The root of this problem lies in the fact that these textbooks try to teach you Japanese with English. They want to teach you on the first page how to say, "Hi, my name is Smith," but they don't tell you about all the arbitrary decisions that were made behind your back. They probably decided to use the polite form even though learning the polite form before the dictionary form makes no sense. They also might have decided to include the subject even though it's not necessary and excluded most of the time. In fact, the most common way to say something like "My name is Smith" in Japanese is to say "am Smith". That's because most of the information is understood from the context and is therefore excluded. But does the textbook explain the way things work in Japanese fundamentally? No, because they're too busy trying to push you out the door with "useful" phrases right off the bat. The result is a confusing mess of "use this if you want to say this" type of text and the reader is left with a feeling of confusion about how things actually work.
The solution to this problem is to explain Japanese from a Japanese point of view. Take Japanese and explain how it works and forget about trying to force what you want to say in English into Japanese. To go along with this, it is also important to explain things in an order that makes sense in Japanese. If you need to know [A] in order to understand [B], don't cover [B] first just because you want to teach a certain phrase.
Essentially, what we need is a Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar.
In the beginning, the English translations for the examples will also be as literal as possible to convey the Japanese sense of the meaning. This will often result in grammatically incorrect translations in English. For example, the translations might not have a subject because Japanese does not require one. In addition, since the articles "the" and "a" do not exist in Japanese, the translations will not have them as well. And since Japanese does not distinguish between a future action and a general statement (such as "I will go to the store" vs. "I go to the store"), no distinction will necessarily be made in the translation. It is my hope that the explanation of the examples will convey an accurate sense of what the sentences actually mean in Japanese. Once the reader becomes familiar and comfortable thinking in Japanese, the translations will be less literal in order to make the sentences more readable and focused on the more advanced topics.
Be aware that there are advantages and disadvantages to systematically building a grammatical foundation from the ground up. In Japanese, the most fundamental grammatical concepts are the most difficult to grasp and the most common words have the most exceptions. This means that the hardest part of the language will come first. Textbooks usually don't take this approach; afraid that this will scare away or frustrate those interested in the language. Instead, they try to delay going deeply into the hardest conjugation rules with patchwork and gimmicks so that they can start teaching useful expressions right away. (I'm talking about the past-tense conjugation for verbs in particular) This is a fine approach for some, however; it can create more confusion and trouble along the way much like building a house on a poor foundation. The hard parts must be covered no matter what. However, if you cover them in the beginning, the easier bits will be all that easier because they'll fit nicely on top of the foundation you have built. Japanese is syntactically much more consistent than English. If you learn the hardest conjugation rules, most of remaining grammar builds upon similar or identical rules. The only difficult part from there on is sorting out and remembering all the various possible expressions and combinations in order to use them in the correct situations.
※Before you start using this guide, please note that half brackets like these: 「」 are the Japanese version of quotation marks.
This is why I'm a firm believer of learning by example. Examples and experience will be your main tools in mastering Japanese. Therefore, even if you don't get something completely the first time right away, just move on and keep referring back as you see more examples. This will allow you to get a better sense of how it's used in many different contexts. Unfortunately, writing up examples takes time and is slow going. (I'm trying my best!) But lucky for you, Japanese is everywhere, especially on the web. I recommend practicing Japanese as much as possible and referring to this guide only when you cannot understand the grammar. The Internet alone has a rich variety of reading materials including websites, bulletin boards, and online chat. Buying Japanese books or comic books is also an excellent (and fun) way to increase vocabulary and practice reading skills. Also, I believe that it is impossible to learn correct speaking and listening skills without a model. Practicing listening and speaking skills with fluent speakers of Japanese is a must if you wish to master conversational skills. While listening materials such as tapes and T.V. can be very educational, there is nothing better than a real human with which to learn pronunciation, intonation, and natural conversation flow. If you have specific questions that are not addressed in this guide, you can discuss them at the Japanese grammar guide forum.
www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/
Don't feel discouraged by the vast amount of material that you will need to master. Remember, every new word or grammar learned is one step closer to mastering the language!
(minus differences in fonts),
then you need to install Japanese language support or use some kind of gateway to convert the
characters. Links to instructions and a translation gateway are below.
Japanese Language Support
Translation Gateway (Considerably slower)
Also, please make sure you have a recent browser to enjoy all the benefits of stylesheets. I recommend Firefox.
Don't worry about having to manually look up all the Kanji and vocabulary. You can go to the WWWJDIC and paste all the examples there to quickly look up most of the words.
All the material presented here including examples is original except for some of the common terminology and when explicitly stated otherwise. I hope you enjoy this guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which is to say, frustrating and time-consuming yet somehow strangely mixed with an enormous feeling of satisfaction.
There are bound to be (many) small errors and typos especially since I wrote this in ed, haha, just kidding! (Sorry, nerd joke). I actually wrote this in Notepad which has no spellcheck, so please forgive the numerous typos! Please post any feedback, corrections, and/or suggestions at the Japanese Grammar Guide Forum
Well, no more chit-chat. Happy learning!
-Tae Kim
This page has last been revised on 2005/6/8 Changed feedback from email to the forum (2005/6/8)
Japanese (n): The devil's own tongue designed
to thwart the spread of Christianity
Chinese characters, called kanji in Japanese, are also heavily used in the Japanese writing. Most of the words in the Japanese written language are written in kanji (nouns, verbs, adjectives). There exists over 40,000 kanji where about 2,000 represent over 95% of characters actually used in written text. There are no spaces in Japanese so kanji is necessary in distinguishing between separate words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for discriminating between homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.
Hiragana is used mainly for grammatical purposes. We will see this as we learn about particles. Words with extremely difficult or rare kanji, colloquial expressions, and onomatopoeias are also written in hiragana. It's also often used for beginning Japanese students and children in place of kanji they don't know.
While katakana represents the same sounds as hiragana, it is mainly used to represent newer words imported from western countries (since there are no kanji associated with words based on the roman alphabet). The next three sections will cover hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
Intonation of high and low pitches is a crucial aspect of the spoken language. For example, homophones can have different pitches of low and high resulting in a slightly differently sounding of the word even if it is written with the same sounds. The largest barrier to proper and natural sounding speech is incorrect intonation. Many students often speak without paying attention to the correct enunciation of pitches making speech sound unnatural (the classic foreigner's accent). It is not practical to memorize or attempt to logically create rules for pitches, especially since it can change depending on the context or the dialect. The only practical approach is to get the general sense of pitches by mimicking native Japanese speakers with careful listening and practice.
This page has last been revised on 2004/11/24
Here is a table of hiragana and similar-sounding English consonant-vowel pronunciations. It is read up to down and right to left, which is how most Japanese books are written. In Japanese, writing the strokes in the correct order and direction is important, especially for kanji. Because handwritten letters look slightly different from typed letters (just like how 'a' looks totally different when typed) you will want to find a source such as a website or textbook that will show you how to write the characters. I must also stress the importance of correctly learning how to pronounce each sound. Since every word in Japanese is composed of these sounds, learning an incorrect pronunciation for a letter can severely damage the very foundation on which your pronunciation lies.
| n | w | r | y | m | h | n | t | s | k | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ん | わ | ら | や | ま | は | な | た | さ | か | あ | a |
| ゐ* | り | み | ひ | に | ち (chi) | し (shi) | き | い | i | ||
| る | ゆ | む | ふ (fu) | ぬ | つ (tsu) | す | く | う | u | ||
| ゑ* | れ | め | へ | ね | て | せ | け | え | e | ||
| を | ろ | よ | も | ほ | の | と | そ | こ | お | o |
Hiragana is not too tough to master or teach and as a result, there are a variety of web sites and free programs that are already available on the web. I strongly urge you to go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each character. The relevant sections are 2.1 to 2.11. I also suggest recording yourself and comparing the sounds to make sure you're getting it right.
When practicing writing hiragana by hand, the important thing to remember is that the stroke order and direction of the strokes matter. There, I underlined, italicized, bolded, and highlighted it to boot. Trust me, you'll eventually find out why when you read other people's hasty notes that are nothing more than chicken scrawls. The only thing that will help you is that everybody writes in the same order and so the "flow" of the characters is fairly consistent. I strongly recommend that you pay close attention to stroke order from the beginning starting with hiragana to avoid falling into bad habits. Go to this web site to see little animated gifs of stroke order and practice from there.
※ As an aside, an old Japanese poem called 「いろは」 was often used as the base for ordering of the hiragana alphabet until recent times. The poem contains every single letter of the hiragana alphabet except for 「ん」 which probably did not exist at the time it was written. You can check out this poem for yourself in this wikipedia article. As the article mentions, this order is still sometimes used in ordering lists so you may want to spend some time checking it out.
All the possible combinations of muddied consonant sounds are given in the table below.
| p | b | d | z | g | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ぱ | ば | だ | ざ | が | a |
| ぴ | び | ぢ (ji) | じ (ji) | ぎ | i |
| ぷ | ぶ | づ (dzu) | ず | ぐ | u |
| ぺ | べ | で | ぜ | げ | e |
| ぽ | ぼ | ど | ぞ | ご | o |
| p | b | j | g | r | m | h | n | c | s | k | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ぴゃ | びゃ | じゃ | ぎゃ | りゃ | みゃ | ひゃ | にゃ | ちゃ | しゃ | きゃ | ya |
| ぴゅ | びゅ | じゅ | ぎゅ | りゅ | みゅ | ひゅ | にゅ | ちゅ | しゅ | きゅ | yu |
| ぴょ | びょ | じょ | ぎょ | りょ | みょ | ひょ | にょ | ちょ | しょ | きょ | yo |
| Vowel Sound | Extended by |
|---|---|
| / a / | あ |
| / i / e / | い |
| / u / o / | う |
For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from 「か」, you would add 「あ」 to create 「かあ」. Other examples would include: 「き → きい」, 「く → くう」, 「け → けい」, 「こ → こう」, 「さ → さあ」 and so on. The reasoning for this is quite simple. Try saying 「か」 and 「あ」 separately. Then say them in succession as fast as you can. You'll notice that soon enough, it just sounds like you're dragging out the / ka / for a longer duration than just saying / ka / by itself. You can try this exercise with the other vowel sounds if you like. Try to remember that you are, in fact, saying two characters with blurred boundaries. In fact, you may not even have to consciously think about long vowels and simply pronounce the letters together quickly to get the correct sound.
In addition, while the / e / vowel sound followed by 「い」 is usually considered to a long vowel sound, the pronunciation is actually a slurred connection of the / e / and / i / vowel sounds. In other words, it should be pronounced like / ay / (as in "acorn") and not just a long / e /.
It's important to make sure you hold the vowel sound long enough because you can be saying things like "here" (ここ) instead of "High School" (こうこう) or "middle-aged lady" (おばさん) instead of "grandmother" (おばあさん) if you don't stretch it out correctly!
There are rare exceptions where an / e / vowel sound is extended by adding 「え」 or an / o / vowel sound is extended by 「お」. Some examples of this include 「おねえさん」、「おおい」、and 「おおきい」. Pay careful attention to these exceptions but don't worry, there aren't too many of them.
This page has last been revised on 2006/4/7 Added reference to 「いろは」 (2005/8/3) /ei/ should be pronounced as /ay/ and not just a long /e/ (2006/4/7)
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Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.
| n | w | r | y | m | h | n | t | s | k | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ん flip |
わ flip |
ら flip |
や flip |
ま flip |
は flip |
な flip |
た flip |
さ flip |
か flip |
あ flip |
a |
| り flip |
み flip |
ひ flip |
に flip |
ち flip |
し flip |
き flip |
い flip |
i | |||
| る flip |
ゆ flip |
む flip |
ふ flip |
ぬ flip |
つ flip |
す flip |
く flip |
う flip |
u | ||
| れ flip |
め flip |
へ flip |
ね flip |
て flip |
せ flip |
け flip |
え flip |
e | |||
| を flip |
ろ flip |
よ flip |
も flip |
ほ flip |
の flip |
と flip |
そ flip |
こ flip |
お flip |
o |
| 1. ku | ru | ma | = | くるま |
| 2. a | shi | ta | = | あした |
| 3. ko | ku | se | ki | = | こくせき |
| 4. o | su | shi | = | おすし |
| 5. ta | be | ru | = | たべる |
| 6. wa | ka | ra | na | i | = | わからない |
| 7. sa | zu | ke | ru | = | さずける |
| 8. ri | ku | tsu | = | りくつ |
| 9. ta | chi | yo | mi | = | たちよみ |
| 10. mo | no | ma | ne | = | ものまね |
| 11. hi | ga | e | ri | = | ひがえり |
| 12. pon | zu | = | ぽんず |
| 13. hi | ru | me | shi | = | ひるめし |
| 14. re | ki | shi | = | れきし |
| 15. fu | yu | ka | i | = | ふゆかい |
| 1. nu | ru | i | o | cha | = | ぬるいおちゃ |
| 2. kyu- | kyo | ku | = | きゅうきょく |
| 3. un | yo-| jo- | ho- | = | うんようじょうほう |
| 4. byo- | do- | = | びょうどう |
| 5. jyo- | to- | shu | dan | = | じょうとうしゅだん |
| 6. gyu- | nyu- | = | ぎゅうにゅう |
| 7. sho- | rya | ku | = | しょうりゃく |
| 8. hya | ku | nen | ha | ya | i | = | ひゃくねんはやい |
| 9. so | tsu | gyo- | shi | ki | = | そつぎょうしき |
| 10. to- | nyo- | byo- | = | とうにょうびょう |
| 11. mu | ryo- | = | むりょう |
| 12. myo- | ji | = | みょうじ |
| 13. o | ka- | san | = | おかあさん |
| 14. ro- | nin | = | ろうにん |
| 15. ryu- | ga | ku | se | i | = | りゅうがくせい |
| 1. きゃっかんてき | = | kyakkanteki |
| 2. はっぴょうけっか | = | happyoukekka |
| 3. ちょっかん | = | chokkan |
| 4. ひっし | = | hisshi |
| 5. ぜったい | = | zettai |
| 6. けっちゃく | = | kecchaku |
| 7. しっぱい | = | shippai |
| 8. ちゅうとはんぱ | = | chuutohanpa |
| 9. やっかい | = | yakkai |
| 10. しょっちゅう | = | shocchuu |
This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20
Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as hiragana except, of course, all the characters are different. Since foreign words must fit into this set of [consonants+vowel] combinations, they undergo many radical changes resulting in the case where English speakers can't understand words that are supposed to have been derived from English! As a result, the use of katakana is extremely difficult for English speakers because they expect English words to sound like... well... English. Instead, it is better to completely forget the original English word, and treat the word as an entirely separate Japanese word, otherwise you can run into the habit of saying English words with English pronunciations (whereupon a Japanese person may or may not understand what you are saying).
| n | w | r | y | m | h | n | t | s | k | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ン | ワ | ラ | ヤ | マ | ハ | ナ | タ | サ | カ | ア | a |
| ヰ* | リ | ミ | ヒ | ニ | チ | シ | キ | イ | i | ||
| ル | ユ | ム | フ | ヌ | ツ | ス | ク | ウ | u | ||
| ヱ* | レ | メ | ヘ | ネ | テ | セ | ケ | エ | e | ||
| ヲ* | ロ | ヨ | モ | ホ | ノ | ト | ソ | コ | オ | o |
Katakana is significantly tougher to master compared to hiragana because it is only used for certain words and you don't get nearly as much practice as you do with hiragana. To learn the proper stroke order (and yes, you need to), here is the same web site as before except it is for katakana.
Also, since Japanese doesn't have any spaces, sometimes the symbol 「・」 is used to show the spaces like 「ロック・アンド・ロール」 for "rock and roll". Using the symbol is completely optional so sometimes nothing will be used at all.
| v | w | f | ch | d | t | j | sh | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ヴァ | ワ | ファ | チャ | ダ | タ | ジャ | シャ | a |
| ヴィ | ウィ | フィ | チ | ディ | ティ | ジ | シ | i |
| ヴ | ウ | フ | チュ | ドゥ | トゥ | ジュ | シュ | u |
| ヴェ | ウェ | フェ | チェ | デ | テ | ジェ | シェ | e |
| ヴォ | ウォ | フォ | チョ | ド | ト | ジョ | ショ | o |
| English | Japanese |
|---|---|
| America | アメリカ |
| Russia | ロシア |
| cheating | カンニング (cunning) |
| tour | ツアー |
| company employee | サラリーマン (salary man) |
| Mozart | モーツァルト |
| car horn | クラクション (klaxon) |
| sofa | ソファ or ソファー |
| Halloween | ハロウィーン |
| French fries | フライドポテト (fried potato) |
This page has last been revised on 2006/9/17 Added link to additional usages (2006/5/11)
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Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.
| n | w | r | y | m | h | n | t | s | k | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ン flip |
ワ flip |
ラ flip |
ヤ flip |
マ flip |
ハ flip |
ナ flip |
タ flip |
サ flip |
カ flip |
ア flip |
a |
| リ flip |
ミ flip |
ヒ flip |
ニ flip |
チ flip |
シ flip |
キ flip |
イ flip |
i | |||
| ル flip |
ユ flip |
ム flip |
フ flip |
ヌ flip |
ツ flip |
ス flip |
ク flip |
ウ flip |
u | ||
| レ flip |
メ flip |
ヘ flip |
ネ flip |
テ flip |
セ flip |
ケ flip |
エ flip |
e | |||
| ロ flip |
ヨ flip |
モ flip |
ホ flip |
ノ flip |
ト flip |
ソ flip |
コ flip |
オ flip |
o |
| 1. pan | = | パン |
| 2. kon | pyu- | ta | = | コンピュータ |
| 3. myu- | ji | ka | ru | = | ミュージカル |
| 4. u- | man | = | ウーマン |
| 5 he | a | pi- | su | = | ヘアピース |
| 6. nu- | do | = | ヌード |
| 7. me | nyu- | = | メニュー |
| 8. ro- | te- | shon | = | ローテーション |
| 9. ha | i | kin | gu | = | ハイキング |
| 10. kyan | se | ru | = | キャンセル |
| 11. ha | ne | mu-n | | = | ハネムーン |
| 12. ku | ri | su | ma | su | tsu | ri- | = | クリスマスツリー |
| 13. ra | i | to | = | ライト |
| 14. na | i | to | ge- | mu | = | ナイトゲーム |
| 1. e | i | zu | wi | ru | su | = | エイズウイルス |
| 2. no- | su | sa | i | do | = | ノースサイド |
| 3. in | fo | me- | shon | = | インフォメーション |
| 4. pu | ro | je | ku | to | = | プロジェクト |
| 5. fa | su | to | fu- | do | = | ファストフード |
| 6. she | ru | su | ku | ri | pu | to | = | シェルスクリプト |
| 7. we- | to | re | su | = | ウェートレス |
| 8. ma | i | ho- | mu | = | マイホーム |
| 9. chi- | mu | wa- | ku | = | チームワーク |
| 10. mi | ni | su | ka- | to | = | ミニスカート |
| 11. re- | za- | di | su | ku | = | レーザーディスク |
| 12. chen | ji | = | チェンジ |
| 13. re | gyu | ra- | = | レギュラー |
| 14. we | i | to | ri | fu | tin | gu | = | ウエイトリフティング |
As you know, since Japanese sounds always consist of consonant-vowel pairs, any English words that deviate from this pattern will cause problems. The only combination that doesn't create problems is the consonant-vowel + n (using 「ン」). Here are some trends you may have noticed.
If you've seen "Lost in Translation", you know that / l / and / r / are indistinguishable.
(1) Ready -> レディ
(2) Lady -> レディ
If you have more than one vowel in a row or a vowel sound that ends in / r /, it usually becomes a long vowel sound.
(1) Target -> ターゲット
(2) Shoot -> シュート
Abrupt cut-off sounds usually denoted by a / t / or / c / employ the small 「ッ」.
(1) Catch -> キャッチ
(2) Cache -> キャッシュ
Any word that ends in a consonant sound requires another vowel to complete the consonant-vowel pattern. (Except for "n" and "m" for which we have 「ン」) For "t" and "d", it's usually "o". For everything else, it's usually "u".
(1) Good -> グッド
(2) Top -> トップ
(3) Jack -> ジャック
| 1. check | = | チェック |
| 2. violin | = | バイオリン |
| 3. jet coaster (roller coaster) | = | ジェットコースター |
| 4. window shopping | = | ウィンドーショッピング |
| 5. salsa | = | サルサ |
| 6. hotdog | = | ホットドッグ |
| 7. suitcase | = | スーツケース |
| 8. kitchen | = | キッチン |
| 9. restaurant | = | レストラン |
| 10. New York | = | ニューヨーク |
This page has last been revised on 2006/11/20
This guide begins using kanji from the beginning to help the reader read "real" Japanese as quickly as possible. Therefore, we will go over some properties of kanji and discuss some strategies of learning it quickly and efficiently. Mastering kanji is not easy but it is by no means impossible. The biggest part of the battle is mastering the skills of learning kanji and time. In short, memorizing kanji past short-term memory must be done with a great deal of study and, most importantly, for a long time. And by this, I don't mean studying five hours a day but rather reviewing how to write a kanji once every several months until you are sure you have it down for good. This is another reason why this guide starts using kanji right away. There is no reason to dump the huge job of learning kanji at the advanced level. By studying kanji along with new vocabulary from the beginning, the immense job of learning kanji is divided into small manageable chunks and the extra time helps settle learned kanji into permanent memory. In addition, this will help you learn new vocabulary, which will often have combinations of kanji you already know. If you start learning kanji later, this benefit will be wasted or reduced.
Certain characters (especially the most common ones) can have more than one 音読み or 訓読み. For example, in the word 「怪力」, 「力」 is read here as 「りき」 and not 「りょく」. Certain compound words also have special readings that have nothing to do with the readings of the individual characters. These readings must be individually memorized. Thankfully, these readings are few and far in between.
訓読み is also used in adjectives and verbs in addition to the stand-alone characters. These words often have a string of kana (called okurigana) that come attached to the word. This is so that the reading of the Chinese character stays the same even when the word is conjugated to different forms. For example, the past form of the verb 「食べる」 is 「食べた」. Even though the verb has changed, the reading for 「食」 remain untouched. (Imagine how difficult things could get if readings for kanji changed with conjugation or even worse, if the kanji itself changed.) Okurigana also serves to distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs (more on this later).
Another concept that is difficult to grasp at first is that the actual readings of kanji can change slightly in a compound word to make the word easier to say. The more common transformations include the / h / sounds changing to either / b / or / p / sounds or 「つ」 becoming 「っ」. Examples include: 「一本」、「徹底」、and 「格好」.
Yet another fun aspect of kanji you'll run into are words that practically mean the same thing and use the same reading but have different kanji to make just a slight difference in meaning. For example 「聞く」(きく) means to listen and so does 「聴く」(きく). The only difference is that 「聴く」 means to pay more attention to what you're listening to. For example, listening to music almost always prefers 「聴く」 over 「聞く」. 「聞く」 can also mean 'to ask', as well as, "to hear" but 「訊く」(きく) can only mean "to ask". Yet another example is the common practice of writing 「見る」 as 「観る」 when it applies to watching a show such as a movie. Yet another interesting example is 「書く」(かく) which means "to write" while 描く (かく) means "to draw". However, when you're depicting an abstract image such as a scene in a book, the reading of the same word 「描く」 becomes 「えがく」. There's also the case where the meaning and kanji stays the same but can have multiple readings such as 「今日」 which can be either 「きょう」、「こんじつ」, or 「こんにち」. In this case, it doesn't really matter which reading you choose except that some are preferred over others in certain situations.
Finally, there is one special character 々 that is really not a character. It simply indicates that the previous character is repeated. For example, 「時時」、「様様」、「色色」、「一一」 can and usually are written as 「時々」、「様々」、「色々」、「一々」.
In addition to these "features" of kanji, you will see a whole slew of delightful perks and surprises kanji has for you as you advance in Japanese. You can decide for yourself if that statement is sarcasm or not. However, don't be scared into thinking that Japanese is incredibly hard. Most of the words in the language usually only have one kanji associated with it and a majority of kanji do not have more than two types of readings.
Some people feel that Japanese should have just switched from Chinese to romaji to do away with all the complicated characters that was bewildering the foreign white devils. In fact, Korean has adopted their own alphabet to greatly simplify their written language to great success. So why didn't it work for Japanese? And I ask this in the past tense because I believe that the government did attempt to replace kanji with romaji shortly after the second world war with little success. I think anyone who has typed at any length in Japanese can easily see why this did not work. At any one time, when you convert typed hiragana into kanji, you are presented with almost always at least two choices (two homophones) and sometimes even up to ten. (Try typing kikan). The 46 or so character alphabet of set sounds in Japanese makes it hard to avoid homophones. Compare this to the Korean alphabet which has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Any of the consonants can be matched to any of the vowels giving 140 sounds. In addition, a third and sometimes even fourth consonant can be attached to create a single letter. This gives over 1960 sounds that can be created theoretically. (The sounds that are actually used is actually much less than that, though I don't know the exact number.)
Since you want to read at a much faster rate than you talk, you need some visual cues to instantly tell you what each word is. You can use the shape of words in English to blaze through text because most words have different shapes. Try this little exercise: Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?" Korean does this too because it has enough characters to make words with distinct and different shapes. However, because the visual cues are not distinct as kanji, spaces needed to be added to remove ambiguities. (This presents another problem of when and where to set spaces.)
With kanji, we don't have to worry about spaces and much of the problem of homophones is mostly resolved. Without kanji, even if spaces were to be added, the ambiguities and lack of visual cues would make Japanese text much more difficult to read.
This page has last been revised on 2006/5/12
Seems easy enough. Here's the real kicker though.
| A state-of-being can be implied without using 「だ」! |
As it stands, (1) is simply the word "fish" and doesn't mean anything beyond that. However, we'll see in the next section that with the topic particle, we can infer that something is a fish from the context without declaring anything. So the question that should be floating around in your head is, "If you can say something is [X] without using 「だ」, then what's the point of even having it around?" Well, the main difference is that a declarative statement makes the sentence sound more emphatic and forceful in order to make it more... well declarative. Therefore, it is more common to hear men use 「だ」 at the end of sentences. This is also why you cannot use 「だ」 when asking a question because then it sounds like you're making a statement and asking a question at the same time. (Unless you're declaring a question word such as 「どこだ」.)
The declarative 「だ」 is also needed in various grammatical structures where a state-of-being must be explicitly declared. There is also the case where you must not attach it. It's all quite a pain in the butt really but you don't have to worry about it yet.
First, for the negative tense, you simply attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective.
In order to say the negative past (was not), the negative tense is conjugated to the negative past tense by simply dropping the 「い」 from 「じゃない」 and adding 「かった」.
| Positive | Negative | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Past | 魚(だ) | Is fish | 魚じゃない | Is not fish |
| Past | 魚だった | Was fish | 魚じゃなかった | Was not fish |
This page has last been revised on 2005/4/7 Removed reference to 「か question marker」 and changed formatting. (2005/4/7)
Sample: 人 = 人だ、人じゃない、人だった、人じゃなかった
| 1. これ | ||
| declarative | = | これだ |
| negative | = | これじゃない |
| past | = | これだった |
| negative-past | = | これじゃなかった |
| 2. 大人 | ||
| declarative | = | 大人だ |
| negative | = | 大人じゃない |
| past | = | 大人だった |
| negative-past | = | 大人じゃなかった |
| 3. 学校 | ||
| declarative | = | 学校だ |
| negative | = | 学校じゃない |
| past | = | 学校だった |
| negative-past | = | 学校じゃなかった |
| 4. 友達 | ||
| declarative | = | 友達だ |
| negative | = | 友達じゃない |
| past | = | 友達だった |
| negative-past | = | 友達じゃなかった |
| 5. 学生 | ||
| declarative | = | 学生だ |
| negative | = | 学生じゃない |
| past | = | 学生だった |
| negative-past | = | 学生じゃなかった |
Sample: Is student. = 学生だ。
| 1. Is college. | = | 大学だ。 |
| 2. Is not high school. | = | 高校じゃない。 |
| 3. Was teacher. | = | 先生だった。 |
| 4. Is adult. | = | 大人だ。 |
| 5. Was not child. | = | 子供じゃなかった。 |
| 6. This was the way it was. | = | こうだった。 |
| 7. Wasn't that over there. | = | あれじゃなかった。 |
| 8. Is not middle school. | = | 中学校じゃない。 |
| 9. Is friend. | = | 友達だ。 |
| 10. Was not car. | = | 車じゃなかった。 |
| 11. Was this. | = | これだった。 |
| 12. That's not the way it is. | = | そうじゃない。 |
| Q1) 友達? |
| A1) うん、友達。 (female) |
| Q2) 学校? |
| A2) ううん、学校じゃない。 |
| Q3) それだった? |
| A3) ううん、それじゃなかった。 |
| Q4) そう? (Is that so?) |
| A4) うん、そうだ。 (male) |
| Q5) これ? |
| A5) ううん、それじゃない。(object is away from the speaker) |
| Q6) 先生だった? |
| A6) うん、先生だった。 |
| Q7) 小学校だった? |
| A7) ううん、小学校じゃなかった。 |
| Q8) 子供? |
| A8) うん、子供。 (female) |
This page has last been revised on 2005/8/2 Added tenses for the conjugation exercise (2005/8/2)
Here, Bob is indicating that his question is about Alice. Notice how the 「だ」 is left out and yet the English translation has the word 'are' and 'am'. Since we know the topic is Alice, we don't need anything else to guess that Alice is a student. In fact, since Bob is asking a question, he can't attach 「だ」. That would be like trying to make a statement and asking a question at the same time.