PS. one of the most obvious spelling changes to happen in English over the last 75 years or so is that inflexion and connexion are gradually becoming inflection and connection. The spelling of recent loanwords, especially ones that have to be romanised, has also changed a bit over the last 150 years or so. eg. I posted a contemporary photograph ca. 1900 or so of “Kita Humiko”, not “Kita Fumiko”. See also how “Peking” is now “Beijing” even though afaik the Chinese name is still the same.
Vocab
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 料理人 | りょうりにん | cook |
| ステーキ | steak | |
| 焼く | やく | to grill |
The cook grills a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼く
This sentence would mean that the cook grills a steak regularly, e.g. as in “the cook grills steak every day”.
More natural would be to use -ている as a continuing action “the cook is grilling a steak”:
料理人がステーキを焼いている
The cook grilled a steak yesterday.
昨日料理人がステーキを焼いた
The past tense of 焼く is 焼いた.
The cook will grill a steak tomorrow.
明日料理人がステーキを焼く
Japanese does not have a future tense, so the addition of “明日” (tomorrow) is necessary to make the sentence unambiguous.
The steak is grilled by the cook.
ステーキが料理人に焼かれる
The passive form of 焼く is 焼かれる.
The indirect object (that is the direct object in the active voice) is marked by the particle に.
The steak has been grilled by the cook.
ステーキが料理人に焼かれた
This is closest to the English grammatical structure and is simply the past tense of the previous sentence. However, in English the sentence could also be a clarification / explanation about the steak. In this case the steak is the topic of the sentence, which would translate as follows:
ステーキは料理人が焼いた
The steak will finish grilling in 10 minutes.
ステーキは十分に焼き終わる
Once again there is no future tense in Japanese, hence without stating a time it will be ambiguous if the steak will finish grilling or the steak finishes grilling.
To state that it finishes, we can combine the verbs 焼く with 終わる (to finish) into the compound verb 焼き終わる.
The cook wanted to grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼きたかった
Japanese has a verb conjugation for desire, namely the ending -たい. It behaves as an い-adjective, and thus the past tense becomes 焼きたかった.
The cook would have grilled a steak.
This was the most difficult for me to translate. Counterfactual conditions (“if X had happened, then Y would have happened”) are translated with the -たら or -ば form of the verb in the antecedent and adding だろう to the consequent (“もし X -たら、Y だろう”).
However, in this sentence the antecedent of the conditional is missing. The following are translated by a native speaker:
料理人がステーキを焼いて置けばよかった
The ending 置けばよかった translates as something like “to wish it had been”, literally meaning “if [it is] put [like this], then [it] was good”. So the closest translation in English would be “If the cook had grilled a steak, then that would be nice”.
This is a different kind of conditional than I wanted, however.
料理人がステーキを焼いてもよかった
This sentence emphasises that the cook did grill a steak. Adding もよかった is translated as “would also be good”; the literal translation is “[If] the cook grilled a steak, [that] also [would have been] good”.
This one is quite close to the conditional I wanted.
料理人がステーキを焼けただろう
焼ける is the potential form of 焼く, meaning “to be able to grill”, with past tense 焼けた.
The だろう at the end expresses uncertainty or seeks agreement. Hence the literal translation is “I guess the cook could have grilled a steak”. However, this sentence is what would be the consequent of the conditional if we add the antecedent: 晩ご飯を食べなかったら料理人がステーキを焼けただろう.
The cook could grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼けるJapanese has a potential conjugation of the verb: 焼く becomes 焼ける. As in english it is used both for expressing the possibility of an action as for expressing the ability to do an action.
The cook couldn’t grill a steak.
料理人がステーキを焼けないOnce again we can use the potential form 焼ける, but this time negated to 焼けない.
Alternatively we can state that the cook is unable to grill a steak by creating a noun 焼くこと, literally “the grilling thing”, or more precisely “the act of grilling”, and adding the verb できる, “to be able to” in the negated form できない.
料理人はステーキを焼くことができない
Hey cook, grill a steak!
料理人さん、ステーキを焼けTo make a vocative of 料理人, we add the respectful -さん suffix. Basically it becomes “mister cook”. It could be omitted if you want to be especially rude.
As in English, the imperative 焼け is very rude. A more polite way is to use the -て form, which can be interpreted as a command as well:
料理人さん、ステーキを焼いて
This is a shortened form of the following sentence, which is the most polite, and would be translated as “Hey cook, could you please grill a steak”:
料理人さん、ステーキを焼いてください
I saw the cook that grilled a steak.
ステーキを焼いていた料理人を見た
In Japanese subordinate clauses do not use pronouns, but instead are just pasted in front of the noun they are modifying.
The sentence ステーキを焼いていた uses the -ている form in the past tense to denote a continuing action in the past (“the steak was being grilled”).
ステーキを焼いていた料理人 is then translated as “the cook that was grilling a steak”.
The steak grilling cook was tired.
ステーキを焼いている料理人は疲れた
This is translated similarly to the previous sentence, with “steak grilling” being a sentence that is placed in front of the noun it is modifying.
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How do I say
Where’s the lamb sauce, you donkey?!
Ore is a very masculine and considered by some to be a bit arrogant. More neutral is to say boku for male speakers or watashi for either sex. Apparently it’s becoming more popular and neutral under the younger generation, though. It’s also one of those words that is overrepresented in anime, similar to how virtually nobody will say kisama unironically in Japan.
However, actually the most natural is to omit ore wa entirely. Putting it in the sentence makes the speaker the topic of the conversation, and thus the translation is more like “It is I, who saw the steak grilling cook”.
Steeko is close, it’s actually suteeki. Not to be confused suteki, which means “wonderful”.
Kuuku is close too, it’s actually kokku. The etymology leads back to the Dutch word “kok” for cook. There’s a Japanese word ryouri + nin (“cooking” + “person”) for cook as well.
guriru is a noun, used for the (barbecue) grill itself. As far as I can find, it’s not one of those nouns that can become a verb by adding suru. Even if it were, guriru shite no kokku would be ungrammatical. The particle no is used to connect two nouns, and guriru shite is not a noun. Usually a sentence can become a subordinate clause simply by gluing it in front of the noun: guriru shite kokku. But there’s another problem: the -te form of verbs does not form a sentence, it should be guriru suru kokku to have a proper subordinate clause.
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I’d say
羊肉のソースはどこ、バカヤロウ？！
Youniku no soosu wa doko, bakayarou?!
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kisama
Only the Japanese would have a word called “you (highly insulting)”
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What’s really interesting, is that it literally means “noble enemy”, with sama being one of the most polite ways to address someone.
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I guess it was the Japanese equivalent of “listen pal” in which the addressee is not your pal.
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I’m afraid I don’t have time to do the grammatical challenge at the moment, so instead I made this little
Vocabulary Workout
The topic is war.
bugcat's Latin translation
I tēlum, pl. tēla
II gladius, pl. gladiī
III sauciō
IV arcus, pl. arcūs
V sagitta, pl. sagittae
VI contendō
VII pugnō
VIII praedor
IX exscindō
whew, I expected to have done far worse.
that looks reeeeally strange to my primitive indo-european mind.
The I’m-grilling-a-steak cook
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When translating a Latin text and you don’t know the meaning of a word, it’s usually “to kill”.
In Hebrew (or was it Arab?), on the other hand, they say, every word has for meanings: Its primary meaning, the exact opposite of that, a sexual innuendo, a synonym for camel.
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This is how I remember my Latin lessons
OK, in Latin we need ten words to express our sentences.
cocus, n. the cook (masculine, second declension)
būbula, n. beef. (feminine, first declension)
herī, abv. yesterday
crās, adv. tomorrow
coquō, v. to cook (third conjugation)
conclūdō ,v. to finish (third conjugation)
volō, v. to want (irregular conjugation)
nequeō, v. to be unable (irregular conjugation)
videō, v. to see (second conjugation)
lassō, v., to tire (first conjugation)
I’m going to shamelessly copy the verb senses given to me by @Sanonius.
I) Cocus būbulam coquit. The cook - beef - he cooks.
II) Cocus būbulam herī cōquit. The cook - beef - yesterday - he cooked.
III) Cocus būbulam crās coquet. The cook - beef - tomorrow - he will cook.
IV) Būbula cocum coquitur. Beef - the cook - it is cooked.
V) Būbula cocum coquētus est. Beef - the cook - it was cooked.
VI) Būbula cocum coquētur conclūdētur. Beef - the cook - it will be cooked - it will finish.
VII) Cocus būbulam coquere voluī. The cook - beef - to cook - he wanted to.
VIII) Cocus būbulam coquerit. The cook - beef - he would cook.
IX) Cocus būbulam coquātur. The cook - beef - he could cook.
X) Cocus būbulam coquere nequiī. The cook - beef - to cook - cannot.
XI) Coce, būbula coque! Hey cook, - beef - cook!
I’ll come back later for XII and XIII.
XII) Cocus viduī, qui būbulum cōquit. The cook - I saw , he - beef - cooked.
XIII) Cocus lassāvit, qui būbulam coquet. The cook - he tired , he - beef - cooked.
Am I the only one imagining a script of hirigana with tentacles?
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Feles edit murem, quae feles cepit.
Hic est fiilus meus, quae valde emo.
Brennus puer valde immodestus est, qui non adiuvat matrem suum.
Spiritus te defendit a monstris, quae te devorabunt.
Virum cognoscimus, qui in Italiam venit.
Galli in pace vivebant, quem Caesar vincit.
“when you’ve never been able to learn a second language but non-indos plague your thoughts”
I’ve gotta learn Ancient Greek and Sanskrit before I even look down there, though.
My old Greek textbox had some example sentence about the houses being small 
I remember these things, like my Latin textbook’s “Marcus is hastening to the Rhine.” I can barely even say “hastening” to my sister now without us going into in-jokes.
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in same sense as “Japanese is syllabary, just an impure one”
in Japanese there is huge problem that a lot of different words have exactly the same pronunciation. So writing is more rich than audio speech. Its easy to find sentence that no one will understand if you just read it. It should be translated to audio version of Japanese language first.
So to remove Chinese characters from Japanese language is not easy modification because of homophones
液 - fluid
駅 - station
both can be written as エキ (E Ki)
English has this problem too, just not to such extent
knight
night
both US IPA: /naɪt/
In US and Great Britain pronunciation is slightly different because independence for many centuries.
Some words that continued to be spoken in Britain, were forgotten in America and then their pronunciation was invented anew based on text only. Pronunciation of such words became different because English alphabet is far from transcription system.
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Not sure what your point is?
Chinese is much more similar to English than it looks at first glance.