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Thu, Feb. 23rd, 2006 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI feel like I have not been writing anything substantial of late in my LJ and that I'm not contributing to general discussion and whatnot.
Ergo, suddenly I have decided that what everyone really needs is a primer on the Japanese language!
This is most likely inspired by having to puzzle through Saiyuki Gaiden vol. 2 in Japanese just to figure out why in the world there was a dinosaur rampaging through Heaven.
The standard disclaimers: I took the equivalent of four and a half years of Japanese in college, including two months of homestay in Japan and a class on Japanese linguistics. Sadly, said class in Japanese linguistics was held entirely in Japanese, which slightly limited the depth of the concepts that could be discussed and understood by me. I am not a native speaker. I am, in fact, nowhere near a native speaker. I am also not a linguist and do not understand most linguistic concepts.
To put it in a little context, my level of Japanese is such that I can generally scan a newspaper or a book and figure out what's going on while mispronouncing half the kanji (I guess at the meanings because I know Chinese) and having some of the more complex grammatical constructions go over my head. I can watch some anime without subtitles, depending on if it's sci-fi (no way!) or My Neighbor Totoro (doable). So... grain of salt, everyone!
I also have no idea what people are interested in or what they already know, so any comments or future topics or questions or "Duh, everyone knows that!" would be very welcome.
Wikipedia has a really cool hiragana table. Actually, they have so much info that I'm not sure why I'm typing this all out. Hrm. Oh well!
Alphabet:
The Japanese alphabet isn't purely sound-based like the English one, but they do split words up into different sounds. There are 46 hiragana (one of the writing systems) that are usually taught:
You can see that everything consists mostly of syllables that are formed by a consonant+vowel. The first row has hiragana that are vowels only, and "n" is the only ending consonant.
I have no idea what happened to the missing "w" row, and while Wikipedia shows them in its hiragana table, those hiragana are very rarely used these days. The "wo" is actually pronounced just "o," but most romanization systems spell it out as "wo," probably because of its placement on the "w" row.
There are also seemingly random pronunciations in the table: "chi" instead of "ti," "shi" instead of "si," "tsu" instead of "tu" and "fu" instead of "hu." I think some other romanization systems will just use "ti" and etc. instead of sort of spelling the hiragana like it's pronounced. The fu/hu is sort of funny because it's half between an "h" and an "f;" sort of pronounced by trying to say "fu" without letting your teeth touch your lower lip. It sounds a little breathy.
I also have no idea who came up with this table in the first place.
The rows for "k," "s," "t," and "h" have the added option of adding two little marks to the upper right ("h" also has the option of an empty circle). This changes them to "g," "z," "d," and "b" ("p" with the empty circle). Except "shi" with two marks becomes "ji" instead of "zi." And "tsu" with the two marks becomes "zu" instead of "du." You can see these in Wikipedia's nifty cool hiragana table.
There's also an option of adding a small "ya," "yu" or "yo" or a small "tsu" to hiragana, but will touch on that in pronunciation.
Hiragana is mostly based off a style of Chinese calligraphy, supposedly (I'm not sure how true this is or how much it's one of those "Chinese characters look like what they represent" type things). So "a" supposedly looks like the Chinese character "an," written very messily in calligraphy. (The style is called tsau zi/grass words).
Supposedly, katakana is as well. Hiragana is swirly and round and somewhat organic-looking (imho), while katakana is very angular. Katakana has all the same corresponding kana as hiragana, though the one for "wo" isn't used all too often. I also don't know when katakana was invented.
Most of you probably already know that hiragana is used largely for "native" Japanese words while katakana is used for loan words. Ex. "watashi" (me) would be written out in hiragana if you didn't already know the kanji for it, while "pan" (bread, from Portuguese) is usually still written out in katakana. My linguistics teacher also had a theory that since katakana looks more angular, it's more often used as emphasis. In manga, I've seen it used completely randomly, for emphasis, for names when the author doesn't want to associate kanji meanings, for names authors want to sound more foreign, and etc. Usually I'll see bits and pieces of katakana used for sentence endings like "yo" and "no" for emotional emphasis.
The most interesting use I've seen is using katakana to act as furigana (the hiragana/katakana next to kanji telling you how to pronounce them) for kanji to indicate a completely different reading. Ex. The kanji for "monkey," usually pronounced "saru," will be printed with "Goku" in katakana so that visually you know that the author is equating "Goku" with "monkey" even though it sounds like "Goku" (one of the reasons why I like the graphic novel medium).
Kanji is technically not an alphabet, so I'm ignoring it here.
Pronunciation:
Japanese is actually pretty easy to pronounce (it's the grammar and the formality levels that get a little complicated).
"a" - a short "ah," as in "father"
"i" - a short "ee," as in "bee"
"u" - a short "oo," as in "whoo!" or "boot," if you whoo differently from me
"e" - a short "eh," as in "elf"
"o" - a short "oh," as in "sofa"
I stuck "short" in all the descriptions because that's what my teachers said. Also, they just sound a wee bit shorter. Of course, the length of the vowels completely varies with emotional state. Ex. "Hara ga heta" (I'm hungry, or, literally, guts empty/lacking) becomes "Hara ga hetaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" when Goku is very hungry (aka, most of the time).
The vowels can be elongated as follows:
a --> aa ("ah" --> "aah" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is enlightened in the non-Buddhist way)
i --> ii ("ee" --> "eeee" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is overly excited)
u --> uu ("oo" --> "oooo" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is confronted by something shiny)
e --> ee or ei (both pronounced "eh" --> "eeh" aka the sound Oyce makes when confused)
o --> oo or ou (both pronounced "oh" -- "ooh" aka the other sound Oyce makes when enlightened)
The long forms of the vowels are usually romanized with a macron or the little upside-down "v" accent mark; I think the macron is pretty standard right now. I've also seen "oo" or "ou" and etc. spelled out though. I personally like spelling out the "ou" just so I know how to spell it in hiragana, but that's just me. So "Tokyo" is actually "Toukyou" and "Kyoto" is actually "Kyouto" (the "kyou" in both is the same character, stands for capital). Ergo funny stories of people who have accidentally called someone's husband (husband is "shujin") a prisoner ("shuujin") by accident. Although my personal favorite is shojo/shoujo (virgin/girl).
The consonants are generally pretty easy (just go with English pronunciations) except for a few things.
There's the breathy "fu" that I mentioned earlier.
A lot of people in my class had problems with the "tsu" sound. It's just how it's typed out, a combination of "s" and "t." My teacher used to tell us to say "cats" and add an "u" to the end.
The "g" sound is supposed to be a combination of "g" and "n," especially in the particle "ga," which sounds more like "nga." (Try saying "ga" with your nose pinched and it's something like that. Very nasal). So while you can say it as a hard "g" and everyone will understand you, I think it's nicer or something to say it with that nasal bit. And it's always a hard "g," like "game" and not a soft one like "genie."
A lot of people in my class also had problems with the "r" sound, which is a combination of "r" and "l" and famously leads to things like "French flies" instead of "French fries." I usually sort of pronounce it as an "l" and then roll my tongue just a wee bit.
The y hiragana (ya, yu, yo) can be written small next to a normal-sized hiragana that's a consonant (it's usually placed to the bottom right when it's written vertically and on the bottom like a subscript when written horizontally). You can see these in Wikipedia's cool hiragana table. This results in very confusing attempts to romanize things! Sometimes it comes up with sounds that don't usually happen in English ("kya," "nyo," "hyu,") but sometimes they do have English counterparts. So then you get "sha" or "shya" or "jo" or "jyo." They're the same thing, in terms of hiragana spelling.
There's also the little "tsu," placed at the same place the y's are. The small tsu can only be placed in front of consonants, because it means you do this funny thing when you almost hold your breath a teeny bit at the small tsu and pronounce the consonant after it more strongly. So "Hakkai" is pronounced with a bit of a glottal stop (I think that's what it's called) right before the "k." So... it sounds sort of like "Hak" after you swallow the k, pause a tiny, tiny bit, and then spit out the "kai."
Ok, that didn't even make sense to me, but it's hard to demo without being able to say something! Also, as you have probably noticed, the small tsu is represented in romanization by the doubled consonant, since there's only one ending consonant in Japanese (n, sometimes spelled as m in front of p or b sounds). That's why there's sometimes the little apostrophe to illustrate the difference between a small tsu + n and an actual ending n + n. Ex. Ten'no instead of Tenno. Although for the life of me, I can't think of a small tsu + n vocab word off the top of my head.
For word pronunciation... hrm. Japanese isn't a tonal language like Chinese, but there are high and low tones in words that are almost sort of like emphasis but not really. It's almost like pitch, if that makes sense. And the stresses make a big difference. I've found that generally, three-syllable words usually have the stress on the first syllable, as opposed to the second (where English-speaking people would usually place it). Ergo, SA-ku-ra instead of sa-KU-ra or YA-ku-za instead of ya-KU-za. I am snobby and will grate my teeth when people say ya-KU-za. And often with four syllable words, the syllable is often on the second syllable, but then again, I could totally be making that one up.
There's also a rhythm to the sentences... instead of wa-TA-shi WA (the general pronunciation used in class, wargh), it should be just wa-ta-shi wa, without any one syllable being stressed. I dunno. I guess I get the feeling that there just aren't that many drawls or stresses, the entire spoken language sounds higher and smoother to me. But, um, that could just be me
And now I'm tired. Is this at all useful? Any other topics? I was thinking of doing grammar, verb conjugation, kanji, politeness levels (crucial for understanding anime!), weird things about learning Japanese when you already know Chinese, and a list of common anime and manga vocab words (aka, the words I first learned but still can't use in everyday conversation because they involve mecha).
Ergo, suddenly I have decided that what everyone really needs is a primer on the Japanese language!
This is most likely inspired by having to puzzle through Saiyuki Gaiden vol. 2 in Japanese just to figure out why in the world there was a dinosaur rampaging through Heaven.
The standard disclaimers: I took the equivalent of four and a half years of Japanese in college, including two months of homestay in Japan and a class on Japanese linguistics. Sadly, said class in Japanese linguistics was held entirely in Japanese, which slightly limited the depth of the concepts that could be discussed and understood by me. I am not a native speaker. I am, in fact, nowhere near a native speaker. I am also not a linguist and do not understand most linguistic concepts.
To put it in a little context, my level of Japanese is such that I can generally scan a newspaper or a book and figure out what's going on while mispronouncing half the kanji (I guess at the meanings because I know Chinese) and having some of the more complex grammatical constructions go over my head. I can watch some anime without subtitles, depending on if it's sci-fi (no way!) or My Neighbor Totoro (doable). So... grain of salt, everyone!
I also have no idea what people are interested in or what they already know, so any comments or future topics or questions or "Duh, everyone knows that!" would be very welcome.
Wikipedia has a really cool hiragana table. Actually, they have so much info that I'm not sure why I'm typing this all out. Hrm. Oh well!
Alphabet:
The Japanese alphabet isn't purely sound-based like the English one, but they do split words up into different sounds. There are 46 hiragana (one of the writing systems) that are usually taught:
| a | i | u | e | o |
| ka | ki | ku | ke | ko |
| sa | shi | su | se | so |
| ta | chi | tsu | te | to |
| na | ni | nu | ne | no |
| ha | hi | fu | he | ho |
| ma | mi | mu | me | mo |
| ya | - | yu | - | yo |
| ra | ri | ru | re | ro |
| wa | - | - | - | wo |
| n | - | - | - | - |
You can see that everything consists mostly of syllables that are formed by a consonant+vowel. The first row has hiragana that are vowels only, and "n" is the only ending consonant.
I have no idea what happened to the missing "w" row, and while Wikipedia shows them in its hiragana table, those hiragana are very rarely used these days. The "wo" is actually pronounced just "o," but most romanization systems spell it out as "wo," probably because of its placement on the "w" row.
There are also seemingly random pronunciations in the table: "chi" instead of "ti," "shi" instead of "si," "tsu" instead of "tu" and "fu" instead of "hu." I think some other romanization systems will just use "ti" and etc. instead of sort of spelling the hiragana like it's pronounced. The fu/hu is sort of funny because it's half between an "h" and an "f;" sort of pronounced by trying to say "fu" without letting your teeth touch your lower lip. It sounds a little breathy.
I also have no idea who came up with this table in the first place.
The rows for "k," "s," "t," and "h" have the added option of adding two little marks to the upper right ("h" also has the option of an empty circle). This changes them to "g," "z," "d," and "b" ("p" with the empty circle). Except "shi" with two marks becomes "ji" instead of "zi." And "tsu" with the two marks becomes "zu" instead of "du." You can see these in Wikipedia's nifty cool hiragana table.
There's also an option of adding a small "ya," "yu" or "yo" or a small "tsu" to hiragana, but will touch on that in pronunciation.
Hiragana is mostly based off a style of Chinese calligraphy, supposedly (I'm not sure how true this is or how much it's one of those "Chinese characters look like what they represent" type things). So "a" supposedly looks like the Chinese character "an," written very messily in calligraphy. (The style is called tsau zi/grass words).
Supposedly, katakana is as well. Hiragana is swirly and round and somewhat organic-looking (imho), while katakana is very angular. Katakana has all the same corresponding kana as hiragana, though the one for "wo" isn't used all too often. I also don't know when katakana was invented.
Most of you probably already know that hiragana is used largely for "native" Japanese words while katakana is used for loan words. Ex. "watashi" (me) would be written out in hiragana if you didn't already know the kanji for it, while "pan" (bread, from Portuguese) is usually still written out in katakana. My linguistics teacher also had a theory that since katakana looks more angular, it's more often used as emphasis. In manga, I've seen it used completely randomly, for emphasis, for names when the author doesn't want to associate kanji meanings, for names authors want to sound more foreign, and etc. Usually I'll see bits and pieces of katakana used for sentence endings like "yo" and "no" for emotional emphasis.
The most interesting use I've seen is using katakana to act as furigana (the hiragana/katakana next to kanji telling you how to pronounce them) for kanji to indicate a completely different reading. Ex. The kanji for "monkey," usually pronounced "saru," will be printed with "Goku" in katakana so that visually you know that the author is equating "Goku" with "monkey" even though it sounds like "Goku" (one of the reasons why I like the graphic novel medium).
Kanji is technically not an alphabet, so I'm ignoring it here.
Pronunciation:
Japanese is actually pretty easy to pronounce (it's the grammar and the formality levels that get a little complicated).
"a" - a short "ah," as in "father"
"i" - a short "ee," as in "bee"
"u" - a short "oo," as in "whoo!" or "boot," if you whoo differently from me
"e" - a short "eh," as in "elf"
"o" - a short "oh," as in "sofa"
I stuck "short" in all the descriptions because that's what my teachers said. Also, they just sound a wee bit shorter. Of course, the length of the vowels completely varies with emotional state. Ex. "Hara ga heta" (I'm hungry, or, literally, guts empty/lacking) becomes "Hara ga hetaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" when Goku is very hungry (aka, most of the time).
The vowels can be elongated as follows:
a --> aa ("ah" --> "aah" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is enlightened in the non-Buddhist way)
i --> ii ("ee" --> "eeee" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is overly excited)
u --> uu ("oo" --> "oooo" aka the sound Oyce makes when she is confronted by something shiny)
e --> ee or ei (both pronounced "eh" --> "eeh" aka the sound Oyce makes when confused)
o --> oo or ou (both pronounced "oh" -- "ooh" aka the other sound Oyce makes when enlightened)
The long forms of the vowels are usually romanized with a macron or the little upside-down "v" accent mark; I think the macron is pretty standard right now. I've also seen "oo" or "ou" and etc. spelled out though. I personally like spelling out the "ou" just so I know how to spell it in hiragana, but that's just me. So "Tokyo" is actually "Toukyou" and "Kyoto" is actually "Kyouto" (the "kyou" in both is the same character, stands for capital). Ergo funny stories of people who have accidentally called someone's husband (husband is "shujin") a prisoner ("shuujin") by accident. Although my personal favorite is shojo/shoujo (virgin/girl).
The consonants are generally pretty easy (just go with English pronunciations) except for a few things.
There's the breathy "fu" that I mentioned earlier.
A lot of people in my class had problems with the "tsu" sound. It's just how it's typed out, a combination of "s" and "t." My teacher used to tell us to say "cats" and add an "u" to the end.
The "g" sound is supposed to be a combination of "g" and "n," especially in the particle "ga," which sounds more like "nga." (Try saying "ga" with your nose pinched and it's something like that. Very nasal). So while you can say it as a hard "g" and everyone will understand you, I think it's nicer or something to say it with that nasal bit. And it's always a hard "g," like "game" and not a soft one like "genie."
A lot of people in my class also had problems with the "r" sound, which is a combination of "r" and "l" and famously leads to things like "French flies" instead of "French fries." I usually sort of pronounce it as an "l" and then roll my tongue just a wee bit.
The y hiragana (ya, yu, yo) can be written small next to a normal-sized hiragana that's a consonant (it's usually placed to the bottom right when it's written vertically and on the bottom like a subscript when written horizontally). You can see these in Wikipedia's cool hiragana table. This results in very confusing attempts to romanize things! Sometimes it comes up with sounds that don't usually happen in English ("kya," "nyo," "hyu,") but sometimes they do have English counterparts. So then you get "sha" or "shya" or "jo" or "jyo." They're the same thing, in terms of hiragana spelling.
There's also the little "tsu," placed at the same place the y's are. The small tsu can only be placed in front of consonants, because it means you do this funny thing when you almost hold your breath a teeny bit at the small tsu and pronounce the consonant after it more strongly. So "Hakkai" is pronounced with a bit of a glottal stop (I think that's what it's called) right before the "k." So... it sounds sort of like "Hak" after you swallow the k, pause a tiny, tiny bit, and then spit out the "kai."
Ok, that didn't even make sense to me, but it's hard to demo without being able to say something! Also, as you have probably noticed, the small tsu is represented in romanization by the doubled consonant, since there's only one ending consonant in Japanese (n, sometimes spelled as m in front of p or b sounds). That's why there's sometimes the little apostrophe to illustrate the difference between a small tsu + n and an actual ending n + n. Ex. Ten'no instead of Tenno. Although for the life of me, I can't think of a small tsu + n vocab word off the top of my head.
For word pronunciation... hrm. Japanese isn't a tonal language like Chinese, but there are high and low tones in words that are almost sort of like emphasis but not really. It's almost like pitch, if that makes sense. And the stresses make a big difference. I've found that generally, three-syllable words usually have the stress on the first syllable, as opposed to the second (where English-speaking people would usually place it). Ergo, SA-ku-ra instead of sa-KU-ra or YA-ku-za instead of ya-KU-za. I am snobby and will grate my teeth when people say ya-KU-za. And often with four syllable words, the syllable is often on the second syllable, but then again, I could totally be making that one up.
There's also a rhythm to the sentences... instead of wa-TA-shi WA (the general pronunciation used in class, wargh), it should be just wa-ta-shi wa, without any one syllable being stressed. I dunno. I guess I get the feeling that there just aren't that many drawls or stresses, the entire spoken language sounds higher and smoother to me. But, um, that could just be me
And now I'm tired. Is this at all useful? Any other topics? I was thinking of doing grammar, verb conjugation, kanji, politeness levels (crucial for understanding anime!), weird things about learning Japanese when you already know Chinese, and a list of common anime and manga vocab words (aka, the words I first learned but still can't use in everyday conversation because they involve mecha).
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