"Do you have a girlfriend?"
Translation:かのじょはいますか？
19 Comments
Acceptable translations:
Do you have a girlfriend (wink wink)?
Is there a girlfriend (in your life)?
Is there a girlfriend (anywhere)?
Is there a girl? (Dear god, what is happening to the female populace?)
I can not explain why, but when I was learning with a teacher she told us that we would always use が when using the verb exist, love or hate. That why for me it is really strange the use of は here.
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For what I have seen, for those verbs you usually use が in affirmative sentences and は in negative and interrogative ones
Maybe if you think of は as having a nuance of "as for X" with the word before は being the X, it might help. が puts the emphasis on what comes before it whereas は emphasises what comes after, so "As for X, this is the point of what I want to say/ask." That's why が comes after interrogative (question) words, the point of your question is to ask "who", "where", etc..
Duo be like: "I don't have a girlfriend." "I don't have a boyfriend." "Do you have a girlfriend?" (Pls be my girlfriend I'm so lonely and desperate I drink alcohol every night and my dog and my grandparents passed away.)
I got how to tell a boyfriend word from a guy.. But kanojo is she... Whats to call her a girlfriend? Hope you understood the question.
I think I got your question? Yeah, she and girlfriend are both kanojo in Japanese. I'm pretty sure, at least. It's up to context to decide which meaning.
This is the problem with teaching Japanese in this manner. There are no contextual clues. The expression in question is contextually 「(あなたは）彼女はいますか？」or 'Do you have a girl?'. Since the 'you' is only implied the above question could be read as 'Is she present?' 「かのじょは（へやに）いますか？」would be 'Is she in the room?'.
Just to make things more convoluted: 「（あなたの）かのじょは（へやに）いますか？」Would be 'Is your girlfriend in the room?' So, the word かのじょ can mean either 'she' or 'girlfriend'.
So, obviously there are many different possible meanings to any simplified expression. What is discouraging is the fact that the team behind this surely knows this to be true...
Then how would you say something like "she is not my girlfriend"?
"かのじょは私のかのじょではありません"?
Both は and が can be used here and が is still missing from the selection as of Jan 17th, 2019. Reported.
