About Japanese

Japanese has a reputation for being a very difficult language to learn. The first Westerners to encounter it were Portuguese missionaries. They dubbed Japanese “the devil’s language”—based on the notion that unholy forces had created the language as a barrier to those preaching the Gospel in Japan. 

Japan is arguably a difficult language, with its complex grammatical rules, vast vocabulary, and multiple systems of writing. However, most of the perceived “difficulty” of the Japanese language stems from the simple fact that Japanese is unrelated to any Western European languages. When we English-speakers learn Spanish, French, or German, we encounter many cognates and familiar grammatical concepts. When we learn Japanese, we are in completely unfamiliar territory. 

There are few nationalities which have an inherent advantage when learning Japanese. No direct link between Japanese and another language has ever been proved. Grammatically, Japanese is similar to Korean; and Japanese shares much of its writing system with Chinese. So perhaps the Chinese and the Koreans have a slight edge as students of Nihongo.  

Nevertheless, a significant number of native English-speakers have learned Japanese in recent decades. Although all Japanese study English in school, most are far less than fluent. Therefore, learning the Japanese language is a sound investment of your time if you plan an extended stay in the country. 

Characteristics of the Japanese Language 

Writing System:

A typical page of written Japanese contains four varieties of script: hiragana, katakana, kanji, and Latin letters. Each of these scripts is employed for specific purposes. 

Kana

The hiragana and katakana are categorized together as kana. They are not alphabets, but syllabaries, and each consists of fifty characters. The hiragana are easily distinguished from the katakana because the former is written in a cursive style, and the latter is written in printed block style. Below is the word nihongo (Japanese language) written in both hiragana and katakana: 

hiragana                 katakana

にほんご　　　　　　　ニホンゴ

In a Japanese text written for adult readers, hiragana are used to indicate verb conjugations, particles, and other functional elements of the language. The katakana are used to transliterate foreign loanwords.

Strictly speaking, it would be possible to write correct Japanese using only the characters. However, Japanese contains many homonyms (words which have the same sound but different meanings). This is where the role of the kanji is important.

Kanji

Kanji are Sino-Japanese characters that were originally borrowed from the Chinese language. In modern Japanese, 1,945 characters (called the jōyō kanji / 常用漢字or “daily use characters”) are considered “standard.” Educated adults can read many more.

Kanji create a visual connection between the meaning of a word and the sound of a word. This is useful when distinguishing between the many homonyms in the language. For example, all of the words below have the same pronunciation, but are written with different kanji, and have different meanings:

Any of the above words could be written in hiragana as こうかん, or in katakana as コウカン; but both kana versions lack the distinct recognizability of the kanji. If kana is used, the reader has to extrapolate the homonym from the context. With the kanji, there is no question concerning which word the writer intended.

Kanji might be thought of as the Greek and Latin root words that form the basis of so much English vocabulary. The Greek and Latin roots help English speakers to decipher the meanings of difficult words like patricide and hexapod. The kanji serve much the same function in Japanese.

Latin Letters

Latin letters were rare in Japanese written texts before World War II. They are not technically considered a part of the Japanese language, but they are used for special notations: the names of international corporations (few Japanese would be puzzled by the words “Honda” or “Toyota”), some technical words (ex: DVD), and certain loanwords from English (ex: OL = “office lady”).

Acronyms comprised of Latin letters can be alternatively converted to katakana, but this usually yields awkward strings of kana. So cite just one example, the acronym OL (“office lady”) becomes オーエル when converted to kana.

Modern Japanese also makes use of Arabic numbers (1,2,3…9), and Greek letters used for scientific notation (π, θ, δ, etc.) Universal symbols for currency (£, ¢, $) and mathematical operations (+, -, %) are also acceptable in Japanese texts. 

Humble and Honorific Speech:

In English, there are some words which naturally seem more polite than others. “Your residence” is more appropriate with certain audiences than “your pad” or “your place.”

In the same way, Japanese contains a whole range of vocabulary to indicate familiarity, neutral politeness, extreme politeness, or humility. Here is just one example: the familiar way of referring to “my father” is the Japanese word chichi / 父. “Your father” (neutral polite) is o-tō-san / お父さん. A very polite term for indicating another person’s father is o-tō-sama / お父様.  

Phonetics 

Japanese grammar is quite challenging, and the above examples give some indication of the difficulty of the written language. The good news is that the Japanese phonetic system is relatively easy for a native English-speaker to master. There are only a few tricky points. Some Japanese words contain long vowels, and these require some attention. The words joken / 女権 (“women’s rights”) and jōken / 条件 (“condition”) sound very different to Japanese ears. With consonants, the difficulties are limited to double consonants—moto / 元 (“origin; source”) vs. motto / もっと (“more”)—and a consonant sound pronounced tsu. However, tsu will already be somewhat familiar to most English-speakers, as it is contained in some Japanese trade names and loanwords: tsunami, Mitsui, Mitsubishi.