Japanese infinitives and phrases

[venefican]

Setting: Bleach (manga/anime) universe

Comments

[emiliglia]

Kawa no uta would be "river of song"/"river's song." Utau is the infinitive of to sing, but having the verb with no doesn't really make sense.

Utagawa would just be the kanji for song and then the kanji for river, and is probably a surname, so that could also work.

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC is the best online Japanese-English dictionary I've found, if that's helpful to you.

[venefican]

Thanks for the reply and the dictionary!

Will probably either use Kawa no uta or Utagawa - the surname aspect doesn't really matter, since swords in Bleach tend to have ridiculously elaborate names like 'Sode no Shiraiyuki' and 'Ryuujin Jakka'!

[sashatwen]

Actually, no. Kawa no uta" is a "a song about a river". "Uta no kawa" would be "river of song"

[rirakuma]

Maybe utaikawa

[majolika]

[venefican]

Thanks for the tip - I'll bookmark it and go ask over there too, since I tend to drop foreign languages all over the place in stories.

[carpemundum]

I would suggest 'Utau Kawa,' 'Utaugawa,' 'Nakugawa,' 'Naku Kawa' (naku is basically the same as utau (to sing) but has an edge/wildness vs. utau's more sweet connotation) if you literally wanted "the singing river," and if you just want the concepts of singing and rivers go with 'Utakawa,' 'Utagawa,' etc.

if you wanted a more passive "song of the river" you could go with 'Kawa no uta,' etc

source: native speaker :)

[ojuzu]

I would pick Utagawa, since it's clearly a name. I mean, I would not feel too silly shouting "Utagawa, (verb)!" And since it's just 歌川, no modifiers at all, it doesn't directly have any other connotations. I mean, you could loosely translate it as various things, but the basic concept is pretty obvious. It doesn't directly mean "the singing river", but it's pretty close-that is, if the owner had to explain it to someone they would probably say "Utagawa: utau kawa!"