この家は南向きだ。 This house has a southern aspect. 向き can be translated as style or aspect? thanks for your reply.
2 Answers
向き｛むき｝ is a conjugation of the verb 向く｛むく｝, which means to face or turn toward, so your sentence is literally translated to:
This house faces south.
You can find the various meanings of 向く here.
"This house has a southern aspect", or "a southern exposure", are perfectly good translations for この家は南向きだ, but this English would only be used, I'd say, by an estate-agent/realtor or by a writer on architecture - and neither a realtor nor an architectural critic would be likely to use だ in written Japanese. In ordinary speech or writing "faces south" or maybe "looks south" would be most likely. I can't think of any other uses of むき that would be rendered as "style" or "aspect".
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+1 because it's important to distinguish tone of the speaker -- As you pointed out, using だ implies casual talk. Formal ways of describing an object in English, in this case, such as "aspect" or "exposure" are much too heady for casual talk, here "faces" or "looks" is more correct as you mentioned– psosunaCommented Jun 2, 2017 at 0:47