matrixofdynamism Wrote:I wish to have correct translation for:
for three years 3年間の
for three months 3ヶ月
for three days 3日間
for three hours 3時間
for three minutes 3分
for three seconds 3秒間
I have listed the translations I have. Now to the problem. As far as I know 間 here means "for a period of (time)". Does it have to appear in all of them? Than the other thing I do not get is the ヶ when talking about months. It is pronounced か, but why does it appear in just of them?
Is there are better or different way to translate them?
I'm not sure how much you need, but there are so many things about this kind of stuff. For starters, among those listed in the OP, 3時間 is the only guy that always needs 間 in virtually any context. Also, you don't seem to need the week version, but 3週間 (three weeks) comes pretty close in this regard, though there are some valid situations where 3週 can be translated as "for three weeks" and vice versa. Notable exceptional cases of this kind are when you talk about pregnancy or the age of a baby. In these particular cases, you'd see 3週 quite frequently that can be translated as "(for) 3 weeks." Other time units can usually be without 間 depending on how you word your sentence, the exact meaning you want to carry, and so on.
The difference between, say, 3日間 and 3日 is not particularly related to the English preposition "for." They both can be translated as "for three days" in some cases, and in other cases, you need totally different words for translation. The same goes for when you translate in the opposite direction, i.e., English to Japanese. For example, the difference between "I've been working 10 days straight" and "I've been working for 10 days straight" is whether you used "for" or not. But this doesn't mean one should be 10日 and the other should be 10日間. Or if you want an example in exactly "formal" and "proper" grammar without any colloquialism and stuff, the "3 days" as in "It has been 3 days since he left" can be either 3日 or 3日間 depending on many, many factors.
Also, you seem to have missed native Japanese versions such as 三年 (みとせ) and 三月 (みつき). Note that it's kind of weird to use Arabic numbers for native Japanese words, so I used kanji for "three" here.
About the ヶ in 3ヶ月, there are alternatives for years like 三カ年 (さんかねん), too. You can write it as 三ヶ年 as well like you did for months, though I think this spelling is less common. Other alternative spellings for this include ヵ年, 箇年, and 個年. Note that カ年 and ヵ年 are different in spelling (The latter uses the smaller version ヵ), though the meaning is exactly the same.
Since you didn't give any context or even the direction of translation, it's kind of impossible to answer your question; we'd have to write a whole long chapter of a grammar tome to help you. If you need more help, it'd be nice if you could be more specific.
