Japanese language
From IkataWiki
Japanese is a language spoken by over 130 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. (See the Wikipedia article for detailed info.)
This article will give a brief introduction to the language, focusing on tips for English speakers who want to learn Japanese or communicate with Japanese speakers.
Spoken Japanese
The basic building blocks of spoken Japanese are the 50-odd syllables represented by the chart below.
| k | s | t | n | h | m | y | r | w | n | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | ka | sa | ta | na | ha | ma | ya | ra | wa | n |
| i | ki | shi | chi | ni | hi | mi | ri | |||
| u | ku | su | tsu | nu | fu | mu | yu | ru | ||
| e | ke | se | te | ne | he | me | re | |||
| o | ko | so | to | no | ho | mo | yo | ro | wo |
You needn't memorize this table; the important thing to understand is that Japanese is built from syllables, unlike English which is built from vowels and consonants. Japanese has only one standalone consonant, n. Everything else in the language is a whole syllable.
Another important thing to note is that Japanese has only five vowels. In English we claim to have "five and sometimes six" (a, e, i, o, u, y), but that's not really true. Consider the words "bet" and "beef"; the vowels here are both written with the letter "e", but they sound completely different.
What all this means is that Japanese is less flexible about pronunciation than English. When Japanese speakers speak English, unless they have had special training in pronunciation, they are trying to paint a very intricate, detailed painting with a massive, industrial-sized paintbrush. The result is awkward-sounding, clunky English that can be hard to understand.
Additional notes
- Though there is an r column in the table above, the Japanese "r" sounds more like a cross between the English "r" and "l". When Japanese people pronounce English words with rs or ls in them, they tend to skip over those letters.
- Japanese vowels are "clean vowels." That means that they are always pronounced the same way in all situations. Japanese vowels sound like the following in English:
| Vowel | English equivalent |
|---|---|
| a | As in "fall" |
| i | As in "field" |
| u | As in "tool" |
| e | As in "tell" |
| o | As in "crow" |
Japanese English
English education starting in junior high school has been required in Japan for a long time. Many Japanese people know a good deal of English vocabulary and grammar, but have had little to no instruction in speaking or listening to native speakers.
Due to the limitations of Japanese phonetics outlined above, the English that Japanese people do know often sounds mangled and stilted. Consider these examples:
- hanbaagaa = hamburger
- The rs are fudged by extending the vowels.
- There is no standalone m so n is substituted.
- makudonarudo = McDonalds
- There is no standalone c (→k), l (→r), or d, so they all have extraneous vowels attached.
- There is no plural in Japanese, so the s is dropped entirely.
- reddo uingu = Red Wing
- There is no standalone d or g so both have extraneous vowels attached.
- There is no wi sound, so u i is substituted.
Though there is no magic formula to convert a "Japanese English" word to its "true English" equivalent, in general you can try:
- Delete extra vowels, especially at the ends of words. (Ex. sarada - a = salad)
- Try saying it out loud, quickly.
- Try to figure it out from context. Have the Japanese speaker use it in a sentence.
