Two possible improvements:
First, you might be better off using である here, given the kind of style the sentence is from (It’s the opening sentence to A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, and is delivered in a very authoritative and poetic style).
Second, a conjunction of some form is probably in order. This could be で, or better yet ば. The best fit I can think of would therefore be でもあれば.
I’m nearly certain that the “official” translation would opt for different word choices, also, but we’re just here for the grammar.
Hint: if the verb is ある, you probably want to be using に.
Also, for seasons, you probably want to stick to the generic counter, so something like ここには季節が2つしかない。
Ooh you’re so close!
First, since it’s the seasons that are coming, you probably want が来る.
Second, it might be better to use something like と instead of 時, depending on if there’s any causality implied (it’s not certain from the English, I don’t think)
Third, you probably want to make the embedded clause into a question: 何がおこるか教えてくれるの?
Here’s my shitty attempt.
あんたったら、なんでいつも「なんで」が出るのか? なんで僕が「結婚しよう」って言うたびに
なんか「はい」ってさえ言えないのか?!
Too strong? Probably
I’m also a bit shaky on a lot of this stuff. Probably gonna get a native to tear it to shreds for me.
“I will fall asleep every time while reading a novel”
Couldn’t find a natural way of saying this… 読みながら、読んでいる間、読む時 etc, don’t know which one to use and which way of “falling a sleep” makes sense.
When did you come to Japan?
I don’t have a dog. I have a cat.
Do you want the blue or the green shirt?
Don’t come closer!
I can’t imagine that being the case!
I thought I could use just いつ but jisho.org doesn’t even have that in its dictionary, so I lost my conviction and used what it said was the way to say it.
I had a feeling there might be a more specific word for having a pet, because this is Japanese, but sometimes it is better to try.
I just checked and saw blue and green were no-adjectives, I haven’t gotten to reading about those yet, but I have a feeling I got my first taste now.
・いつも間違ってるのはなぜだろうか?(made it into “why am I always wrong”. I really don’t know about this one though… couldn’t think of a natural sounding phrase for it)
・信じられる?一体何だったの?(made it into “what in the world was that?”)
・子猫、おいでおいで。食べたいよ。もぐもぐ…
It’s ok if it’s cold.
This bread is not tasty.
How many do you have?
Do you know where the hotel is?
Come home before it gets dark.
If you follow this street you will get to a house full of people for sure.
… … … So the way the page formats the furigana above made me think it meant that いつ was only for the first kanji (aka that it would be read like this 何時). I didn’t stop to think that they would have put more furigana for the second kanji if that was so.
That is pretty annoying actually, because the furigana clearly looks like it belongs to just one kanji, but I scrolled down and it seems to be common. Or I should say common for exceptional readings that belong to multiple kanji…
寒くてもいい。
(assuming we’re talking about the weather here… Otherwise, I guess we’d have to replace 寒い with something else!)
このパンが美味しくないです。
Alright, so I am not sure how to handle this one. If the intention is to ask for the hotels location, then maybe just “where’s the hotel”?
ホテルはどこですか。
But that’s… pretty far from a literal translation. Someone wants to take a stab at literally asking whether the other guy knows about the hotel’s whereabouts?
暗くなる前に帰りなさい。
この道に追いかけてから、たくさん人がある家には必ず着く。
So many questions! Is 必ず a good choice here? Is the placement correct? Is it fine even to use てから?
Can “full of people” really be translated that way? Quite the sentence
Anyway, I guess I owe you guys some sentences!
I’d be better to write four japanese sentences every day!
I could eat fourty portions!
Haven’t you heard? There will be fireworks tonight!
When you learn every day, writing becomes easy!
I decided on rice today.
Yesterday, I only ate green things. Today, I’ll go for blue.
When the traffic light turns red, you must not go!
Oh, in case some Bunpro Staff reads this: Duolingo has a “Club” feature. It’s mostly useless, but it asks the users to write some sentence once a day. This is automated by some bot either posting two pictures (and you then have to make a sentence about that), just one picture of a scene, or it’s just asking you to “use this word”.
Perhaps something like this could also be done here, if a discourse-bot allows that?
Yeah I guess it happens sometimes when the furigana characters don’t separate to fit into a specific kanji. Like…
い is not 何
つ is not 時
いつ is 何時
Don’t really know how to explain it properly but it shouldn’t bee too confusing. You will get the hang of the pattern once you familiarise yourself with kanji a bit more
Thanks, I do know this. It was literally the formatting on the website that threw me. Not how it works, since it is the same for 今日 and probably several more words I do know. The website should have formatting so the furigana gets centered over both kanji to make it clearer, or some other syntax to show when furigana is shared between multiple kanji.
Do you know any store that sells cheap shoes around here?
この辺に、安い靴を売っている店を知っていますか?
Perfect!
My friend told me he wanted to live in Japan, but refuses to learn kanji.
友達は日本に住みたいって言ったけど、漢字を勉強するのを拒んだ。
Perfect! Though, I would simply say 嫌がる which also means “to refuse”.
No way! That’s not possible, you liar!
うそだろう!無理っすよ!うそつき!
I would say:
うそだろう!そんなのありえないよ!うそつき!
Because 無理っすよ in most contexts means “I can’t do that/ I am not able to do that etc”. (But it also sometimes is used as “that can’t be possible”, so in the end all your sentences are 10/10)
If you want to say that possibility of something happening is extremely low you should go for ありえない。