random long sentence practicing..

you eat like a pig, and go no where but home except when your sleeping.

anata wa buta-tai taberu deshita soshite doko mo ikonai igai ketai to nerimashita.

hmmm...so how is it?

"you eat like a pig, and go no where but home except when your sleeping".
"anata wa buta-mitai ni tabe masu, soshite,
neru igai wa doko mo ikazu ni ie ni kaeru dake desu"

AssassinWarrior

you eat like a pig, and go no where but home except when your sleeping.

This is quite a sentence you chose. The best I can do is to omit the part "nowhere but" to rephrase it to:

"You eat like a pig, and do not go home except when you sleep."

Anata wa buta no you ni tabete, neru toki shika uchi ni kaerimasen.

The headache lies at the double negative in the sentence - "nowhere but" and "except when you sleep". This is because the way to put them would be to use "shika", which requires a negative verb after that. Besides, even if I was to change the "except" to "only" (dake), eg "go home only when you sleep", the sentence is complex when you try to translate it to Japanese. Not much help here I'm afraid...

ay,

Oops I was writing my reply when you posted yours. But that's a nice one. I thought of using igai too, but I'm not that familiar with it.

Zyzzyva,

if you taken out the "nowhere but" of the sentence, it changes the context and its original meaning...

the original sentence means 'you stay home and eat like a pig except when sleeping' while the ones you provided means 'you do not go home unless to sleep'.

ay,

what does ikazu mean? i searched tangorin.com and http://jisho.org, only jisho provided the meaning to "ikazunisumu" means the "to need not go", is that it?

AssassinWarrior,

Ikazu is the -zu form of "iku". The "-zu" form is another negative form of verbs (apart from -nai, -nu etc...) In this context, it is used to express your doing something without doing something else.

In this case,
doko mo ikazu ni ie ni kaeru"
"Without going anywhere, go back home."

Its counterpart using the "-nai" form would be:
"doko mo ikanai de ie ni kaeru"

oh i see :) thanks

The phrase "eat like a pig" should not be translated word by word, by the way....

how can it be said then? o_O

"gatsugatsu taberu/tabemasu" is the first thing that comes to mind.

"Gatsugatsu" is an onomatopoeic expression expressing the speed/messiness with which you dig into food and keep on eating :)

ah...i see, but translating word for word works too right? but jsut not too hmm..natural?

No, in this case, saying "buta mitai ni taberu" does not mean much to Japanese speakers. Phrases like "eat like a pig" are idioms, and do not translate into other languages if you go word by word. Some people would be able to "guess" what you mean if you said "buta mitai ni taberu," though. But that is all. This is not an expression that is used in Japanese as it is.

oh ok ... in cases of for statements like "you sound like..." can you use "anata wa .... (oto-tai ni /oto mitai-ni)"?

"....mitai ni" part is OK. But the verb "to sound" is not "oto." "Oto" is the noun "sound" :) And again please look at the word order carefully. "like (Something)" is "(something) mitai ni." The word order is different.

Another thing - "to sound like (something)" needs to be expressed more specifically - you "talk" like something, or you "walk and make sound" like something, for example.

"You sound/are talking like a teacher"
- Anata wa sensei mitai ni hanashite imasu."

"You sound/talk like a baby"
- Anata wa aka-chan mitai na hanashi kata wo shimasu ne. (You speak in a way that is like a baby, don't you.)

oooh...i sort of understand it now! thanks AK :)

"buta mitai ni taberu" is commonly used, albeit it is a strong put down (especially if said to a female) & means you eat too much & (becoming) fat & lazy.
"gatsu gatsu taberu" means a little different & is like eating when you are thin & starved to death.

what does "albeit it is a strong put down" mean? is "albeit" a typo?

To ay,

I have never heard/used the Japanese expression used that way :) OK, thanks for the input.

To AssassinWarrior,
"albeit" is a legitimate English word - please make it a habit to look up things in dictionaries, be it English or Japanese :) I'll tell you just this time, it means the same as "although."

yeah i do look up words most of the time..i go denshi jisho or tangorin.com usually for japanese. google is usually for english :) but thanks for the advice anyways.