、顕微鏡を持って行きま す。

etc.

So
リーさんは普通、金曜日にテニスをしますか。

You don't but that is how native speakers actually describe a habitual action most of the times.

Cool. Thanks!

Are you a Freemason, lol.

もう一回質問がありまーす。

Googleでどうやって漢字の写真が探しますか？

Lets say.. I'm looking for pictures of the Kanji　龍 instead of a dragon. Do I type 龍字　or 龍漢字 for best results? Is there a better way of doing it?

Thanks as always!

Go to Yahoo Japan. Yahoo! JAPAN
Type 龍の字
Click 「画像」

Voila: 「龍の字」の検索結果 - Yahoo!検索（画像）

Hah, ofcourse! So simple! Thanks very much! :D

Just remember that 「の」 is the magic particle.

Found this while peforming your suggested action, Masaegu. Is the poster talking sarcasticly about Johnny Foreigner's ink? Is there something wrong with the sentence?

Nothing is wrong with the sentence BUT inking a "sentence" itself is very rare in Japan. Thus the indifferent-sounding comment there.
I said "nothing is wrong" but there is this cold-sounding online-translated-ness about the phrase.

Would you want "I walk alone with my own shadow" inked on your arm in any language? If you did, I would probably refuse to walk with you again!