The Littlest Birds

[Sukebe Uchuujin]

[center]Odd translation request.....
How would you translate
'The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs'

is this close.........or no cigar?

ichi ban kire no uta wa ichi ban chisai no tori ga suru

Thanks in advance

Oh and in case you are wondering its a lyric from a
'Be Good Tanyas' song
Beautiful beautiful 3 part harmony bluegrass/country band
They are my current favourite band:D[/center]

[richvh]

一番小さな（or 小さい）鳥が一番きれいな歌を鳴く。
Ichiban chiisana (or chiisai) tori ga ichiban kireina uta o naku.

That's at least closer (I don't know if uta is appropriate for bird songs.)

[Shibakoen]

Does kirei work for describing sounds??

[Harisenbon]

Yup

[Sukebe Uchuujin]

[center]Thanks for your answer rich........
(now i can explain the lyric to my girlfriend)
just one question......
I thought chisai was an -i adjective and therefore wouldnt take the ending-na????[/center]

[richvh]

Chiisai and ookii can be used as either -i or -na adjectives. There's probably a difference in nuance, but I don't know what it is.

[Akamaru]

Yes, I would also be grateful if someone put the work in to explain the -na ending of chiisai and kirei!

Ah, I found out myself... thanks richvh for sheding some light on the problem.

[keatonatron]

Well if you found out... why shouldn't you be the one to put in the work to explain it?

[Akamaru]

That's one good question!;)

Well, the reason why I didn't write down an explanation on the question of the na-endings is because richvh pretty much summed it up. Furthermore, I could've got it wrong, and I don't want to spread any lies. But I can try to deepen the explanation a little bit.

Chiisai and kirei are both adjectives (meaning small resp. pretty). Adjectives come in handy when describing nouns. Chiisai belongs to the most common group of adjectives that are conjugated as verbs. Those adjectives does never require a particle when placed in front of a noun (chiisai kutsu = small shoes).
Kirei, on the other hand, belongs to a group of adjectives that cannot be conjugated themselves, but are conjugated by attaching conjugations of desu after the word. This group of adjectives must, when placed in front of a noun, be followed by the particle -na (kirei na uta = pretty song).
And as richvh said, chiisai can, along with ookii (meaning big), be treated as an adjective from the second group as well (chiisa na tori = pretty bird). But I'm not sure _when_ the -na form is used. Maybe it has something to do with the noun that comes after.

Please correct me.

[keatonatron]

As I posted in another thread here... within the last week... I've heard that the -na form of chiisai and ookii further emphasizes the smallness/bigness.

For example, Mongol 800's song 小さな恋の歌 is often translated as "The smallest love song" while 小さい恋の歌 would be, simply, "a small love song".

We do this in English too:

"The other day I saw the biggest cockroach!"


Course this is all just hearsay so don't quote me on it!

[Akamaru]

That sounds credible. But doesn't the word ichiban work in the same way, as a superlative-izer?

[keatonatron]

Yep. But that's more literal. You can have many ookina cockroaches but only one ichiban ookii cockroach

[Oracle]

To me 小さい and 小さな are pretty much the same thing, 小さな doesn't mean "smallest", it just means "small", like 小さい。 I do tend to use one or the other in certain situations though, but can't say exactly why.. I think it's like "small" and "little" in English. One of them just tends to sound better

Anyway, I couldn't find anything on 小さい vs 小さな but here's an interesting article on a web site for teachers of Japanese about the difference between ookii vs ookina (all Japanese, sorry) which I guess we can extend to 小さい・小さな:
http://www.lec-jp.com/nihongo/info/006.html

English summary:

1) 大きい (ookii) is used before the noun it's describing, or anywhere else in a sentence
大きな (ookina) can only be used before the object it's describing

大きい車　(ookii kuruma) <- OK
あの車は大きい。 (ano kuruma wa ookii.) <- OK
大きな車 (ookina kuruma)<- OK
あの車は大きな。 (ano kuruma wa ookina.) <- NOT OK

2) 大きい is for physical "bigness" only, while 大きな can mean both big for both physical AND "abstract" things/attributes

Examples:

もう少し大きいサイズはありますか?
mou sukoshi ookii saizu wa arimasu ka?
Have you got a larger size? (a shirt, whatever)

You can replace 大きい with 大きな in this sentence and it means the same thing because a shirt is a physical thing wih a measurable size.

大きな問題 ("big problem") is correct rather than 大きい問題 because a "problem" is abstract and doesn't actually have a 'size' which you can measure.

大きい人 and 大きな人 are both correct but 大きい人 just means someone who is physcially big, while 大きな人 can mean a person is physically big OR a person who is has personality emotional traits which are described as "large" in Japanese.

Anway, according to the site that's how they're supposed to be different, though it says there are exceptions and idioms which use one or the other in defiance of the rules. In real life you see them used interchangeably all the time, but I guess this is better than no explanation at all

[Akamaru]

That helped me a lot. Thank you Oracle-san! (and keatonatron-san as well)

[Oracle]

Akamaru wrote:
That helped me a lot. Thank you Oracle-san! (and keatonatron-san as well)

No problem! Actually it was interesting researching that because I've always known/felt there is slight difference in nuance, but I've never been able to say exactly when you're really supposed to use one or the other.

You learn something new everyday.