Search from various English teachers...
United Kingdom flagJosie
Japanese sentence-making/word order help! How would you translate the following sentence into Japanese? "The students wrote down their kanji in their notebooks with a pen." My textbook is saying something like this: "学生は漢字のノートにペンで書きます。" But wouldn't this translate to "The students wrote in their kanji notebooks with a pen?" because doesn't "漢字のノート" refer to notebook for kanji, instead of writing kanji in a notebook? Would be possible to say "学生はノートにペンで漢字をかきます。"? Or would that disrupt the word order/sentence structure? Any help would be much appreciated!

Answers · 4

1
The translation in your text book is completely wrong; and your reverse translation "The students wrote in their kanji notebooks with a pen?" for that fault sentence was grammatically correct though it didn't make sense because of that the original didn't make sense. Your alternative of translation "学生はノートにペンで漢字をかきます。" was absolutely correct and a regular expression; you could flexibly replace some parts of the sentence with another some as you would already know.

Still haven’t found your answers?

Write down your questions and let the native speakers help you!

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn a language from the comfort of your own home. Browse our selection of experienced language tutors and enroll in your first lesson now!

Start Learning Today