I asked a question like this a while ago and it helped a lot. My japanese is getting a little better but I have come to a halt again. Could some one help me figure out what it is my penpal is trying to say? His email said...


ichido

ohanasisimashou


I would give you guys the context of the email previous but I had simply said thank you to a compliment so it doesn't seem to apply.

From Yahoo Answers:
"Mou ichido itte kudasai masuka?" = Could you say that again, please?
"Mou ichido yatte-kudasai." = Please do it again.

So it looks like ichido means "again".

As far as ohanasisimashou I'm not sure!

From he Information I have ichido means once, or at one time. but I can't find the other is it a single word or a phrase?

for the second phrase i think your spelling it wrong. since japanese is usually spelled out in one or two 'sets'(sometimes three such like "shi" and "chi"'

the phrase you gave should be broken down such like this

oh a na si si ma sho u

theres no such thing as "si si"

only shi.

the closest thing i can make out of that word is "onegai shimasho" meaning please. indicating please do something again. hoped this helped!

I think I got it

Its:
Lets talk again.

Ichido= at one time

ohanasisimashou is broken into ohanashi and Shimashou

o-is added to nouns for polightness, or can indicate that the object belongs to someone other than speaker.

Hanashi- talk, speech, tale, story, news rumor.

Shimashou-a form of the verb do

Onliime wrote:
I think I got it

Its:
Lets talk again.

Ichido= at one time

ohanasisimashou is broken into ohanashi and Shimashou

o-is added to nouns for polightness, or can indicate that the object belongs to someone other than speaker.

Hanashi- talk, speech, tale, story, news rumor.

Shimashou-a form of the verb doYup you got it! Ohanasisimashou is a typo though. It should just be 'ohanashimashou' meaning 'let's talk'.

Uwaaaa~ minna nihongo shabereru jyan!!

And yup, you guys got it right! Ichido ohanashishimashou means 'Let's have a talk'

Thank you for all your help. By the way I thought I should mention that it was not a typo on my part. The person I talk to is using romaji but that is how he wrote it himself. He seems to write like that on a regular basis. I am figuring it is more casual to him. But it is very confusing. Speaking of does anyone know of a site that translates romaji to english rather than me going through a program to retype it into kanji?

Just a quick note....


Hanasu would be the dictionary form of "to speak" or "to talk". Most standard Japanese-English dictionaries do not list the verbs in conjugated form which ohanashimashou would be considered. Hanashi is how hanasu would be conjugated depending on what tense you are going for.

Personally, I have not found a good, free, and accurate website for translating romaji into English. Even since I started learning Japanese xx years ago, it seems the accepted forms of writing Japanese words in romaji has changed a bit. This could be why finding a site that can take in variations of spelling is so difficult.

Also, this is a thought that just occurred to me, he might be writing to you in romaji because he does not know if your computer has the ability to "read" Japanese characters.

Another quick note.

I'll soon began my fourth year as a translator student, and having studied translation, I know that while computers can be a lot of help, a pure machine translation (be it googletranslation or whatever), no matter how (artificially) intelligent, is something one should never really trust. Especially so, with a language like Japanese, which has much conjugation and many words that have the same reading but different meaning.

Dictionaries are another thing, of course.

I'm just a bit curious, how did the two of you become penpals? It sounds like fun!