How to Learn Japanese (4 page)

kanji
.

In today's world, the ability to write Japanese by hand is not as useful as it was. If you have a Japanese mobile phone, you can use the messaging function to remind you of
kanji
you have forgotten (don't try this in an exam). Writing on a computer with the aid of a dictionary is less difficult as the computer will select the
kanji
for you (to a certain extent). I explain how to learn to write Japanese
here
.

At this point, we have covered some of the main things you need to know before starting to study Japanese. Everyone is different and you are only limited by your energy and creativity. Find or invent the study methods that work for you. Do not lose sight of your goals. I believe anyone who has attained fluency in their own language can attain fluency in Japanese within a reasonable length of time if they so desire. Doing so will almost certainly change your life for the better. Good luck!

Perfecting pronunciation
Vowel sounds

 

Japanese has only five vowel sounds which do not change. Listen to them
here
.

A – Cat, attack. Not father I – See. Not I.
U – Who, you. Not umbrella. E – Egg.
O – Hot, con. Not open.

Here
are all the Japanese syllables (
go juu on –
50 sounds). It’s worth printing this table out and sticking it on your wall somewhere where you can see it.

 

Check out
the accompanying sound files
.

Just to note, both
hiragana
and
katakana
represent the same sounds;
hiragana
are used for Japanese words and
katakana
are used for foreign loan words (
gairaigo
). For more insight into the
kana
, check out Wikipedia on
hiragana
and
katakana
.

It is important to familiarise yourself with the layout and order of the
kana
table even if you do not intend to learn the
kana
. There are five columns based on the five vowel sounds of Japanese. Most rows will contain five sounds. Japanese is generally “alphabetised” according to the
kana
table layout.

Thinking in syllables
Understanding the
kana
table will also get you thinking in syllables which will help your Japanese greatly. It’s quite an easy concept to understand when you start using
kana
as usually one character represents one syllable, however, for those who write Japanese in
romaji
this may not be immediately clear.

Thinking in syllables helps to keep your pronunciation even and flat and also makes conjugating Japanese verbs and adjectives much easier.

Sounds
You may notice that there aren’t really all that many different sounds. English speakers should be able to pronounce all of them without too much difficulty.

One sound that may require practice is the
tsu
. Make sure that you can differentiate it from the
su
sound.

 

The Japanese
r
sound should be fine pronounced as an r but it is actually a blend of l and r which explains the difficulty some Japanese people have with those sounds.

 

The
chi
,
shi
and
fu
sounds are also worthy of note because they don’t quite fit the usual pattern (you would expect them to be ti, si and hu).

 

The
nn
sound is the only non-vowel sound. You may see it romanized as
n
or
m
.

Small
tsu
One point that needs explaining is the small
tsu
character. The small
tsu
has the effect of doubling up the following consonant which results in words like
atta
.

Dots and circles
You will see two dots in the top right hand corner of some of the characters looking much like an English apostrophe. This mark is usually called a
ten ten
, literally dot dot, and it changes the pronunciation of the characters as follows:

l
Syllable from the k row +
ten ten
= equivalent syllable from the g row.

 

l
Syllable from the s row +
ten ten
= equivalent syllable from the z row (note there is no zi, just a
ji
).
l
Syllable from the t row +
ten ten
= equivalent syllable from the d row (note there is no di or du, only a
ji
and a
zu
).

 

The small circle (
maru
) in the top right has a similar effect on pronunciation.
l
Syllable from the h row + circle = equivalent syllable from the p row.

 

Mnemonic: imagine the circle makes the character “happy” and you should find it easy to remember the h to p change.

 

These sounds produced by the dots and circles are known as
dakuon
and
handakuon
respectively
.

Combined syllables
The characters
ya
,
yu
and
yo
also appear as smaller versions of themselves and combine with other syllables to form new syllables as follows. You have seen all these characters before in the main chart so there is no need to panic.

Syllable counting
Now you’ve digested that information see if you can count how many syllables there are in the following words. Check the answers at the end of this chapter.

Au
to meet
Shimasu
to do (polite)
Wasurechatta
ended up forgetting

Su
The final part of the
su
syllable is sometimes omitted in speech. This is often applied to common words like
desu
, pronounced “dess” and the polite ending
-masu
, pronounced “mass”.

Ha
and
he
The topic particle
wa
is written with the character for
ha
. Thus the
ha
character is usually pronounced
wa
unless it is part of a word.
The particle
e
is written with the character
he
but pronounced
e
.

Common mistakes
Most of the common mistakes come from not knowing the correct pronunciation of the vowels and not separating the syllables. English spelling rules do not apply to Japanese. For example, the word
made
is not pronounced as the English, but as two separate syllables, “mah-deh”.

One difficulty for English is long and short vowel sounds which can completely alter the meaning of a word. This is something you are going to have to pay close attention to. Mistakes can be embarrassing, as in the probably apocryphal story of the American who, whilst trying to introduce himself as
Sumisu san no komon
(Mr Smith's adviser), actually introduces himself as
Sumisu san no koumon
(Mr Smith's anus).

Other easily confused words include (but are by no means limited to)
joushi
(boss) and
joshi
(woman),
shujin
(husband) and
shuujin
(prisoner).

Intonation
Intonation is a huge part of making your Japanese understandable. Try to pronounce everything as flatly as possible and give equal time and weight to each syllable. The best way to develop your intonation is to listen and repeat real Japanese from a CD or similar. Another good drill, called shadowing, involves speaking the Japanese words or sentence at the same time as the CD.

Noting where the particles are can make your Japanese pronunciation much better. Think of them as pause indicators that tell you when you can take a breath while speaking.

For example, look at these two sentences. Sentence 1 sounds much more natural than sentence 2.
l
Watashi
ha
… nihonjin
no
tomodachi
ni
… eigo
wo
… oshiete iru.
l
Watashi…
ha
nihonjin…
no
tomodachi…
ni
eigo…
wo
oshiete iru.

Literally translated, the above means, “I (topic) Japanese (belonging particle) friend (to) English language (object particle) teaching.” More naturally translated, “I’m teaching my Japanese friend English.”

 

As a Japanese learner, you will definitely need to pause while constructing sentences in your head and learning the correct time to pause to think will be invaluable.

Homonyms
Japanese contains a large number of homonyms (
douonigigo
). Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings e.g. blue/blew, lead/led etc. These can be distinguished either by context or by their
kanji
in the written form. Some words can have up to ten homonyms. An interesting sight in Japan is watching one person draw a
kanji
in the air to explain a word to another person.

Pronunciation practice
The king of all pronunciation drills has got to be the simple “listen and repeat”. You can use a CD or a live teacher to help you.

l
Stick with Japanese sentences that you can comfortably repeat at first.
l
Pay close attention to the intonation, the weight given to each syllable and where the pauses come.
l
Make sure to get feedback from your teacher about any words or sounds you have difficulty with.

Good pronunciation is not something that will come overnight but it can be improved so stick with it.

 

A variant on this drill is called shadowing. Here, you attempt to speak along with the CD you are listening to. You will need a script for this and it is quite difficult. It's definitely worth giving it a go.

If you are having trouble memorising or repeating long sentences one tip is to start at the end and work backwards. For example:
...ikimasu
.
...gakkou ni ikimasu.
...kuruma de gakkou ni ikimasu.
...tomodachi no kuruma de gakkou ni ikimasu.
...mainichi tomodachi no kuruma de gakkou ni ikimasu.
...Watashi ha mainichi tomodachi no kuruma de gakkou ni ikimasu.
(As for me/every day/friend's car/by/school/to/go.)

By doing this, you can build up to quite long sentences a little more easily than you would starting from the beginning.

To a beginner, native speaker speed Japanese can sound extremely fast. One trick I picked up to make it
more manageable was to use my PC to slow it down. You can do this with a free program called
Audacity
. Audacity allows you to import audio files from CD or tape or even record straight onto a microphone. The files can then be slowed down (or speeded up) as desired using the “change tempo” function.

Other language learning tricks you can do with Audacity include adding periods of silence to a track to give yourself time to repeat sentences and recording Japanese with your own voice. I recorded many of the
idioms in
Japanese Idioms
onto mp3 files myself for listening practice.

At the close of this chapter I would like to impress upon you the importance of developing good pronunciation as early as possible. The Japanese are much more picky about how their language is pronounced than English speakers are. It's possible this is due to the fact English speakers get more exposure to foreign accents or it could be something that is inherent to Japanese (or both).

Good pronunciation covers a multitude of sins and will make your Japanese seem much better than it actually is. On the other hand, even someone with an extensive knowledge of grammar and vocabulary will sound awful if their pronunciation is poor.

Answers to syllable counting quiz
Au
to meet 2
Shimasu
to do (polite) 3
Wasurechatta
ended up forgetting 5

Writing right

 

This chapter will actually cover both reading and writing as they are obviously closely intertwined.

 

When learning to read and write Japanese you should learn in this order:
katakana
,
hiragana
and
kanji
.

 

By learning
katakana
you will be able to understand many English loan words
. Katakana
are simpler and more angular than the
hiragana.
Hiragana
are necessary to start understanding Japanese and you can write Japanese entirely in
hiragana
if you do not understand
kanji. Hiragana
have a more rounded and flowing shape.

 

Kanji
are the hardest to master and should be left until you have fully mastered the
kana.
The sooner you can move away from the crutch of
romaji
(Roman letters) the better.

Stroke order
Both
kana
and
kanji
have a designated stroke order (
kakijun
). It's quite tempting for an English speaker to ignore correct stroke order, reasoning that it doesn't matter if the characters look OK and that learning the characters is hard enough without worrying about stroke order. Don't give in to temptation! Stroke order is very important and you are shooting yourself in the foot if you ignore it.

Correct stroke order will help make your handwriting legible and becomes quite intuitive after a while. The basic rule is to start in the top left corner and finish in the bottom right hand corner. There are rules for drawing boxes and other common shapes. Wikipedia has a nice explanation of stroke order
here
.

If you know the number of strokes in a
kanji
, you will be able to look it up in a dictionary without knowing the pronunciation or the reading. To be able to count the strokes it is essential to have a solid grasp of correct stroke order. If you don't know the stroke order for a character, check it in your dictionary or online. Once again, stroke order is important so get into good habits from the start.