日本語を勉強しましょう - Let's Study Japanese

[Mikagi-sama]

Language and Culture

Self-Introduction
Hi, my name is Mikagi-sama. I am studying linguistics in university, and I live in Ottawa, Canada. I have been studying Japanese for about 4.5 years, and I absolutely adore kanji.

Method

Resources  

[Mikagi-sama]

Language Family

Where is it spoken?
Japanese is spoken predominantly in Japan, but varieties different depending on the geographic distribution. It's interesting to note that the Ainu people, Japan's native people, speak a non-Japanese language that is facing extinction due to the forced assimilation and need to adopt the national language.

Japanese was spoken in territories which, during the Second World War, Japan occupied. This includes parts of Korea, Philippines, Taiwan and parts of China.

Japanese communities outside of Japan also speak Japanese.

Dialects

Writing Systems
Japanese is considered to be one of the hardest languages in which to become literate because 3 writing systems are used simultaneously. In all honesty, it's not as difficult as people may say, considering 2 are just syllabaries.

Japanese uses Kanji (漢字), Hiragana (平仮名) and Katakana (片仮名). Hiragana and Katakana are collectively referred to as 'kana' (仮名), which are both syllabaries.

Hiragana is a syllabary used for Japanese words native to the language, including particles and okurigana (送り仮名). The shape tends to have more curves compared to katakana, and was traditionally the script women would use to write. Because of this, women's names not written with kanji are usually written with hiragana. When kanji is taught, hiragana is used to teach the kunyomi (訓読み). It's understandable that the kunyomi would be taught using hiragana because the kunyomi is the traditional Japanese word, which is almost always written in hiragana.

Katakana is another syllabary (hiragana and katakana write the same syllables, but have different forms for different uses) that is used to write words not native to Japanese (i.e. radio ラジオ(rajio)), words with strong or vulgar meanings (i.e. swearwords), and men's names. Recently, animal names are being written using katakana because, as a Japanese companion informed me, some animal names use kanji not taught in school. Traditionally, men used katakana to write, unless they were fortunate enough to learn kanji. Onyomi is taught using katakana.

Kanji (漢字) is the writing system Japan borrowed from China several millenia ago. Japanese used to write texts the same as the Chinese languages (rows on rows of kanji), but scholars found it difficult to adapt kanji to Japanese because Japanese is an agglutinative language unrelated to Mandarin or Cantonese (which are isolating languages). Because they were not as effective in describing the language, kana was created from the shape of some kanji (see image). Luckily for you, people only need to learn about 1,955 kanji in order to read an average book or newspaper. There are 2 types of readings: onyomi and kunyomi, which are readings borrowed from Chinese and Japanese, respectively. (For more information, check out my other thread, and I definitely suggest you to check out some other books to learn more).

China calls kanji 'hànzi' and writes it 汉字 in simplified, and 漢字 in traditional.  

[Mikagi-sama]

Pronunciation Guide

Consonants
Oral Plosives (Stops)
[t] voiceless alveolar oral stop
[d] voiced alveolar oral stop
[p] voiceless bilabial oral stop
[b] voiced bilabial oral stop
[k] voiceless velar oral stop
[g] voiced velar oral stop

Nasal Plosives (Stops)
[m] voiced bilabial nasal stop
[ɴ] voiced uvular nasal stop
[n] voiced alveolar nasal stop
[ŋ] voiced velar nasal stop

Fricatives
voiceless alveolar fricative
[z] voiced alveolar fricative
[ɕ] voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
[h] voiceless glottal fricative
[ç] voiceless palatal fricative
[ɸ] voiceless bilabial fricative

Affricates
[ʨ] voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
[ʥ] voiced alveolo-palatal affricate
[ʦ] voiceless alveolar affricate

Liquids
[ɽ] retroflex flap

Glides
[j] voiced palatal approximant
[w͍] voiced labio-velar glide

Vowels
[a] low front tense unrounded vowel
[e] mid front tense unrounded vowel
high front tense unrounded vowel
[o] mid back tense rounded vowel
[ɯ] high back tense unrounded vowel  

[Mikagi-sama]

Syntax

Japanese's sentence structure is SOV (subject-object-verb).
To compare for Anglophones, our sentence structure is SVO (subject-verb-object).
i.e. I eat apples. (I = subject) (eat = verb) (apples = object).

Japanese would say: I apples eat.

This way of speaking may seem daunting for people familiar with Indo-European languages (majority of languages spoken in Europe and India), but I assure you, you will begin to feel comfortable speaking with verbs at the end of the sentences as you progress in your studies.

Like all SOV languages, prepositions are actually post-positions (they come after the word, rather than before). Japanese, however, calls them particles because the majority of these particles only fulfill a grammatical role.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how words in Japanese are organized, we can focus on learning basic sentences.

〜は〜です。

If you want to say, "X is Y", the phrase would be, "XはYです。"

Japanese utilizes the particle は (pronounced 'wa' instead of 'ha' when used as a particle) to indicate the subject of the sentence (X in this case). I will explain the uses of は in a later post.

です is a copula often translated as 'to be'. It’s form changes to indicate different verb 'tenses' in the: present, past, negative, negative past, and a probability.

です- present ('is')
でした - past ('was')
ではありません・じゃありません* - negative ('is not')
ではありませんでした・じゃありませんでした - negative past ('was not')
でしょう** - possibility ('is' with uncertainty)

i.e
これはりんごです。- This is an apple.
これはりんごでした。- This was an apple.
これはりんごではありません。- This is not an apple.
これはりんごではありませんでした。- This was not an apple.
これはりんごでしょう。- This is an apple, I think.

* There are 2 forms, both have the same meaning, but have different levels of politeness. では is pronounced 'dewa', instead of 'deha'
** There is no English translation, so you will just have to understand though context.

Particles

は - (pronounced 'wa'). It marks the subject of a sentence. For Indo-European languages, it would mark the 'nominative case'. Basically, it indicates what the sentence is about and who is doing an action. Sometimes, は can be translated as, 'as for'.
i.e. 池田君は本を読みます。- Ikeda reads a book.

の - (1) marks possession or belonging, indicating that the preceding word belongs to the one following. In English, we would consider this as the "genitive case," often marked with an apostrophe S.
i.e. 木村さんの車 Mr. Suzuki’s car

(2) It also indicates a relationship between two objects. If a noun modifies another like an adjective, の is placed between them after the noun that modifies the other.
i.e.　日本の言語の話し方 Japan’s language’s way of speaking

と - means 'and', and indicates a sequence of nouns with a similar function. It usually appears between 2 nouns, but if there are more than 2, it will only appear between the last two.
i.e. 小学校、中学校、高校と大学は学校です。- Elementary school, middle school, high school and university are schools.

も - 'too, also'. It follows the noun or noun phrase, indicating a similarity or agreement.
i.e. 田中さんもケーキが好きですか。- Mr. Tanaka also likes cake.

Vocabulary

Nouns
りんご - apple
これ - this
車 (くるま) - car
言語 (げんご) - language
話し方 (はなしかた) - way of speaking
小学校 (しょうがっこう) - elementary school
中学校 (ちゅうがっこう) - middle school
高校 (こうこう) - high school
大学 (だいがく) - university
学校 (がっこう) - school
ケーキ - cake

Verbs
読む (よむ) - to read

Adjectives
好き (すき) - like

Proper Nouns
鈴木 (すずき) - Suzuki
田中 (たなか) - Tanaka
池田 (いけだ) - Ikeda

Countries
日本 (にほん) - Japan  

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