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- "У меня детское лицо."
38 Comments
I wonder if "youthful" should be accepted as a translation here? The word "childish" has a derogatory connotation in English that I don't think is implied by the Russian phrase.
You can say "I have a face of a child" or something like that. The meaning is that one looks like a child, not that they look young.
' childlike ' has no negative connotation. ' Childish ' usually comes as a pair word in ' childish behaviour '.
for this, the literal translation is crap, so we can't reproduce the exact literal structure and have to get creative. That's what language is all about. And, as for myself, I rather like the "child's face" expression, it is very adequate here imho.
Baby face is the common way to say this in english. This answer should absolutely be accepted.
I would also say babyface is somewhat derogative. I favour "child's face", as suggested by @Oscar491659, to me that has a connotation of innocence, whereas babyface always has an association of immaturity and exploitable harmlessness.
I did this three times just to see what would go in. The first 'childish' which to me is wrong but thats what they want, the second 'childlike', also accepted and then 'baby face' not accepted.
I think in British English we would say "a childlike face" or "the face of a child", whereas the Americans might say "a baby face".
This particular exercise makes me angry ... I don`t know if "children´s face" is good English ("Kindergesicht"), but I know that "childish face" is not appropriate.
child's face is better, no need for the plural. Even in German you use the singular.
Neither childish nor childlike really fits here, as both usually describe someone's behavior or temperament rather then their physical features. I would say a "youthful", "boyish" or "baby" face.
I wanted to say "I have a face like a child" but thought this may be incorrect so put "I have a child's face". I agree with jsiehler that childish is slightly derogatory in English?
In American English, no one EVER says someone has a "CHILDISH FACE!" The proper expression is I have a baby face, often written babyface - all one word. Childish means you have a rotten, selfish, immature personality. It is an insult. It is never used to describe a face.
True.... We can say "child like face".... Childish is a characteristic of one's personality.... Not appearance
I wrote "baby face" and it was accepted as a wrong answer. A lot of mistakes in exercises.
I'm not native, but my phone's keyboard didn't accept the word "childish"... Maybe a neologism?
well, so I guess Google's keyboard has problems even in English hehehe I thought that it had problems in Portuguese because maybe English speakers were doing it. I never thought that they could let behind words in English as well...
The Brazilian Portuguese keyboard doesn't know many verb declensions...
Thanks for the info. I'm going to add it as correct the next time I use it.
The lesson notes say that you never use "есть" with body parts that are expected to be there. So you leave it out here since the point of the sentence is that their face looks a certain way instead of that they have a face at all.
I read that детский and дедский are homophones. So would this be a case of exact opposite meanings being possible in this sentence, i.e., I have a childish face OR I have an elderly face?
"Дедский" is not a word, so there could be no confusion. "Elderly" can be "старческий" if you talk about face or looks in general. The adjective derived from "дед" would be "дедовский" but it has different meaning ("grandfather's" or "age-old", "ancient", "old-fashioned") and it's not suitable here.
"The face of a child" would be better in the translation from Russian to English. It is a common figure of speech. However, that doesn't mean it would necessarily work the other way around. The transliteration «У меня лицо ребенка» in Russian might convey something altogether horrific. Similarly «У меня лицо преступника» while "gangsta" might conjure an image in very poor taste.
