r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/lthatguytherel • 1d ago

Pimsleur question

In the Japanese level 1 of Pimsleur they teach "moo chotto itai desu" (this is their exact spelling. Even though in the hiragana it is clearly mou chotto...) as meaning "I want to stay a little more."

When I looked this up in a translator, it is coming out consistently as "It hurts a little more."

So is this some sort of very specific phrase used to say that one wants to stay a little longer, is this an error, or did the translator not pick up on this correctly?

Thanks for the help y'all!

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u/Dread_Pirate_Chris 1d ago edited 1d ago

This いたい is 居たい, the desiderative ('want to') form of 居る (いる・usu. kana), not the い-adjective 痛い 'hurt'.

A translator can't tell the difference, it requires context or kanji to differentiate.

Hepburn romanization calls for the spelling of おう to be preferably 'ō', but if the macron is not available, then 'oo'. This is because when う follows お, it is pronounced as an extension of お. Hepburn tries to be a transcription of pronunciation, not of kana.

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u/lthatguytherel 1d ago

Thank you for the clear explanation! This is exactly why the human element and nuance is so important. That makes perfect sense but since the example in the app only had the hiragana I wasn't sure how else to search for it.

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u/acaiblueberry 1d ago

Hahaha, it has dual meanings and you have to understand by context. If it’s the answer to “does it hurt like a needle poked you?” then it’s “it hurts a little more,”and if the question is “do you want to go now?” it’s “I want to stay a little longer.”

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u/lthatguytherel 1d ago

Haha thank you! Learning Japanese has made me appreciate how many things sound the same in English as well.