You’ll have to forgive me for the really rudimentary grammar. I had just been thinking about a situation where, let’s say I’m talking to someone in Japanese and I want to reference an animal, but I realize I don’t know its name in Japanese, and, rather than taking the easy way out and asking if the person I am talking to knows its name in English, or by googling it, if I could successfully learn its name by describing characteristics of it in Japanese with words I know.
I’ll put the name of the animal I’m attempting to describe beneath the description sentences I’ve made in spoiler text. I’m not going to run them through a translator app or anything, I’m just going off the top of my head. I also haven’t cheated and googled what its Japanese name is.
If you think these questions wouldn’t cut it (as in, they aren’t coherent enough / specific enough to reasonably yield a correct answer, what would you say instead? And, if there are glaring grammatical / logical errors with them, what are they?). Keep in mind that I still intend on using basic Japanese grammar / vocabulary with this exercise. I’m sure there is a much more complex sentence I could make that would instantly get the answer I’m looking for but it’s likely far beyond what I could do right now realistically.
この動物は海に住んでいる、だがね魚じゃない。
この動物は大きすぎるんだ。海の中では一番大きいだ。
この動物は生んでに塩水。卵を作らない。
この動物は小さい魚をたべるんだ。
(The animal is a >!whale. I’m not sure if I have more accurately described a blue whale in particular with the line where I attempted to say that it’s the biggest in the sea. It’d also be a little embarrassing if the things I attempted to say weren’t even true lmao; I’m 99.9% certain all of that is the case, including that they give birth to live whales and do not make eggs!<)
This is my first time generating sentences like this to try and describe something besides a food I like to eat, so constructive criticism is encouraged. Please be sure to use spoiler text for your guess about what I’m talking about so that other people get to guess too.
Thanks!
2 comments
Im not japanese but I guessed >!whale!< after your first two sentences. Im not sure if “not a fish” has the same meaning to native speakers as it does to english speakers, though? For all I know sakana might mean sea creature which could be confusing, but at least for me it was clear
What are you talking about is a very common approach people use, because something like 6k vocabulary is enough for casual conversations and be able to speak fluently, but at the same time there are a lot of unknown specific words. The only difference is that people usually describe it in several words like “the biggest in the ocean”. And you can do that for anything, it’s a skill by itself, so you can pick any random thing around you and try to reword it.
That’s basically why people consider something around 6k vocabulary as being able to talk properly. With enough rewording you already can talk about anything you want and it’s already not vocabulary that limits, but rather practical ability.