This Week in Daibii-Chan

デイビーちゃん (Daibii-Chan, or "Little Davy") is my sister's baby. His exploits teaching us Japanese have already been documented here. We had class again yesterday and once again Daibii-Chan rode to the rescue.

Yesterday's lesson was the phrase "-そうです”, which attaches to an adjective to indicate that you think the adjective is accurate, but you haven't confirmed it personally. Its rough English equivalent is "looks [as if it is]," as in "That cake looks tasty" (but I haven't tasted it yet), or "I heard that..." "I heard that that movie is good" (but I haven't seen it myself).

And Daibii-Chan? I have a new photograph of him on my phone wearing a bear hat. My sister has asked me not to post pictures of her child here, so you can just trust me when I tell you it is objectively the cutest photograph of an infant which has ever been taken, and I include baby penguins in that statement. That prompted the following practice sentence:

デイビーちゃん はうれしそうです。

Daibii-Chan wa ureshisoudesu.

Little Davy (subject) happy looks to be.

I described this to my sister and she said, "This is the perfect phrase for that photograph. He looks happy, but two seconds after I took the picture, he ripped the hat off, screaming."

In which case we could say:

デイビーちゃん はうれしくなさそうです。

Daibii-chan wa ureshikunasasoudesu.

Little Davy (subject) happy does not look to be.

Little Davy looks unhappy.

And this gets even better. To check that I didn't mess up the phrase, I ran it through Google Translate, which came up with "Davy Chan is unlikely to be pleased." Jackie, I think that kind of sums him up!!