Jedi:
beautiful eyes you have
Cantonese: Ley-ge ngaan ho leng.
Speaking of Hungarian.
Nagyon szép a szemed.
The Arabic phrases above should have read:
‘Indaki ‘aynayn jamilatayn.
‘Indaka ‘aynayn jamilatayn.
After posting, I remembered I should have used the dual number for specifically two eyes. By mistake I used the plural, forgetting that it’s used for three and up. So you could compliment someone’s eyes in the plural only in a science fiction scenario. For Earthlings, you have to use the dual.
That’s a lot of languages Johanna.
What’s the deal with the informal/formal stuff. Since I’m commenting on the beauty of the eyes, isnt it informal?
I think we are pretty good on the way in the utterly useless language compartment. With Latin, Esperanto and Klingon.
Still missing is Volapük and Elvish.
Indeed you’ve been duped.
It took me a little while to figure out just what in the heck you were trying to say, but the phrase you’re looking for is:
Masz ładną dupe.
Which means, of course “you have a nice ass.”
Try: Masz piękne oczy for more accurate results.
haha, nice ass.
How do you pronounce the e with the beard? Like an ordinary e?
“Do you want to come up to my place bouncy-bouncy?”
Finnish:
Sinulla on kauniit silmät.
Kazakh and Kyrgyz:
Suluu közdering bar. (familiar)
Suluu közderingiz bar. (polite)
Lithuanian:
Tu turi gražias akis. (familiar)
Jus turite gražias akis. (polite)
Mongolian:
Chi saikhan nüdüüdtei bain. (familiar)
Ta saikhan nüdüüdtei bain. (polite)
That was literary Tamil I posted above. Tamil is a language with diglossia, i.e. two levels, high and low, exist at the same time. The identical phrase in colloquial Tamil would be something like:
Unakku azhagana kannugal irukku (familiar)
Ungaluukku azhagana kannugal irukku (polite)
Whether it’s spelled “alakana” (according to the University of Madras standardized transliteration) or “azhagana” (in more popular variants), it’s the same word either way, spelled the same in Tamil script.
Urdu:
Tumhari ankhen khubsurat hain (familiar)
Apki ankhen khubsurat hain (polite)
After you become lovers, you can use the extra-familiar form Teri ankhen khubsurat hain, but if you’re not on intimate terms with someone, or talking to the Deity, it would be considered an insult.
More corrections. I should post more slowly and carefully. Sorry about that. As with the Arabic, please discard the above versions and use these. I should restrain the urge to be the first out of the box with answers to questions. I almost got the Finnish sentence wrong above, but remembered to verify my grammar on preview and caught my mistake before posting.
Turkish:
Güzel gözlerin var (familiar)
Güzel gözleriniz var (polite)
Uyghur:
Gözäl közliring bar. (familiar)
Gözäl közliringiz bar. (polite)
Uzbek:
Go’zal ko’zlaring bor. (familiar)
Go’zal ko’zlaringiz bor. (polite)
As you can see, the Turkic languages resemble one another pretty closely.
mr. jp: It isn’t inconceivable to compliment the beauty of someone’s eyes even if you’re not on familiar terms with them. What if you were introduced to a movie star…
The e with hook, which you called e with beard, is nasalized in Polish.
Lle hera vanya hendu.
Quenya Elvish.
(Hey…one never knows when they might run into a beautiful Elf… )
A fene egye meg, azt arkartam mondoni.
Word-by-word, literally, this means ‘Very beautiful are the eyes of you’.
Literally, ‘Your eyes are very beautiful’.
(I cribbed off of your example for the Urdu sentence, 'Mika.)
How come in these two languages you reworded the sentence and inserted the word for “very”? I know translations can’t always be literal or follow the original construction slavishly. I was just wondering what it is about these two languages that calls for a rewording.
I rephrased the sentence in Persian myself and literally had it say “Your eyes are beautiful.” Because in Persian the word that is used for “have” literally means “hold” in the sense of possession. I wasn’t sure if that had the right implication. As if I’m admiring your eye collection instead of your butterfly collection… This verb seems better for incidental possession than essential possession. I reworded it to be on the safe side. But if it’s OK to use this structure in Persian, that would be:
To chashm ha ye ziba dari. (familiar)
Shoma chashm ha ye ziba darid. (polite)
“You hold beautiful eyes.” I’m not sure…
In Hindi or Urdu the usual way to say “have” is X ke pas Y hai, meaning “X has Y”; literally it says “Near X there is Y.” Again, this seems better suited incidental possession - Kis ke pas rimot hai? Who’s got the remote? - than for facial features. Maybe there is no good way to say “have” in Hindi in this example.
Afrikaans: Jy het pragtige oë.
I’m sorry! runs off sobbing
Ok, I’m back.
Uh, I don’t know. In my mind, ‘szép’ means pretty and ‘nagyon szép’ means beautiful. Now that I think about it, ‘gyönyörű’ might be a better word for beautiful.
Gyönyörű a szemed.
As for the order of the words, I just go with what sounds right. I think it works both ways in Hungarian. I’ve had no formal grammar training though. (Spoken in household).
Oh man, I don’t want to compete with the Lord of Bears!
You could be complimenting on the beauty of your boss’s eyes?
y-o-u h-a-v-e b-e-a-u-ti-f-u-l e-y-e-s in ASL finger spelling
Tvuj oci je velmi krasny.
Czech (pronounced “t-VOO-e O-chi yeh VEL-mi KRAS-ny”). It’s not quite spelled right because I can’t do the accents on the letters particular to the Czech alphabet, but you get the idea.
On second thought, I think “eyes” is neutral gender, so that may be “Tvoje oci je velma krasna.”
Pig Latin:
Ou-yay ave-hay eautiful-bay eyes-way.