Please help me :)
 

Hey, I'm working on a picture and I would like to translate 2 sentences to japanese.

"I want to tell you"
and
"Happy birthday"

I would really appreciate some help, thank you (◕‿‿◕)

The second sentence is really easy: お誕生日おめでとうございます (o-tanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu) If this is to a friend, though, お誕生日おめでとう works just fine. As for 'I want to tell you', I'm a bit tired and I'm sure someone more versed than me can give you something better than I could right now. Do you want this whole thing to say 'I want to tell you happy birthday'?

Thank's for the help :)

I'm making a pic with 2 frames. One of the should say "I want to tell you" and the next frame will say "Happy birthday".

You can't structure it that way because what you say comes before the verb "to tell" in Japanese.

You probably could get away with something like
(I've got something to tell you--
Happy birthday!)

Of course, the way you write the first part (vocab-wise) hinges on whom you are writing it to.

Just a question. Shouln't it be なんか言いたいことがあるのは? Just a personal curiosity....

Negative. This の isn't nominalizing ある, it's being used as のです. I'm not even sure you can nominalize something like existence >_>, as I certainly am having trouble doing it in my head.

Edit: That makes me think, considering his name is Kevin, shouldn't we say なんか言いたいことがあるんだ ? I was under the impression that just using の at the end of a sentence (not a question) was more female. In fact, I've been corrected on Lang-8 for ending a sentence with のよ. I was told it sounded a bit too feminine.

You could say something like
"教えたいことがあるけど。。。" (oshietai koto ga aru kedo...)
"。。。お誕生日おめでとう！" (...otanjoubi omedetou!)

Of course, it depends who you're writing it to. this is a pretty casual way of saying it.

Hope it goes well :D

Umm, why put なんか in there at all? Why 言いたい? And why a の at the end?

Sorry, but this just sounds really weird to me in it`s entirety...

If you NEED to write "something" (which you shouldn`t), at least put it as なにか.
言いたい would sound a lot better as 伝えたい... And the の isn`t needed at all, and makes it sound really wrong to me. :D Just imagine sticking a か on the end of that, and having an angry guy come up to you saying it...

ETA; If I were writing a card like that (I wouldn`t, but that`s beside the point) - I`d probably write it as this;

（君に）伝えたい事がある/あります･･･
お誕生日おめでとうございます！

With the 君に optional, and either ある or あります at the end.

Well... if he said Happy Birthday to me after, I'd be kinda relieved.

Yeah, but if there was a か on the end, he would be saying something like "You got something to say?!?" - so a birthday wish would be kind of hard to stick on the end there.

Yeah, actually, I take back what i said before. I think 伝えたい is better than 言いたい or 教えたい。

Thank you everyone for the replies, it helped me alot :)

Actually I'm using の as a softer sentence ender than よ. Sort of a soft, non-female version of わ (although I am aware of men using わ now, especially in Kansai region).

I don't think it sounds "too" feminine. I use it all the time in Japanese. Of course, I'm a pretty carefree, friendly, non-aggressive male, so it fits me well. It all depends on your confidence, situation, etc.

But I'll stand by my choice of の there unless a native tells me not to.

Yeah, 伝えたい is much better.

And I know the の isn't needed, but I opted to use it as a softer sentence ender. I'll defer to you, though, because your Japanese is far better than mine.

Perhaps since の functions like both よ and か, it was a poor choice of particle on my part.

Edit And yeah, about the なんか, that was way too colloquial (all my university friends used なんか like we use "like" in English).

I think the whole problem with your sentence is that it would be an okay thing to just say to friends... But you wouldn`t write it like that. Writing の as an ender looks feminine, particularly with that sentence. I find it hard to envision a guy saying that pattern. Not to say you can`t, but it just feels a bit strange.
Either way though, it wouldn`t be written - same with the なんか.

This makes me feel a lot better about what I posted. It felt quite natural when I typed it (admittedly, quickly while my fiancée was yelling at me to get off the computer so we could go to church—this was my mistake in offering half-considered advice).

I absolutely agree it sounds like something said to friends and not like something that would be written down. I hadn't considered that the card needed to sound any differently, but now that I've re-read what you've written, I find myself persuaded by you.

Regardless, I feel embarrassed by my initial offering, and relieved that I wasn't as completely wrong as I felt after reading your first post. The self-doubt has subsided to a certain degree. :)

(Whether the recession of my self-doubt is a good thing for JF, time will only tell!)