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I'm trying to say "If you like men in suits, I think you will like the U.K.," but I'm struggling with it.

This is my attempt so far:

「あなたがスーツの男の人が好きであればあなたがイギリスきっと気に入ると思います。」

(1) Is this grammatically correct? If I were only translating the first part of the sentence, I would say 「あなたスーツの男の人が好きです」, but I was worried that using the topic particle in a conditional construction might apply to the whole sentence, not just the first clause, i.e. I would be saying "You think if..."

(2) Is it kosher to say 「イギリス気に入る」, or do you need to somehow explicitly indicate that you might enjoy being in London?

(3) Is it possible to drop either of the explicit subjects (「あなたが」)? Even if the sentence is grammatically correct, it feels relatively clumsy as is.

On an tangentially related note, is there an idiomatic way to say "under-dressed" in Japanese, as in "I always felt under-dressed in London"?

Thanks in advance for your help!

1 Answer 1

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  1. As far as grammar goes, I think it will be correct to say it as:

    あなたがスーツの男の人が好きであれば、あなたイギリスが/をきっと気に入ると思います。

  2. I would say イギリスが気に入る or maybe イギリスを気に入る.

  3. Yes, you can drop あなたが/は, as in:

    スーツの男の人が好きであれば、イギリスがきっと気に入ると思います。

    Or a bit more naturally...

    スーツを着た / スーツ姿の男の人が好きなら、きっとイギリスが気に入ると思います(よ)。
    スーツを着た / スーツ姿の男性が好きなら、イギリスはきっと気に入ると思います(よ)。/ きっと気に入りますよ。

For "under-dressed", how about using ラフな(ラフすぎる)服装/[恰好]{かっこう}, カジュアルな(カジュアルすぎる)服装, or maybe [普段着]{ふだんぎ} or [軽装]{けいそう}?

I always felt under-dressed in London.
ロンドンではいつも自分の服装/恰好がラフすぎる/カジュアルすぎる気がしました。

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  • Thanks for the help! Several followups: (a) To confirm my understanding in (1), I can't use the は particle in the first half of the sentence (the part before ば), correct? (b) You suggest that I drop the 「...とおもいます」in (3). Does that make the sentence more emphatic, like "If you like men in suits, you will almost certainly like the U.K."? Or is "I think" just not often used in Japanese? (c) You suggest that I use 「なら」 to express the conditional instead of 「ば」. Is this because it is uncertain whether the listener likes men in suits? What if the listener already said they like men in suits?
    – Peter
    Commented Oct 26, 2018 at 6:22
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    @abc (a) Yes, in the ~ば/たら/なら/とき etc. clause, you'd usually use が. eg ◎山田さんが来たら始めましょう。×山田さんは来たら~ (b) 「きっと~ですよ。」 can mean "I think ~~ will ~~". I don't think it's very different from 「きっと~と思います。」but maaybe sounds a little bit more certain.. (「~と思います」(with no きっと) would sound less certain.) And I think we use と思います/と思う quite often. (c) 好きであれば sounds more formal/literary than 好きなら, and I think ~であれば would sound a bit more hypothetical.
    – chocolate
    Commented Oct 26, 2018 at 7:01

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