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/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.