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language of Japan
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English |
Conversational English is not widely spoken. Most Japanese people
have knowledge of English because it is studied in junior high and
high school. However, it is mostly reading, writing, and grammar
that is studied. This means that most people can read and write
better than they can speak. Sometimes writing something down may
help Japanese people understand better. If it is necessary to ask
someone on the street for help, you will have a better chance of
being understood if you ask a university aged person because they
are more likely to have studied English recently. English is also
widely used on signs throughout the country, especially in train
stations and subways. A lot of restaurants will have English
translations of their menus. The Tourist Information Centers (TICs)
will have English speakers, and can help with translations if
needed.
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Spoken Japanese |
Japanese is a phonetic language consisting of 5 vowel sounds (with
both a long and short sound) and 16 constant sounds that are
combined to make the Japanese alphabet. Japanese pronunciation is
easy to learn because each kana character has one sound and only one
sound consisting of a vowel and consonant. There are also some kana
representing single letter sounds: a, e, i, o, u, and n. This is
different from English where every letter can have many
pronunciations. However, Japanese grammar is more difficult to learn
because the verb comes at the end of the sentence, i.e. subject,
object, verb. Whereas English and other Latin based languages are
subject, verb, object. For example, when you translate "I bought a
shirt" into Japanese, it becomes "I a shirt bought". However, a lot
of times in Japanese the subject is not included at all it is
generally implied, therefore "I bought a shirt" becomes "bought a
shirt".
The Japanese language uses and contains loan words from English,
French, German and many other languages. For example the Japanese
word for hamburger is hanbagaa, hotel is hoteru, taxi is takushi,
bus is basu and beer is biiru. This is useful for travel because a
lot of western food uses the same or similar words, but with
slightly different pronunciation. However some loan word's
definitions were changed when they transitioned to Japanese, e.g.
manshun (mansion) means apartment, not a very large house.
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Written Japanese |
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Japanese writing is far more complex. There are three sets of
characters, two sets of phonetic kana and one of pictographic kanji.
The two types of kana are hiragana and katakana, and each contain 46
syllables. Hiragana is used for most words, whilst katakana is used
mainly for foreign words. Kanji is a set of Chinese characters used
to represent whole concepts; for example, the word "kitten" is
written with two kanji, one meaning "cat" and one meaning "child".
There are around 2000 kanji in common usage. The difference between
the three scripts is very obvious: hiragana is curvy and simple,
katakana is straight and simple, and kanji is complex. All three
sets of characters are intermixed in sentences in paragraphs. |
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 Japan Regions |
Japan country Information
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Hokkaido,
Chubu,
Kinki,
Shikoku,
Tohoku,
Kanto,
Chugoku,
Kyushu |
History,
Geography,
Government,
Economy
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Destinations in Japan
( Tokyo ) |
Japan Religion |
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Sightseeing of Japan |
Japan
Cuisine |
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Japan
cuisines |
Japan Culture |
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Weather of Japan |
Shopping
in Japan |
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Transport
of Japan |
Language
of Japan |
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Events
and Festivals |
Travel
tips of japan |
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World Heritage Monuments
Japan
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Map of
Japan |
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