Monthly Archives: January 2006

For those completely new to Japanese

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I hope you enjoyed my attempt at humor in the previous post about Japanese. As promised, here’s a more serious description of what Japanese is like to give you an idea of whether you really want to board this handbasket. If you are completely new to Japanese and don’t have the faintest clue what Japanese is all about, this post is for you.

So you want to learn Japanese

So you are interested in learning Japanese for some reason; you like manga/anime, you’re family is Japanese, you think Japanese men/women are hot, whatever. But you have no idea how Japanese works. How does the writing system work? What about all those Chinese characters? How should you go about studying it? Is Japanese impossible to master?

Relax. First of all, Japanese is no more difficult than learning any other language. However, I’m not saying that learning Japanese is easy by any means. Learning any foreign language basically means re-learning everything you know in a different language. Take all the knowledge from a typical 12-year education along with all cultural information that you are exposed to everyday, and you have a hefty job on your hands.

The writing system

First of all, you are going to need to master a completely different writing system which consists of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is a phonetic “alphabet” consisting of 46 characters and can be mastered in a few weeks. The same goes for katakana as well, because it is essentially the same thing but with different characters. Its main purpose in modern Japanese is to distinguish words that have been imported from a foreign language such as “Internet” or “email”. While things like extended vowel sounds, the small 「ゃ、ゅ、ょ、っ」, etc. might require a bit of time getting used to, mastering hiragana and katakana is not too difficult. And since they are both completely phonetic, you never have to wonder how to pronounce words like “sangfroid”.

The third aspect of the writing system is kanji, which is the Japanese word for Chinese characters. While every word in Japanese is pronounced with the phonetic sounds in hiragana and katakana, most words are written in kanji. You need to learn about 2,000 characters to be able to read most of Japanese. A lot of people panic upon hearing that they have to memorize 2,000 characters but I think it actually makes things easier in a sense. Let me explain.

The hardest part of learning a language is memorizing the 20,000 some words an average adult has accumulated in his or her native language. If you were learning English, this would mean you would have to memorize the spelling and definition of 20,000 separate words, many of which have similar spellings but are totally unrelated. With Japanese, if you learn how to read and recognize just 2,000 characters, it will help you learn a bulk of the Japanese vocabulary which are simply combinations of these characters. In fact, while studying vocabulary for both the GRE and the JLPT, I found that memorizing Japanese words was much easier than memorizing English words and easier to retain thanks to kanji.

Learning how to write all these words with the correct characters is, I must admit, a very, very difficult task. However, in the age of computers, you’ll find that you rarely have a chance to write by hand. And if you’re stuck, you always have hiragana to fall back on.

Japanese grammar

Every complete idea or thought in Japanese ends with an action. Everything else that comes before describes the who, what, where, etc. but everything concludes to the action. This means that you are going to need to change essentially the way you think in order to naturally express yourself in Japanese. The rest of the sentence is put together by particles that define what role each word is playing in the sentence. In English, sentence ordering often define the role each word is playing such as the sentence, “The boy hit the ball” vs “The ball hit the boy” However, in Japanese, because particles describe the role of each word and attach directly to the word that it applies to, sentence ordering is a lot less strict than English.

Another significant difference in Japanese is the large amount of information that is implied by context. For example, if I wanted to know whether you ate or not, the conversation might go like this.

Me: Ate?
You: Ate.

This is a difficult adjustment for English speakers and they often have a habit of constantly specifying the subject because it’s required for English. However, in Japanese, the subject is usually left out unless there is no way the listener could know what the subject is. This “less-is-more” philosophy of Japanese makes grammar a great deal easier in Japanese. This means that you never have to worry about singular-plural, gender, or subject agreement. Verb conjugation is relatively straightforward as well. All verbs are divided into two main categories with only two exception verbs (most of the time). Conjugation is also very consistent and systematic based on the two main categories so I think it’s fair to say that Japanese grammar is much easier than most romance languages.

Politeness levels

Japanese, unlike many languages, have different levels of politeness. While the borders are not nearly as clear-cut, you can roughly divide the levels of politeness into three levels: casual, polite, and honorific/humble. Casual speech is used for your peers and friends while polite language might be more appropriate based on age, social status, and level of intimacy. Honorific/humble forms are used for very formal situations. While polite conjugations are very straightforward and should present little difficulty, honorific/humble language is more difficult because you have to consider social status relative to your position in deciding whether to refer to someone as honorific or humble. For example, your own actions will require the humble form, while those of people above you will use the honorific form. But even people above you will be referred to in the humble form if you are addressing somebody who is above them.

However, the use of honorific and humble forms are quite limited in regular day-to-day conversations, confined mostly to the service industry such as restaurants and stores. In short, politeness levels are an important additional level to learn but is not too big an obstacle once you get the hang of several fairly simple conjugation rules for the polite forms.

Pronunciation

While the basic sounds are very easy, when you put them all together, you will most likely have some form of an accent. That’s because Japanese pronunciation is made up of high and low tones and you need to get the ordering of the pitches right in order to sound natural. The pitches are so important that sometimes Japanese people will look at you with a puzzled expression and finally say, “Oh, you’re saying that word!” and say essentially the same word you were saying all along.

You may be wondering, “Can I ever really sound like a Japanese?” It depends to some extent on how old you are and how good your ear is. If you are already an adult, you need to have good ears and skills at mimicking the way other people talk. So far, I know two people who started learning Japanese as an adult yet still have a perfect Japanese accent, so it’s definitely possible. One of them is a Harvard grad and the other a Rhodes scholar but don’t let that get you down.

Conclusion

As you can see from this broad overview, Japanese, just like any language, is very easy in some respects and difficult in others. The greatest difficulty for English speakers is bridging the large gap between English and Japanese and adjusting yourself to the way Japanese people think. And just like any language, because of the sheer volume of information you need to learn, mastering Japanese will, at times, seem like an impossible task and you will feel discouraged and frustrated along the way. However, if you persevere, I think you’ll find the effort well worth it.

If you’re interested in learning more about Japanese, I suggest you check out my guides to learning Japanese.

You think Japanese is hard?

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So you think Japanese is hard?
Many of you have already seen this amusing description of the difficulty of Japanese. Well, here is my counter-argument of why Japanese is so much easier than English

Why Japanese is approximately 1.342×10^6 times easier than English
So you’re all bruised up from having engaged in a 2 hour royal rumble match with your Japanese teacher in which you failed to convince her to curve your grade even after 2 DDT’s and a Moonsault off the top rope. Well, what you need realize is that you’re a big sissy (yes, you) for not realizing just how easy Japanese is to learn. But after reading this, you’ll understand why your massive beer drinking is the root cause of your bad grade and not some intrinsic difficulty of the language.

1. Pronunciation is easy because Japanese people have a tongue disability
Japanese people can only make about 102 sounds. No, really. As a result, it’s incredibly difficult for Japanese people to correctly pronounce other languages. This is why simple English words like, “TV” sounds like “terraybi” in Japanese.

On the other hand, much to your benefit, pronouncing Japanese is a cinch. Unfortunately, your brain has been so thoroughly messed up by English that for some reason “karaoke” looks like “kery-okay”. I mean look at the word “thoroughly”, just look at it. Does the spelling make any sense? So the next time you ask in Japanese, “Where is the elevator?” and the Japanese person smiles and says, “yua japaniizu bery guddo” and just walks away, you’ll know that it’s really your fault he thought you were speaking in Swahili.

2. Grammar is easy because Japanese people are mind readers
In Japanese, there’s something called 以心伝心, which basically means that Japanese people can read each other’s minds, thereby creating a hive consciousness that is currently plotting to take over the world with giant robots. That’s why Japanese doesn’t have a singular/plural distinction and only past/non-past tenses. There really isn’t any sentence structure to speak of for that matter, either. You might think that leaving the subject and object out of a sentence would make it too ambiguous to say anything. Ahh, but you’re forgetting that Japanese people can read your mind. As a result, you don’t have to worry about subjects, objects, participles, sentence order, subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions, pronouns, and pretty much the rest of English grammar.

For instance, if you wanted to say, “Hi, I’m looking for a cheap place to stay,” all you have to do is say, “Me…”, trail off into silence, nod, and point knowingly to your head. The Japanese person will nod knowingly back and then go back to whatever he was doing. In all likelihood, that’s probably his way of saying, “Back off you foreign infidel, you shall not have my daughters!” But you should have expected that since you were probably thinking nasty thoughts about his daughters.

3. Spelling is easy because it’s impossible
In Japanese, you don’t have to worry about spelling because each sound has a corresponding letter. Most words consists of 2 or 3 Chinese characters anyway. You might complain that it’s so hard to figure which Chinese character to use but since no one actually knows how to write Japanese without a computer, you don’t have to worry about it. Not to mention the fact that Japanese classes and textbooks don’t use Chinese characters because of the fear that it’ll make your head explode (which I imagine would create a huge headache for the janitors).

4. Japanese people are friendly to foreigners and are willing to help
In the unlikely event that you find yourself in a bind, you can easily ask any Japanese person for assistance and she’ll gladly oblige. The only catch is that you’ll have to be fluent in Japanese since Japanese people can’t speak any other language. (See the first reason) Also, when I said foreigners, what I really meant was white (and possibly black) English-speaking foreigners. That’s because Japanese people will only give you the time of day if they think it’ll land them some free English conversation practice.*

For some reason, most Japanese people are brainwashed from childhood to have an irrepressible desire to learn how to speak English. This is quite sad because it’s practically impossible considering how much more difficult English is compared to Japanese. But that doesn’t stop them for trying for 10 or 20 years. What results is a very interesting language that, unfortunately, no one understands. So remember, as long as you are either 1) fluent in Japanese, or 2) own a 200 processor Beowulf cluster that can parse Japanese English into real English, you should have no problems finding help.

Conclusion
I hope I have convinced you with my clear and concise arguments that Japanese really is just about the easiest language there is to learn. While this amusing essay makes quite a few jokes about the difficulty of Japanese, I just wanted to clear the air with a somber discussion of what Japanese is really like.

Author’s Note
I would like to clarify that I am, in no way, trying to prove that learning Japanese will make your teeth crooked and turn ugly colors. If that’s what you were thinking, you totally missed the point of this treatise.

*Then there’s the type of Japanese people who are so terrified of speaking English that they run away from you as if you were the living dead. I left that part out because it would disprove my argument, which I was told to never do in High School English class.

When it’s not quite good enough to be 「まあまあ」

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In this short post, I’ll be talking about 「微妙」（びみょう）, a na-adjective that is used quite often in Japanese. The word 「微妙」 itself describes a state of delicate balance and indicates that things can easily go one way or the other.

You can find many examples from the WWWJDIC of this usage such as the following sentence.

その言葉には微妙なニュアンスがある。
-The word has a delicate shade of difference in meaning.

While the word when used in this fashion is not slang, there is one more way to use 「微妙」 that can be considered slang: a negative version of 「まあまあ」.

Many of you probably have already learned 「まあまあ」 in the classroom as a way of describing something as “so-so”. However, while 「まあまあ」 means neither good nor bad, it has a favorable connotation. 「微妙」 on the other hand, while also used to describe something that is neither good nor bad, looks at things in a negative light. To illustrate, let’s look at the two different responses to the following question.

Q: 味はどう？ – How is the taste?

A1: まあまあ。- It’s not bad.
A2: 微妙・・・。- Umm… it’s not that good.

The first answer is saying, while the taste is not great necessarily, it not that bad. The second answer takes the opposite stance and indicates that while the taste is not terrible, it’s just not very good. It’s similar to the “cup is half-empty/half-full” distinction. While both mean the same thing, the attitude is completely opposite from each other.

Here are some interesting examples of 「微妙」 that I came up with. Be careful not to insult anybody using this word (unless that’s your intent)! That’s probably why they only teach you 「まあまあ」 in class.

1： あの子は、かわいくない？ – Don’t you think that girl is cute?
2: う～ん、微妙だな。 – Hmm, nah, not really.

1: 明日、時間空いている？ – Do you have time open tomorrow?
2: 明日は、ちょっと微妙かも。 – Tomorrow might be a bit shady.

As you can see from the second example, like most slang, you can use 「微妙」 in all sorts of situations. Try it on your Japanese friends today!

Japanese videos on Google Video

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I’ve been killing time this holiday enjoying some random videos on Google Video. I thought I’d share some interesting videos in Japanese in case anybody was looking for a fun way to study this holiday. Somebody was diligent enough to put English subtitles on the videos so you can enjoy them even if you don’t feel like studying Japanese.

Sushi Documentary

The first video is a “documentary” about sushi. And the word “documentary” is in quotes for a very good reason. It starts out like this.

寿司。日本の代表的スナック。それが寿司です。この寿司を食べるショップが寿司屋です。日本人のほとんどがこの店を毎日利用しています。


女性が男性に注ぎ、女性は自分で注ぎます。なるほど。侍の国ですね。

It’s quite amusing and represents, in my opinion, the image that some foreigners have regarding Japan. I remember, before I knew anything about Japan, that I used to think that Japanese was a country with very strict rules such as the appropriate angle for bowing.

The narrator speaks in a very clear, standard Japanese so people learning Japanese in a classroom should have no trouble with the style. Anyway, here are a few comments and corrections just in case.

1. Most of the Japanese population cannot afford to eat sushi everyday.
2. That’s way too much soy-sauce on the sushi. （Soy-sauce, by the way, is called 「醤油」（しょうゆ）. Sometimes, it’s written as 「正油」.）
3. The wet napkin given out in restaurants to wipe your hands is actually called 「おしぼり」 and not 「雑巾」（ぞうきん）, which is a cloth used to clean around the house. 「おしぼり」 comes from the verb 「絞る」（しぼる）, which means to squeeze. I presume it’s because the excess water is squeezed from the cloth.

地球戦隊 フレッシュメン

Here’s another funny video featuring Shingo Katori （香取慎吾） from Smap, a “talent” group you can’t avoid here in Japan (as much as I try). This video features quite a lot of slang so those of you who learned Japanese on the streets should have no trouble. Here’s how it starts.

高校ん時の親友は、俺にこう言った。「ちょうだい？これ。お前っていいやつだよな。」　だからってわけじゃないけど、俺だって、自分のことを悪いやつなんて思ってなかった。地球を滅ぼすほどの悪いやつだなんて。

I intend to cover some of the expressions in the video such as 「というか」 and 「じゃん」 so make sure to subscribe to the feed.

I hope you find the videos as amusing as I did!