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Nouns are the easiest words to learn in a foreign language. Memorizing them all, however, is no easy task. By learning nouns, though, you will create a framework which, when paired with grammar, will allow you to express the things you want to talk about.

In addition to nouns, this lesson will also serve to introduce you to pronouns, which are words that indirectly refer to people, direction, and things that require context to be properly understood. 

In a basic understanding, a noun (meishi 名詞) represents a person, place, state, quality, event, or thing. In Japanese, nouns have no number or gender. This means that there is no fundamental distinction between singular and plural forms or masculine and feminine forms. In addition, there are no articles like "a," "an," or "the" that accompany nouns like is the case in English. 

Some of the most common nouns in Japanese include the following. Many of these words are also written with the most basic Kanji 漢字 that are taught early on in Japanese education. 

Grammar Note: Making nouns plural, although not common, is still possible. One method involves the suffix -tachi たち, which is typically used to refer to a group of people or (living) things. 

1. 女性じょせいたち
Joseitachi     
(Group of ) women

2. 男性だんせいたち
Danseitachi
(Group of) men

3. 犬いぬたち
Inutachi
(A group of) dogs 

Proper Nouns 

In English, a proper noun is a noun that indicates an individual person, place, organization, etc. and is spelled with initial capital letters. In Japanese, words are not capitalized, but the concept of proper noun (koyū meishi 固有名詞) still exists. Below is a chart with some very important examples. 

Word Notes:
1. There are four main islands of Japan. The northernmost island is Hokkaido. South of it is the largest island, Honshu. Further south are the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu, with Kyushu being the southernmost island. Further south is a chain of islands referred to as Okinawa. 
2. The Kanto Region encompasses the capital of Japan, Tokyo, as well as the surrounding area.
3. The Kinki Region encompasses both Osaka and Kyoto and their surrounding areas. 
4. Shinzo Abe is the current Prime Minister of Japan.
5. Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.
6. Tokyo Skytree is the second tallest structure found in the world and is located in Tokyo.
7. Ueno Park is a very spacious park found in Tokyo. 

 Loan-words

A loan-word is a word borrowed from another language. In Japanese, there are many loanwords from all sorts of languages. Loan-words are called Gairaigo 外来語, and this term typically refers to words that have been borrowed in the last two, three centuries from the world's modern languages. Words borrowed from Chinese during the language's development--Kango 漢語--are usually treated separately. Words that have come from Chinese languages in recent centuries like chāhan 炒飯 (fried rice), though, are treated as Gairaigo 外来語.

Although loan-words come from dozens of languages, the overwhelmingly majority of them come from English. As convenient as that may be, you must still treat these loan words as Japanese words. This means you can't simply pronounce it as if it were English. You will likely not be understood. It is always important that you pronounce words in Japanese like any other word in Japanese regardless of whether or not it comes from English. 

Pronouns: Grammatical Person

A pronoun (daimeishi 代名詞) indirectly refers to an entity that involves a person, direction, or thing. The meaning of said entity is determined by context. For instance, proper names are pronouns because they stand in place of the actual person/thing they reference. Proper names can also be shared with others or other things, and so we need context to truly understand what is meant by say the name "Seth." This can refer to the creator of this curriculum, or it can refer to any other person whose name is "Seth." Because of this, the word "Seth" is a pronoun. 

Similarly, words like "here" and "there" or even words like "this" and "that" are also pronouns. This is because no one can ascertain what they refer to without context.

Generally, when we think of pronouns, we think about pronouns that are used to establish grammatical person. For instance, in English we make the following distinctions in grammatical person.

In English, gender and number both play roles in determining what grammatical person is used in a sentence. In Japanese, however, there isn't a single pronoun that corresponds to each of the pronouns for grammatical person. Meaning, there is more than one word for "I," "we," etc. This is because all pronouns in Japanese started out as typical nouns, or they were far vaguer pronouns that didn't necessarily match up with the concept of showing grammatical person. 

 In Japanese, pronouns differ by their politeness and by who actually uses them. Many pronouns are reserved for whether the speaker is male or female, or whether the person is young or old. Dialects also differ majorly in what pronouns are used.

For the purposes of understanding basic Standard Japanese, the pronouns listed below are the most essential. As you will see, the notes provided for them show just how different they are from their English counterparts.

Usage Notes:

Grammar Note: To make a third person reference into the possessive case, just add no to whatever name you're using. This means that "Seth's" would be expressed as Sesu no セスの.

When we start learning how to make sentences in Lesson 9, it will be important to remember that different things will happen in a Japanese sentence. However, we won't revisit the particle ga が until Lesson 11.