My favorite

[2008年11月18日(火) ]

My favorite ...

My favorite colors are probably orange and yellow.
Probably???

Yes!
I would have answered, “blue”,
but both my wife and my daughter claim
I don’t even know my own preferences.

They say that, whenever I buy something for them,
it is very often something orange or yellow:
an orange bag, a yellow T-shirt and the list goes on.

In Japanese, “favorite” is often translated as “お気に入りの”.
Sometimes this is incompatible with English.
[incompatible = 不釣合いの、両立しない]
In Japanese it is common to hear

「お気に入りの靴を買った」

which would become

“I bought my favorite shoes.”

or

“I bought my favorite pair of shoes.”

If they are already your shoes,
why buy them (again)?
There is no need to buy something that already belongs to you,
so it is probably better to translate it as

“I bought a pair of shoes I really liked.”

or

“I bought some nice shoes.”
“I bought a nice pair of shoes.”

You could also say “a pair of nice shoes”,
but this is not so common as “a nice pair of shoes”.