The U.S Department of State rates Japanese as a Category IV (scale of I to IV) language of difficulty for English natives to study, recommending that a student needs 2,200+ hours of study to become proficient. If one were to study at least 1 hour per day, that is approximately 6 years of study.
The vast differences in grammar, pronunciation, writing, and culture are a number of the reasons why it takes so much time for a native English speaker to learn Japanese. Perhaps the underlying reason why Japanese is so difficult is because it is not related in any way to English nor any other major world language for that matter.
■What Language Family is Japanese in? 日本語って何語族に分類されるの?
English is a Germanic language, meaning it is directly related to languages like German. In turn, Germanic languages are just one branch of the Indo-European language family that comprises a majority of languages in Europe, the Middle East, and the India subcontinent. Though there is great linguistic diversity among these languages, it is still possible for an English speaker to notice remarkable similarities between English words and Sanskrit words. When a speaker of English tries learning any of these other Indo-European languages, they will generally spend far less time to become fluent than with Japanese. How about Japanese?
Japanese is in its own language family called Japonic/Japanese-Ryukyuan. There at least 15 languages in this family, all of which are spoken in Japan and 11 of the 15 are found exclusively in Okinawa. In principle, any native speaker of these other languages will find Japanese or another Japonic language to be far easier to learn than English. In fact, all speakers of these minority Japonic languages happen to be fluent in Japanese.
The Japonic languages are not thought to be related to other extant languages in the region, and even if they were distantly related to other nearby languages such as Korean, the relation would be so ancient that shared origin would not be why it's easier for Korean speakers to learn Japanese. The reason for this is that Korean and Japanese grammar happen to be very similar and both languages took heavy influence from Chinese in vocabulary and have also influenced each other over centuries of contact. Similarly, although Chinese grammar is very different from Japanese, Chinese students of Japanese don't have to spend nearly as much time on the writing and are at least able to carry over vocabulary language where the languages have influenced each other.
For English speakers, there is no shared culture to make learning any easier as is the case for Chinese and Korean learners. One truly has to start all over with the only saving grace being words that come from English, but even those words are limited to newer things in today's 21 century world, and the learner would still have to overcome the many differences in pronunciation between the two languages.
■The Diversity of Dialects 方言の多様性
There are still dozens of dialects and forms in Japanese that came about due to centuries of external and internal isolation, but the form that almost all speakers share is known as Standard Japanese (Hyōjungo 標準語), which is also the language of instruction and the one taught to second language speakers. Standard Japanese is mostly based on the speech of Tokyo with elements borrowed from other regions, allowing for its proliferation to be more successful. The result of this is that even today, Tokyo Dialect is not 100% the same as Standard Japanese.
There is a considerable degree of dialect diversity that all speakers are at least familiar with and utilize for various effects. Many learners will have at least heard of Kansai Dialect, often times before really learning Standard Japanese due to its prevalence in Japanese comedy. Additionally, as dialect differences continue to disappear in mainland Japan, some dialects are taking their last breathes by contributing some of their uniqueness to mainstream Japanese.
In いまび, major dialect grammar and vocabulary will not be avoided as there is no way to separate dialect from 'real' Japanese. Pick up any book or manga to practice reading and you will find dialectal speech. What's more, all Japanese speakers are at least vaguely familiar with old-fashioned Japanese due to their schooling. To become truly native, you will have to branch out from the hyōjungo grammar.
This famous map of Japanese dialects is mostly accurate, but it is worth noting that some areas listed as dialects are in fact distinct enough from Standard Japanese to be considered separate languages. If you visit such remote areas of Japan such as Aomori, the Ogasawara Islands, etc. and ask speakers of the native 'dialects' to talk to you in them, you'll hear for yourself how little you'll understand even as a fluent Japanese speaker.
Unlike English, the basic syllabic structure in Japanese is a mora-based system. A mora is a unit of sound that is equivalent to a single beat. Each "beat" is conceptualized as being equal in length, and each beat is assigned a high or low pitch. In reality, morae are not always exactly equal in length, but this is how they are conceptualized. The moraic sound system helps explain why Japanese distinguishes between short and long vowels as well as single (short) and double (long) consonants. Meaning, if you pronounce a vowel or consonant too long or vice versa, you could change the word! What better example that the syllable "ko" doubled. How long you pronounce the o's or the second k will determine what word you say.
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Koko ここ (here) |
Kōkō 高校 (high school) |
Kōko 公庫 (finance corporation) |
Kokō 孤高 (solitary) |
Kokko 国庫 (treasury) |
Kokkō 国交 (diplomatic relations) |
Although SOV is the basic word order, the subject and object may flip if the object is deemed more significant, and a sentence may even lack either or both yet still be grammatical if they are deemed obvious through context. This means that Japanese exhibits five possible word orders: SOV, OSV, SV, OV, and V.
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SOV |
OSV |
クマが漁師の魚を盗った。 Kuma-ga ryōshi-no sakana-wo totta. Gloss: Bear-subject marker fisherman-possessive marker fish-object marker took. Translation: (A) bear took (a/the) fisherman's fish. |
漁師の魚をクマが盗った。 Ryōshi-no sakana-wo kuma-ga totta. Gloss: Fisherman-possessive marker fish-object marker bear-subject marker took. Translation: (The/a) bear took (a/the) fisherman's fish. |
SV |
OV |
クマが盗った。 Kuma-ga totta. Gloss: Bear-subject marker took. Kuma-ga totta. Translation: (A/the) bear took (it/them). |
漁師の魚を盗った。 Ryōshi-no sakana-wo totta. Gloss: Fisherman-possessive marker fish-object marker took. Ryōshi-no sakana-wo totta. Translation: (subject in context) took (a/the) fisherman's fish. |
V |
|
盗った。 Totta. Gloss: Took. Translation: (subject in context) took (it/them). |
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TOPIC + TIME + LOCATION + SUBJECT + INDIRECT OBJECT + DIRECT OBJECT + VERB/ADJECTIVE (PREDICATE) |
Of course, you can make sentences without having every piece of information. After all, a verb by itself can constitute a sentence.
今朝地震が起きました。
Kesa jishin-ga okimashita.
Literally: This.morning earthquake-subject.marker occurred.
Translation: An earthquake occurred this morning.
This sentence is perfectly grammatical with just a time phrase, subject, and a verb.
Watashi-wa kyō, eki-de (ø-ga) tomodachi-ni hon-wo agemashita.
Gloss: I-topic.marker today train.station-at (unspoken subject) friend-indirect.object.marker book-object.marker gave.
Translation: I gave a book to a friend at the train station today.
In any language, there are several kinds of phrases. Each one has a head and the possibility of a modifier. The "head" of a phrase is the element that determines the syntactic function of the whole phrase. In "the smart cat," the head is "cat" because "cat" is the word that determines what the phrase means. The "modifier" of a phrase, then, is a word that gives information about the head. In this case, "the" and "smart" are both modifying "cat."
The head of a phrase in Japanese is said to always follow its modifier(s), meaning that the modifier(s) are to the left of the head. The same cannot be said about English. Take for example the difference between "the Japanese book" vs. "the book in Japanese." Although there is no real difference in meaning, the grammar between the two is different. In Japanese, the equivalent would be Nihongo-no hon 日本語の本. Nihongo-no means "Japanese" and hon means "book." The affix -no seen attached to Nihongo is another example of how the function determining part of a phrase comes last as it is what allows Nihongo to modify hon as an attribute.
When a language places the head of a phrase in the final position and places complexity before it, it is said to be left-branching. A good example of this in English would be "my husband's friend's adorable puppy." When translating this into Japanese, the word order will stay the same.
私の主人の友達の可愛い仔犬
Watashi-no shujin-no tomodachi-no kawaii koinu
Gloss: I-possessive.marker husband-possessive.marker friend-possessive.marker cute puppy
Translation: My husband's friend's adorable puppy
Japanese takes left-branching to the extreme when creating even more complex phrases and sentences. When modifying nouns with other sentences (participle phrases), Japanese still places them to the left of the head constituent of the sentence, and the word order within the modifying constituent too must follow the same left-branching principle.
学校から帰った子供たちが外で遊んでいる。
Gakkō-kara kaetta kodomo-ga soto-de asonde-iru.
Literally: School-from returned kid-subject marker outside-at play-ing.
Translation: (The) children who came back from school are playing outside.
This example is a relatively short sentence with not too much information, but if you're wondering why there are two verbs in the sentence, remember what is meant by left-branching. The predicate (jutsugo 述語) of a sentence is what tells us what the subject is or is doing. That role is held by verbal expressions, and where is the verb in an SOV sentence? At the end. It is the head of the whole sentence, and so that is why no matter where the subject or object may be, the verb stays put. The reason for why there are two verbs in this sentence is because they're in different clauses. "Came back" is modifying "children," thus it is before "children," but it is also at the end of the modifying phrase as its head constituent. In turn, this principle pervades Japanese grammar and if you can get it to click now, you won't make any word order mistakes.
In Japanese, agglutination is brought about by a system of bases and endings. For every base that exists, several endings exist that attach to it, and each ending has its own set of bases to potentially keep the chain going. This concept of conjugation is very different to what native English speakers are used. For example, "I did not want to be forced to eat" is expressed with nine words. In Japanese, however, it is expressed as one phrase composed of many morphemes.
Ex. 食べさせられたくありませんでした
Tabe-sase-rare-taku-ari-mase-n-deshi-ta
Gloss: Eat-causative-passive-want-to.be-politeness.marker-negation-politeness-marker-past.tense
Translation: Didn't want to be made to eat
This phrase can be broken down even further as there are smaller, hidden morphemes that stand for the bases that act as the true glue of Japanese conjugations. Knowing how to break down phrases that far isn't necessary, but it is important to know how conjugation works overall.
In Japanese, something that is conjugatable has potential access to six base forms. After these bases, endings may or may not follow. Endings will either be in the form of auxiliary verbs (which can conjugate) or particles (which cannot conjugate, thus stopping the chain). These bases (katsuyōkei 活用形) are as follows:
Whether you learn the terms or not, this system of "base + ending" is what governs Japanese conjugation. Although it isn't necessary for you to know what base attaches to what so long as you know how to conjugate in real practice, once you have reached Advanced I, the bases will be reintroduced to better describe more advanced grammar topics.
One question you might have is how endings are placed in a chain. The answer to this is that endings are always placed in a particular order. The example above is about as complicated as a phrase can get, but you will naturally learn the ordering of endings as you continue studying how to conjugate.
The ordering of phrases that we've discussed thus far also affects how names are constructed in Japanese. The family name comes first as it is modifying one's personal name. On the other hand, any title one has is deemed to be the 'head' of the phrase, thus coming last. This is proven by the fact that people are often referred to by their title rather than their personal name.
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三島由紀夫
Mishima Yukio Yukio Mishima |
畑中先生
Hatanaka-sensei Teacher/Sensei Hatanaka |
習近平
Shū Kimpei Xi Jinping |
大阪なおみ
Ōsaka Naomi Naomi Osaka |
伊藤社長
Itō-shachō Company President Itoh |
ラファエル・グティエレス
Rafaeru Gutieresu Rafael Gutierrez |
Many learners feel like inverting their own name to sound more Japanese, but this will result in mutual confusion as Japanese speakers anticipate names being constructed differently in other cultures. Their priority is making sure that they are giving you proper respect, and so whatever your name is, that is what it is in Japanese, albeit with a Japanese-friendly pronunciation.
It is worth noting that for those with Chinese or Korean names, the Chinese character spelling of one's name will carry over. As for how one's name would be pronounced, it's becoming more common to honor the original pronunciation as best as possible with the sounds available in Japanese.
Japanese grammar is rather certain about the predicate (verb/adjective) coming at the end of a sentence. However, there are times when a speaker may wish to state the predicate first and leave the rest of the sentence as an after-statement. This known as inversion.
叶え、私の願いよ。
Kanae, watashi-no negai-yo.
Gloss: Come.true I-genitive.marker wish-exclamation.marker
Translation: Come true, oh my wishes.
Although not common, you may see this occasionally in music, poetry, and other similar emphatic situations.
As has been stated a few times already but cannot be stressed enough, Japanese allows for contextually obvious things to be omitted from a sentence even if that said part(s) is/are grammatically necessary in English. The most famous instance of this is Japanese's tendency to drop pronouns such as "I" and "you" despite these same words appearing in a large majority of English sentences.
Of course, the decision between omitting or verbalizing something does imply change in nuance. For now, however, it's important to know that even a basic sentence like "what is your name?" will exhibit this behavior, so it's important to know about it now. As you can see from the gloss, the Japanese equivalent of "your" is not used.
お名前は何ですか。
O-namae-wa nan desu-ka?
Gloss: Honorific.prefix-name-as.for, what is-question.marker.
Translation: What is your name?
New learners will constantly insert words such as watashi (I) and anata (you) into their sentences even though no actual speaker does this. All the aspects of the language that you're being told in this introduction are pervasive. Even if you forget about them, they will pop on in all the sentences you see.
"To Say" (Speech Register) | Forms |
Honorific Speech |
Ossharu (base form) Osshaimasu (polite form) Iwareru (alternate base form) Iwaremasu (alternate polite form) |
Polite Speech |
Yū (base form) Iimasu (polite form) |
Humble Speech |
Mōsu/Mōshiageru (base form) Mōshimasu/Mōshiagemasu (polite form) |
Vulgar Speech |
Iiyagaru Nukasu |
There are two kinds of words in Japanese: independent words (jiritsugo 自立語) and ancillary words (fuzokugo 付属語. Independent words are those that can stand alone. Independent words can further be broken down into conjugatable and non-conjugatable words. Ancillary words, however, cannot stand alone. They too, though, may or may not be conjugatable.
There are 12 unique parts of speech that can be classified as either independent or ancillary words. They then can be further categorized by their ability or lack thereof to conjugate.
The parts of speech of Japanese typically match up well with their English counterparts even if they end up elsewhere in a sentence, but the part of speech that is completely foreign to the English learner is "particles."
Particles are small words that note some sort of grammatical function, but some particles don't translate at all to English. What's more is that although there is only a handful of particles, most particles have more than one function, and using context and other grammatical clues are necessary to interpret them correctly.
There are six main types of particles: case, parallel, conjunctive, final, adverbial, and bound. Particles may be categorized differently depending on how they're used, so if you see the same particle in a different part of a sentence, it will certainly have a different function.
Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ are both respectively known as Kana syllabaries. Learners familiar with Chinese characters will vaguely recognize many of the characters in these two systems, and this because all the characters do come from simplifications of Kanji. However, unlike Kanji, the purpose of these systems is to write out sounds phonetically. One might wonder why there are two syllabaries if they both do the same thing. Indeed, there is no difference in how they write Japanese sounds, but they have different histories and have been allocated for different semantic roles that will be discussed in Lesson 3 (Hiragana) and Lesson 4 (Katakana) respectively.
Each Kana syllabary has a set of 48 basic characters, and from there a small number of add-ons are used to represent all other possible 'syllables' in the language. Although we will wait until Lesson 3 to start learning what the glyphs are, here are two charts showing their origins from Kanji. The chart to the left illustrates the origin of Hiragana ひらがな, and the chart to the right illustrates the origin of Katakana カタカナ.
The Jōyō Kanji List, which is a list that the Japanese Ministry of Education has put forth to create a literary baseline for compulsory education, bureaucratic documents and publications, and general use. As of 2017, 2,136 characters have been designated as Jōyō Kanji 常用漢字. Additional characters used primarily for names, are designated as Jimmeiyō Kanji 人名用漢字, of which a total of 862 exist as of 2017. Most competent readers know over 3,000 characters, and due to the ease of typing, this average is steadily rising.
In addition to there being thousands of Kanji, most Kanji have more than one kind of readings--ON and KUN readings--and can have more than one of each. This results in having to learn how to read each word on an individual basis. This is in stark contrast to how Chinese characters are used in Chinese. However, learning how to pronounce words on an individual basis should be something that English speakers are more than familiar with. Despite having only 26 letters, English spelling lacks the regularity that Spanish and other languages have.
■ Character Simplification 漢字の簡略化
If you are a reader of Traditional Chinese or can read Hanja in Korean, you may notice that many Kanji 漢字 don't look the same. This is because many Kanji 漢字 were simplified after World War II. The old forms of characters are called Kyūjitai 旧字体 whereas the new forms are called Shinjitai 新字体. The old forms may still be used in proper nouns as well as in publications printed in the 1960s and beforehand. Below are a handful of some of the characters that were altered.
Meaning | Traditional | Simplified | Meaning | Traditional | Simplified |
Yen |
圓 |
円 |
Learning |
學 |
学 |
To learn more about what Kanji have been altered in Japanese, you can check them out in Lesson 362. This will be incredibly helpful for those who already know how to write and recognize Kanji from another language.
■Japanese-Made Kanji 国字
Hiragana and Katakana won't be the only writing systems foreign to Chinese or Korean learners. In fact, the Japanese have also created their own Kanji over the centuries. Some of them have even made their way back into Chinese such as the character for "to work" 働. To learn more about these Japanese-made Kanji, check out Lesson 360.
Example | Meaning | Example | Meaning |
PR (Piiāru)
|
Public relations
|
OL (Ōeru)
|
Female office worker
|
CD(Shiidii)
|
CD
|
Tシャツ (Tiishatsu)
|
T-shirt
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LGBT (Erujiibiitii)
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LGBT
|
PM2.5 (Piiemu nii ten go)
|
Fine particles (PM 2.5)
|
Japanese was once void of any punctuation. This may seem incredibly strange, but Japanese grammar does a great job of accounting for all the jobs punctuation marks do in English. Nonetheless, it is due to contact with Western languages that Japanese borrowed those same punctuation marks into their own writing. Although mostly obvious as to what they are, some of the marks have changed appearance or at the least underwent a font transformation.
The Period | The Comma | The Exclamation Point | The Question Mark | Quotation Marks |
。 |
、 |
! |
? |
「」
|
Native | Sino-Japanese | Loan |
Yama 山 (mountain) |
Kazan 火山 (volcano) |
Doa ドア (door) |
Mizu 水 (water) |
Genki 元気 (lively/well) |
Zubon ズボン (pants) |
The spoken language is full of colloquialisms, filler words, emotion, and tone that are often never truly expressed via the written language. Although everyone can be moved by a beautiful passage, one is more likely to be moved by a soothing song or story. Speaking Japanese requires that you know not just how to pronounce words but also how to use them to best express how you feel and want to get across to the listener.
The written language is characterized as being formal and often void of the colloquialisms and filler words that pervade speech. Using alternative or creative spellings thanks to the existence of thousands of Kanji is also a noticeable feature of the written language. There are also many grammatical patterns that are used heavily in the written language that are not really used in the spoken language. Archaic expressions are also more likely to be used in the written language.
Although it is important to know how to speak Japanese, it is also just as important to read and write Japanese as mastery in the written language is essential to being a functionally native-like user of the language.