Speaking Japanese

Though one language, Nihon-go has many speech forms, ranging from the very formal, almost imperial style, to the village street variety with at least twelve styles in between. The language is deeply tied to Japanese culture and, like Korean, it is unique in the sense that it supports an extensive verbal "honor system" to reflect the status of the person to whom you are talking. Cultural distinctions reflecting relative levels of superiority are so strong and the language is so honor sensitive that failing to use the proper honorific phrases can be very disturbing and lead to social conflict. Japanese tend to be quite formal when greeting each other, and their body language is often more important than their words. This formality is embodied in the ritual bowing that takes place when two people meet. They do not bow to show friendliness, but to confirm a social relationship. Standing straight and erect, heels together, each person bows from the waist. The more senior the person is receiving the greeting, the deeper the bow.

If you decide to learn Japanese, you will likely be taught the formal speaking style. While you may sound like you are reciting hai-ku poems to the Emperor, or addressing a member of the imperial court, by learning this style you will not likely to inadvertently offend someone. There is a catch, however. Formal Japanese, though not different, is so elaborate (perfect grammar accompanied by archaic flourishes) it can be quite difficult to understand the Japanese spoken by ordinary people. There are so many linguistic "shortcuts" that just when you think you've caught the one or two words you do understand, the conversation is over!

Because they are not used to hearing it, most English-speaking people think Japanese sounds both funny and extremely difficult to speak. This is a perfectly natural reaction and most Japanese react to English in the same manner. If they listened to the spoken language regularly, it would begin to sound quite natural. Japanese have problems hearing and pronouncing certain letters in English. The most difficult are "L and R" and "B and V."  To a Japanese, the words "red" and "led" and the words "bat" and "vat" sound exactly alike.

The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different scripts (four if you count the Roman alphabet, which is also used intermixed with the other three):  Kanji (Chinese characters borrowed from China and incorporated in the Japanese language) is used to represent ideas or objects, Hiragana is used to express the grammatical relationships between ideas and objects, Katakana is used for foreign words and for emphasis - similar to using italics. Romaji uses the Roman alphabet to write Japanese for foreigners.

Kanji is what makes Japanese a difficult language to learn. There are literally tens of thousands of Kanji and at least two ways of pronouncing each one. Most have between four and six different pronunciations. Trying to describe the pronunciation for all the Kanji goes way beyond the scope of this essay and is better left to a more formal course in Japanese.

The Japanese language is generally easier to pronounce than English. The following brief guides to pronunciation are nontechnical in nature and ignore many fine points, but they should be adequate to help you pronounce Japanese words.

Vowels

The Japanese language has only 5 vowels:  A, I, U, E, O. They are pronounced clearly and sharply as in Italian, German, and Spanish rather than English, and represent the foundation for all other sounds in the language.

Syllables

Each character in Hiragana and Katakana represents a basic syllable, a self-contained sound that begins with a consonant (K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R and W) and ends with a vowel (A, I, U, E and O) - ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc.. Each of the 46 simple characters in each set contain identical sounds to the other.  Japanese consonants are pronounced about the same as English consonants. One exception is the Japanese "R," which sounds very much like the English "L." Japanese syllables and words begin with either consonant or vowel, but they all end with a vowel.

Vocabulary

The Japanese vocabulary includes words that are actually "loan words," words adopted from other languages during Japan's long history of cultural contact with other nations. Numerous foreign words have entered the Japanese language from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and other Western languages, but the majority of these words have English origins, due in part to Japan's modern relationship with the United States. Katakana script is used to spell out these "foreign" words and, when written in Romaji, many of them are easily recognizable by English-speaking people.

A short sampling of Japanese "loan words" will give you an idea of the flexibility and creativity of the language. In Japan, "whiskey" is uisukii. The word purattohomu is Japanese for "platform."  An "autobike" from "Europe" is an Otobai from Yooroppa. To ride an "elevator" in Japanese is to ride an erebeta. To visit a "self-service" snack bar for a hamburger and coffee, you could look for a snack bar offering serufu saabisu that had hanbaga and kohii on the menu, or you could just go to makudonarudo - McDonalds. Such clever adaptations have also found their way into the world of computers. Wapuro is a "word processor" and it runs softo, or "software.