How to say "I like watching birds"


The title explains it all. I think that one would say (mind you I'm just
starting out, so I will write everything in hiragana) わたしはとりがながめるのすきです。Would
that be correct? Or am I totally wrong, and if so, how do you actually say it?




> 私は鳥を見るのが好きです (watashi wa tori wo miru no ga suki desu) - I like to watch
> birds/watching birds

You had a couple things wrong in your sentence, for instance, after 鳥(bird)
you need the particle **を** because this particle is the one required when an
action is happening towards something.

The action of seeing is happening towards the bird, if you use **が** it feels
like the birds that are doing the "watching" and not yourself.

also it lacked the **が** particle before **好き(suki)** , this particle marks
the subject of watching, since it marks a verb, you correctly nominalized it
with **の**.

> 見るのが好きです(miru no ga suki desu) - I like to watch.

Often in common speech we often have no need to say **私は** if it is implicit
by the context, that is you who likes to watch birds.

So the sentence could be like that:

> 鳥を見るのが好きです (tori wo miru no ga suki desu) - I like to watch birds.

or in a more casual way:

> 鳥を見るの好きです (tori wo miru no suki desu) - I like to watch birds. (dropping ga
> particle in casual speech often happens as well)




ながめる has more of a sense of "gaze at" than "watch". You might want to use
観察{かんさつ}. I think the rather technical term for bird watching is
[野鳥]{やちょう}[観察]{かんさつ}. So you could write 野鳥観察が[好]{す}きです.

