# Chinese + Japanese: Wo Ai Ni/Watashi-wa anata-o ai shite imasu



## daisuke_renai

Does "Wo Ai Ni" mean I love you in chinese?

And may I ask what exactly this means?(points to topic) I was told it means I love you, but I've seen so many different versions of it, that "watashi-wa anata-wo shite imasu" seems way too long to be "I love you" 

Thank you so much =3!!!!


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## erick

In Chinese, I believe:
wo = I 我
ai = love 爱
ni = you 你

In Japanese we can just say 「愛してます。」 The subject/object are implied
Watashi wa = 私は = I + subject marker (は indicates the subject)
Anata wo = あなたを = You + object marker (を indicates object)
_Aishitemasu_ = 愛してます。 = to love
"Shite imasu" means "I am doing"  You must add "ai" (love) before "shitemasu"
But ... Japanese people don't really say "Aishitemasu" very much. We usually say "Suki" instead. It means "to like" but "aishitemasu" is too profuse for most of us to say. We're kind of the opposite from Latin people who will say "I love you I love you I love you," ad infinitum and usually limit ourselves to "I like you very much" (Daisuki) unless it's _really_ a special moment.


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## MingRaymond

daisuke_renai said:
			
		

> Does "Wo Ai Ni" mean I love you in chinese?


 
Yes.


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## daisuke_renai

Thank you both for all your help ^-^!!! It means a LOT!


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## erick

Daisuke I just noticed -- is your avatar of Shampoo from Ranma Nibunnoichi?  She was always saying "wo ai ni" to Ranma (or trying to kill the female version) ... I'm sure Akane and Ranma never went past "suki."


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## jorge_val_ribera

But 私はあなたをしています。 literally means "I'm doing you", right?


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## imast

Yes, you're right.


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## showerbabies

"Wo Ai Ni" is in mardarin.  

If you live near the Bay Area in California where cantonese is majority, its "ngo oey lay".  Both means "i" + "love" + "you".


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## alwayslearning

erick said:
			
		

> Daisuke I just noticed -- is your avatar of Shampoo from Ranma Nibunnoichi? She was always saying "wo ai ni" to Ranma (or trying to kill the female version) ... I'm sure Akane and Ranma never went past "suki."


 
My daughter's class is celebrating the Chinese new year in their class today. One of the items I placed in her envelope for her classmates was a note on how to say "I love you" in Chinese "wo ai ni" along with the characters. Now all the kindergartners will be saying this. It should be very nice! Also, I love to hear the name Suki, it's such an endearing name for a child.


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## Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

By the way, what about tone? Surely if you say "wo ai ni" with the wrong pitch, it will mean something completely different, or nothing at all.


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## nichec

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! said:
			
		

> By the way, what about tone? Surely if you say "wo ai ni" with the wrong pitch, it will mean something completely different, or nothing at all.



great point. I'm going to hear some robot-Chinese again 

"wo" and "ni" both take the third sound and "ai" takes the fourth one. Well, I don't really know how to explain this, but this is the best I can do here, and you are perfectly right. If you say any word in the wrong way, the whole sentence can be totally meaningless or different.

By the way, as erick observed, we don't use this sentence often (at least not me). It's more likely for a Taiwanese to say "我很喜歡你" which stands for "I like you very much" instead of "I love you". I've never in my life said this to my classmates or parents. It's simply too awkward.


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## SpiceMan

On topic:
I agree. Despite there's a literal translation, you should avoid using them. I'm talking about japanese, I know no chinese, except ayamaru-ayamaru: 謝謝 (to apologize - to apologize - in the japanese meaning of the ideogram ) 

Offtopic:


			
				erick said:
			
		

> We're kind of the opposite from Latin people who will say "I love you I love you I love you," ad infinitum and usually limit ourselves to "I like you very much" (Daisuki) unless it's _really_ a special moment.


Maybe that's an american thing rather than "latin"?  (I don't feel myself as "latin", but I know that "latin" somehow includes me from an american POV).

From what I can get from movies, or sitcoms or whatever, people say I love you to even say good bye at the phone. You hardly say it to friends or family here in Argentina, and we also limit ourselves to "te quiero" (I like you - used much as japanese' "suki") having "te amo" for I love you. 
Despite "te amo" being said rather often in soap operas (telenovelas), it's _hardly_ ever said in real life.


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## alwayslearning

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! said:
			
		

> By the way, what about tone? Surely if you say "wo ai ni" with the wrong pitch, it will mean something completely different, or nothing at all.


 
I never thought about pitch. Hmmm, well at least the kindergartners liked telling each other they loved each other. I forgot about pitch......


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## non_parlo_italiano

alwayslearning said:


> My daughter's class is celebrating the Chinese new year in their class today. One of the items I placed in her envelope for her classmates was a note on how to say "I love you" in Chinese "wo ai ni" along with the characters. Now all the kindergartners will be saying this. It should be very nice! Also, I love to hear the name Suki, it's such an endearing name for a child.


 
Hi,

Just a quick warning to anyone tempted to name their child "Suki" - it literally means "like" (so it is used, for instance, to say "I like baseball") and it is pronounced almost like the English word, "ski". And I don't think most Japanese would name their child that. Not to tell you what you should or shouldn't name your child but I thought I should just make these things clear first...

"Ai" (愛), however, is quite a common Japanese girls' name (and as with Chinese, literally means "love").


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## sneeka2

erick said:


> Daisuke I just noticed -- is your avatar of Shampoo from Ranma Nibunnoichi?



I don't think it's Shampoo, I think it's Inu Yasha. Same mangaka though.
Which reminds me, I should catch up on Inu Yasha episodes. 昔犬夜叉大好きだった。。。(just to get back on topic )


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## jazyk

> Maybe that's an american thing rather than "latin"? (I don't feel myself as "latin", but I know that "latin" somehow includes me from an american POV).


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

For what it's worth, and speaking as a foreigner, I've never heard a Chinese say 我 爱 你.

I have heard phrases using 愛してます used in Japanese, but only on TV.  I've never heard it in real life.  

Frankly, I'd feel uncomfortable teaching anybody to use these phrases.  I don't think I'm offending anybody by saying that I just think that the idea of expressing love verbally is uncommon in East Asian cultures.


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## BaraniskoDyskoteka

*Watashi-wa anata-wo shite imasu* 
watashi- I wa - an marker...
anata - you
wo- other marker
ai - love
shite a form of verb meaning "do" ...
imasu ... as I have learnt it means that someone exists....
so not too long...


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## DoriMie

showerbabies said:


> "Wo Ai Ni" is in mardarin.
> 
> If you live near the Bay Area in California where cantonese is majority, its "ngo oey lay".  Both means "i" + "love" + "you".



I'm sorry to say this, but the last word is off [in the cantonese one]
I'm pretty sure it's "ngo oi nei"
but it's nice that you know some cantonese ^^

as for "wo ai ni", the accents are wo3 ai4 ni3. So the way you pronounce "wo" and "ni" have like a down then up tone. Hahaha, I was always scolded for the wrong tones when I was little.
Hard to explain ^^;
I guess, I'd say, the way a person says "no" in English, when it's like.. a mean question. I'm not sure if I explained that right. ^^;

"ai" is pronounced with a down tone. Maybe, like when said in english would be like "hey!"
Just, when you pronounce it, it's not actual yelling xD

In Japanese, normally it's something "suki desu" 
It's rare to hear the words "aishiteru" come out of one's mouth.
:]


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## lammn

DoriMie said:


> I'm sorry to say this, but the last word is off [in the cantonese one]
> I'm pretty sure it's "ngo oi nei"


 
Yeah, DoriMie, you are right. In Cantonese, 我 should be pronounced as "ngo" in the 5th tone, 愛 can be either pronounced as "oi" in the 3rd tone or "ngoi" in the 3rd tone, while 你 is "nei" in the 5th tone.



nichec said:


> By the way, as erick observed, we don't use this sentence often (at least not me). It's more likely for a Taiwanese to say "我很喜歡你" which stands for "I like you very much" instead of "I love you". I've never in my life said this to my classmates or parents. It's simply too awkward.


 
Yeah, nichec, it is very seldom for Chinese people (including Hong Kong Chinese) to say 我愛你 to anyone, unless you are trying to propose marriage to someone, but still, the degree of awkwardness does not even diminish in a proposal...


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## RusskiPower

lammn said:


> Yeah, DoriMie, you are right. In Cantonese, 我 should be pronounced as "ngo" in the 5th tone, 愛 can be either pronounced as "oi" in the 3rd tone or "ngoi" in the 3rd tone, while 你 is "nei" in the 5th tone.
> 
> I'm not a huge expert in Cantonese but I have noticed that colloquially the initial "n" is often used interchangeably with "l". There are regional variations of Cantonese, so in some areas that may not be the case.


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## lammn

RusskiPower said:


> I'm not a huge expert in Cantonese but I have noticed that colloquially the initial "n" is often used interchangeably with "l". There are regional variations of Cantonese, so in some areas that may not be the case.


 
Sometimes the "ng" sound is ommitted and this phenomenon is regarded as the "lazy sound"(懶音).


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## kamper

RusskiPower said:


> I'm not a huge expert in Cantonese but I have noticed that colloquially the initial "n" is often used interchangeably with "l". There are regional variations of Cantonese, so in some areas that may not be the case.


Personally my mother tongue isn't Cantonese, but I can say with full certainty that, in practice, you would never pronoun 你 as NEI in colloquial Cantonese. Instead you would always have to pronounce it as LEI.

“我” in nowadays HongKong-Cantonese is practically pronounced "ó", with the initial nasal consonant "ng-" dropped, rather than "ngó". The pronunciation "ngó" is merely to be heard in Cantonese lyrics, but almost not a single Hong Kong guy would use it on a daily basis.

(The recent decades have seen great alterations of pronunciation in most "dialects", or "language variants"(or whatever you would call it) of the Chinese language group of the Sino-Tibetan language family, due to the well-known political and cultural homogenisation throughout the whole China, and Cantonese is no exception. As a consequence, many language variants in China has lost their distinctive features, among which is the Cantonese initial nasal consonant "ng-" gradually suffering the "denasalisation".)

A practical way to say "I love you (so much)" in Cantonese is "我(好)中意你", pronounced somewhat like "O (hou) chung-yee lei", (whereas "Ngo (hou) chung-yee lei" is merely the _theoretical_ pronunciation & is of NO use)

NOTE: This is the Japanese subforum and we might be straying off. Sorry for this. So if there is a necessity we can continue this thread in the Chinese subforum.


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## Anatoli

> I'm sorry to say this, but the last word is off [in the cantonese one]
> I'm pretty sure it's "ngo oi nei"
> but it's nice that you know some cantonese ^^


In Hong Kong they pronounce initial n- as l-, so "nei" becomes "lei", even if it's not quite standard (if Cantonese can be standardised), it's quite common. "Ngo" is reduced to "o". Mixing n- and l- is common to many Southern dialects in China.

Thus, 你好 is pronounced "lei hou" in Cantonese.

I just noticed Kamper's reply, sorry for the double-post. HK'ers must be like Japanese, too shy to say directly "love", using "中意" (to like) instead  In Mandarin, it's pronounced zhòngyì and is used in the meaning "to like".

As for "I love you", Japanese don't say literally "I love you" （僕は君を）愛している but 
君が大好きだ (kimi-ga daisuki da), literally "(I) like you very much"


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## audreymarie

Thomas F. O'Gara said:


> For what it's worth, and speaking as a foreigner, I've never heard a Chinese say 我 爱 你.
> 
> I have heard phrases using 愛してます used in Japanese, but only on TV. I've never heard it in real life.
> 
> Frankly, I'd feel uncomfortable teaching anybody to use these phrases. I don't think I'm offending anybody by saying that I just think that the idea of expressing love verbally is uncommon in East Asian cultures.[I believe in saying it at the right moment. Even if its at least over the internet and through text messages and through chat messages]


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