Introduction

Home , Chi (kana), E (kana), Fu (kana), Ha (kana), He (kana), Hiragana

INTRODUCTION

Overview of text

Description of the Japanese Language I. Japanese Language II. Writing System (overview) III. Speech Sound IV. Sound Unit V. Writing System VI. Sentence Structure

Japanese is a language spoken by people in Japan and some descendants of the Japanese who have immigrated to communities in countries around the world, for example Brazil, Hawaii, Northern California, and North Sydney.

II. Writing System (Overview)

Japanese is written using a combination of hiragana, katakana, and Chinese characters (kanji). All Japanese writing scripts were derived from Chinese characters over 1000 years ago. Hiragana and katakana are characters that have been simplified tremendously and stripped of meaning. They are syllabaries, which represent the sounds of the Japanese language. Kanji are ideograms, used to write words. There will be a more detailed section on kanji later in this introduction, in addition to the kanji sections found in each paragraph. In general, each of the scripts is used as follows:

Category Appearance Usage hiragana “curvy” All sounds in Japanese; typically used for particles, inflectional endings (“conjugations”) of verbs, adjectives and the like, and some words that are typically not written in kanji katakana “angular” While katakana can be used to write all sounds in Japanese, it is typically used to write borrowed words, and onomatopoeia kanji Chinese Characters Kanji are generally used to write words, such as nouns, and the roots of verbs and adjectives

The Japanese syllabaries hiragana and katakana consist of 46 characters each, consisting of vowel sounds (-a, i, -u, -e, -o), consonant plus vowel sounds, and a syllabic –n. Diacritical marks (the “ten-ten”, or “small circle”) may be added to make “voiced” sounds. Finally, “glides,” or sounds with –ya, -yu, and –yo, in words such as “Tokyo” or “Kyoto” are indicated in writing with “small –ya, -yu, or –yo” following hiragana in the –-i line.

See Section V in this introduction for a detailed introduction to hiragana, katakana and kanji.

III. Speech Sound

All human language consists of two basic categories of sounds, consonants and vowels. Consonant sounds are the sounds created with friction in the mouth. The initial sounds [p] and [b] in the following words, pig and book, are created by the friction between the lips and the exhalation of air from the lungs. What makes [p] and [b] sound different is the state of vocal folds; the vocal folds do not vibrate when [p] is pronounced and the vocal folds vibrate when [b] is pronounced. Those sounds produced by the vibration of vocal folds are called voiced sounds, whereas the sounds produced without vibration is called voiceless sounds. Vowels are sounds created without any friction in the mouth. The inventory of Japanese speech sound is smaller than English (23 consonants and 5 vowels in Japanese vs. 26 consonants and 12 vowels in English), which is to say that the Japanese language lacks some sounds that exist in English.

Many Japanese native speakers find it difficult to produce consonant sounds such as the ones in the initial position of the following words, think, they, victory, rabbit since these sounds do not exist in their native language. By contrast there are very few sounds in Japanese that pose problems for native speakers of English, but take the time to work on your pronunciation.

IV. Sound Unit

Words in any languages are formed with a certain sequence of consonants (C) and vowels (V) and can be organized into an abstract sound unit called a syllable. For example, the English word “stripper” composed of two syllables, “strip” and “per”. English syllable structure can be quite complex, including syllables with CCCVC as the structure, as you can see in the e example “striper.” The first syllable starts with three consonants [s-t-r], followed by a vowel [i] and then another consonant [p] at the end). In contrast with English, the Japanese syllable structure is very simple, having only three patterns, V (vowels by themselves, as in the the syllable of the word atama—head), CV (in words such as Toyota, which consists of three CV syllables) and a consonant by itself. (This syllable structure is restricted to the so-called syllabic N (as in Honda or pen, or the syllabic beat that appears with so-called “double consonants.)

V. Writing System (A detailed introduction)

The Japanese language is written using a combination of hiragana, katakana, and Chinese characters (kanji). All Japanese writing scripts were derived from Chinese characters over 1000 years ago. Hiragana and katakana are characters that have been simplified tremendously and stripped of meaning. They are syllabaries, which represent the sounds of the Japanese language. Kanji are ideograms. In general, each of the scripts is used as follows:

The Japanese syllabaries hiragana and katakana consist of 46 characters each, consisting of vowel sounds (-a, i, -u, -e, -o), consonant plus vowel sounds, and a syllabic –n. Diacritical marks (the “ten-ten”, or “small circle) may be added to make “voiced” sounds. Finally, “glides,” or sounds with -ya, -yu, and -yo, in words such as “Tokyo” or “Kyoto” are indicated in writing with “small -ya, -yu, or -yo” following hiragana in the –-i line.

In addition to the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, the Japanese use kanji (Chinese characters) as part of the orthographical system. At present, there are 2,136 jōyō kanji ( じょうようかんじ常用漢字 regular-use kanji) plus an additional 983 kanji that may be used to write

personal names. Kanji are ideographs, representing semantic units, and in Japanese may be pronounced according to their so-called Chinese pronunciation, or their so-called Japanese pronunciation. You will be learning approximately 15 Chinese characters each chapter. A single sentence may contain all of the writing forms; some may even have roman letters used to write words or expressions. Look at the sentence below: try to determine which elements are hiragana, which katakana, and which are Chinese characters.

私はコンピューター科学の先生です。 Watashi wa (particle) Konpyuutaa kagaku no Sensei desu.

As for me (topic), I am a computer science instructor.

Familiarize yourself with the layout of the hiragana chart as you memorize the hiragana. The layout itself is a memory aid. The chart shows a grid of 5 base vowels plus the 10 base consonant combinations. Notice that some boxes are empty, meaning the sound/symbol combination doesn’t exist in modern Japanese. More complex sounds are indicated with diacritical marks or hiragana combinations, as we will see later in the Introduction. Your teacher will probably refer to hiragana in the “k” line, for example, or in the “m” line.

1. Hiragana k s t n h m Y r w n a あかさたなはまやらわん i いきしちにひみり u うくすつぬふむゆる e えけせてねへめれ o おこそとのほもよろを

In general, Japanese pronunciation is relatively straightforward. Vowels are pronounced like vowels in Spanish or Italian, and consonants have almost the same value as in English, though most are not enounced as forcefully as in English. The charts below provide the hiragana symbol, its common Romaji equivalent, its pronunciation, and some English words that contain sounds with the approximate pronunciation. The chart will also identify key similarities and differences if they exist.

The Japanese sound system is as follows: Vowels あ [a] Sounds like [a] in “father”, but shorter い [i] Sounds like [i] in “beat” or “eat,” but shorter う [u] Sounds like [u] in “boot” or “oops,” but shorter, and the lips aren’t rounded え [e] Sounds like [e] in “pen” or “west” お [o] Sounds like [o] in “horde” or “go,” but it is shorter and the lips are rounded

The base vowel sounds can be combined with the following consonant sounds: [k], [s], [t], [n], [h], [m], [y], [r], and [w], and with the following voiced consonants: [g], [z], [d], [b],

and [p]. The remaining hiragana indicate syllables consisting of these consonant + vowel combinations, or with additional more complex combinations.

k-line か [ka] Sounds like [k] in “cat” or “karate” き [ki] Sounds like [k] in “key” or “keep” く [ku] Sounds like the [k] in “coo” or “coop” け [ke] Sounds like [k] in “kept” こ [ko] Sounds like [k] in “coat”

[k] sounds in Japanese are like the [k] in English, but are a little lighter, articulated a bit further forward in the mouth, and in the case of く and こ without rounding the lips. s-line さ [sa] Sounds like [s] in “sake” (rice wine) or “sat” し [shi] Sounds like [shi] in “sheep” or “she” す [su] Sounds like the [su] in “soup” せ [se] Sounds like [se] in “cent” or “septic” そ [so] Sounds like the [so] sound in “soap” or “soak”

In general, the [s] sounds are like English, but notice that there is a soun change when an [s] sound comes before an [i] sound. Then it is pronounced like the English word “she.” Articulate the sound further forward in your mouth, and don’t aspirate the initial sounds as much. t-line た [ta] Sounds like [t] in “tap” or “attack” ち [chi] Sounds like [chi] in “cheap” or “chip” つ [tsu] Sounds like the [tsu] in “eats” or “it’s” て [te] Sounds like [te] in “tepid” or “tent” or “tsetse” と [to] Sounds like the [to] sound in “tote” or “toe”

The [t] line sounds are like English but there are two combinations where there are sound changes. Again the sound is pronounced further forward in your mouth and there is less aspiration of the initial sound.

n-line な [na] Sounds like [na] in “nap” or “Granada” に [ni] Sounds like [ni] in “neat” or “knee” ぬ [nu] Sounds like [nu] in “noodle” or “nude”

ね [ne] Sounds like [ne] in “net” or “nest” or “neck” の [no] Sounds like the [no] sound in “note” or “no”

The [n] line sounds are completely regular in Japanese. However the vowel sounds that follow in this line are shorter and not as rounded as in English. h-line は [ha] Sounds like [ha] in “hahaha” or “happy” ひ [hi] Sounds like [hi] in “heat,” “he” or “Asahi” ふ [fu] Sounds like the [fu] in “foot” or “tofu” へ [he] Sounds like [he] in “hen” or “heavy” ほ [ho] Sounds like the [ho] sound in “Honda” or “hokey”

In general, the [h] line sounds are much weaker than in English. In addition, the [hi] sound is articulated a little higher and with more friction. Note also that the Japanese [h] sound combined with [u] is much closer to the pronunciation “fu” as in “foot,” or like a puff of air. m-line ま [ma] Sounds like [ma] in “mama” or “map” み [mi] Sounds like [mi] in “do-re-mi,” “me” or meat. む [mu] Sounds like [mu] in “moot” or “mood” め [me] Sounds like [me] in “medal” or “many” も [mo] Sounds like the [mo] sound in “mope” or “more”

The m-line sounds are completely regular and almost identical to the [m] sounds in English. The vowels are a bit shorter. y-line や [ya] Sounds like [ya] in “yap” or “yacht”

ゆ [yu] Sounds like [yu] in “yoohoo” or “ukelele”

よ [yo] Sounds like [yo] sound in “yodel”

Sounds in the [y] line are regular and like the English [y]. Note, however, that there is no [yi] or [ye] sound in modern Japanese. There are additional sounds where the –y sound follows immediately after the initial consonants. These are called glides and will be covered below. Glides can be found in such common words as Tokyo or Kyoto. r-line ら [ra] Sounds like [ra] in “rabbit” or “ratchet”

り [ri] Sounds like [ri] in “merry” or “repeat” る [ru] Sounds like [ru] in “rule” or “loot” れ [re] Sounds like [re] in “ready” ろ [ro] Sounds like [ro] sound in “robot

Pay particular attention to how you pronounce the [r] line sounds in Japanese. It is called a “flap r” (because you flick the tip of your tongue against the ridge behind your front teeth) and sounds somewhere between the English letters [r], [l], and [d]. The standard American –r is too strong. Think about the British expression, “Very very good,” or the medial consonant sound in the American pronunciation of “Patty.” These sounds are pretty close to sounds in the Japanese /r/ line. w-line わ [wa] Sounds like [wa] in “what” or “watt”

を [o] Sounds like [o] お

In modern standard Japanese there are only two w-line hiragana. Note that the “わ” sound is regular. を sounds more like “o” in modern Standard Japanese. You will soon learn that this を has restricted usage and is only used as a grammatical particle.

Syllabic consonant ん [n]. Note that the sounds represented by this hiragana vary depending upon what sounds follow it. a. before m, p, b —ん is pronounced [m] (Shimbun=newspaper) b. before n, t, d, or z—ん is pronounced [n] (kantan=simple, easy) c. before k, g, and at end of word—ん pronounced a bit like a nasal [ng]

Complex Sounds in Japanese In addition to the basic C and CV sounds as described above, the Japanese language contains some more complex sounds. In writing, these sounds are indicated through the use of diacritical marks or other writing conventions. Complex sounds include voiced sounds, double consonants, and glides.

Diacritical Marks In addition to the basic hiragana symbols presented above, there are two diacritical marks that change the pronunciation of the basic syllable. The two diacritical marks are two small marks and a small circle placed immediately to the right of the hiragana symbol. The diacritical marks changes the basic hiragana sounds as follows.

Mark Name function ゜ Small circle “maru” or “handakuten” Turns the /h/ sounds into ‘p’ sounds

〝 “ten-ten” or “dakuten” Make voiceless into voiced sounds

When ゜is added to the h-line characters, they turn into p-line. p a ぱ i ぴ u ぷ e ぺ o ぽ

When 〝 is added to the voiceless consonant lines (k-line, s-line, t-line and h-line), they turn into voiced consonant lines. g z d b a がざだば i ぎじぢび u ぐずづぶ e げぜでべ o ごぞどぼ

If you look at the chart immediately above, you see when hiragana in the k-line have the two dots added, the /k/ sounds turn to /g/; similarly, /s/ sounds turn to /z/ sounds; /t/ sounds turn to /d/ sounds, and /h/ sounds turn to /b/ sounds, when the two dots are added, and /p/ sounds when the small circle is added. Note that there are some sound changes, indicated with bold outline in the chart above.

Summary of voicing changes  [k] [g] all sounds regular  [s] [z] note that when the “ten ten” is added to し the resulting sound is [ji] as in Jimbocho.  [t] [d] the だ,で,ど sounds are regular; but when the diacritical mark is added to ち、the resulting sound is [ji] as in Jimbocho, and when added to つ, the resulting sound is [zu] While the voiced sound written じ is extremely common, the voiced sounds written ぢ and づ occur with much less frequency.  [h]  [b] all sounds regular  [h]  [p] when small circle is added, the [h] sound becomes a [p] sound

Glides The following charts show how glides are written in Japanese. Glides are sounds containing a –ya, -yu, -yo sound that follows immediately after a consonant. Glides are very common in Japanese and occur in words like Tokyo, Kyoto, and ocha (tea). The –y sound doesn’t take a full syllabic beat.

Voiceless Glides (to form glides, you add a “small –ya/yu/yo” after a hiragana in the i- vowel line. Glides can be start with the following consonants: k, s, t, n, h, m, r, as shown in the chart below. As you can see by the second chart, glides can also include voiced sounds.

k s t n h m r -ya きゃしゃちゃにゃひゃみゃりゃ -yu きゅしゅちゅにゅひゅみゅりゅ -yo きょしょちょにょひょみょりょ

Voiced Glides (to form glides, you add a “small –ya/yu/yo” after a hiragana in the following lines) g z d b -ya ぎゃじゃぢゃびゃ -yu ぎゅじゅぢゅびゅ -yo ぎょじょぢょびょ

Bilabial Glides (to form bilabial glides, you add a “small –ya/yu/yo” after a hiragana in the P-line)

ぴゃぴゅぴょ

Double Consonant Many words in Japanese also have something called a “double consonant” in most Japanese language textbooks even though it isn’t really pronounced that way. The reason for this is because when written in Romaji, the sound appears as doubled consonant. Rather, the “doubled” consonant sound is held for two beats, with a kind of glottal stop before the sound is articulated. In Japanese orthography, this sound is conventionally indicated with a small hiragana っ.

To indicate double consonants, a small っ appears before the sounds p, t, s, k. In terms of pronunciation, the hiragana indicates that there is a glottal stop before the consonant that follows. Hold the following sound for two beats. The followings are the examples.

きっぷ kippu “ticket” きって kitte “stamp” きっさてん kissaten “coffee shop/café” にっき nikki “diary”

Japanese Intonation 9

Unlike English, which has a stress accent, Japanese has a pitch accent. This means that every word exhibits a particular pitch accent pattern, where some syllables may be high and others low. In addition, except in the case of glides, every syllable has approximately the same duration. For standard Tokyo Japanese, there are a few accent patterns to note:

 The first two syllables of a word are always different in pitch.  Two-syllable words: L-H or H-L  Three-syllable words: L-H-H; L-H-L; or H-L-L  Four-syllable words: L-H-H-H; L-H-H-L; L-H-L-L; or H-L-L-L

There is generally a slight raise of pitch at the final syllable, usually to indicate questions, or empathy. The most common pattern start at a low pitch and then goes to a higher pitch. Intonation in Japanese is not difficult, but take a little time to work on it.

B. Katakana

The katakana syllabary contains all of the sounds that are found in the hiragana syllabary. The chart below shows the basic katakana symbols. Katakana may be used in glides, or with diacritical marks to indicate voiced sounds or the sound “p”. Katakana can also be used to indicate some additional sounds from borrowed words.

k s t n h m Y r w n a アカサタナハマヤラワン i イキシチニヒミリ u ウクスツヌフムユル e エケセテネへメレ o オコソトノホモヨロヲ

C. Kanji (Chinese Characters)

You might wonder why kanji are one of the corner stones of the modern Japanese writing system. There are historical reasons why this is so. The Chinese had already begun to develop a writing system some 4000 years ago. By around the 4th century C.E. the Chinese writing system was largely established, consisting of a system of ideographs. By contrast, the Japanese did not independently develop their own writing system. They were introduced to Chinese characters, as official seals, documents and letters that were brought into Japan starting around the first century C.E.

It was not until the fifth century C.E. that the Japanese people began to utilize a written language. Initially Chinese was used as a written language of the elite, in a similar fashion to the way that Latin was used in Europe in the middle ages. These individuals—primarily men—used Chinese as Chinese as a way of writing things they wanted to write. In other words, Japanese still didn’t have an independent written form: texts that were written were written and read in Chinese. Over time, however, there

10 were numerous experiments in adapting the use of Chinese characters to create a way to write Japanese.

Manyōgana, which emerged in the mid-7th century, was one of these forms. In this form, writers used a subset of Chinese characters for their sound only to transcribe the sounds of Japanese. The kanji that were used in this method bore no semantic weight. A famous Japanese poetry collection, The Manyōshū was written using this method. Over time, the number of characters that could be used in this manner decreased, and more significantly, the actual shape of these characters was simplified, leading to the development of hiragana, which provided a simple syllabic way of indicating the sounds of Japanese.

The chart below shows the development of hiragana from Chinese characters.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/; image provided by Steph Holloway.

The development of a streamlined writing system allowed writing in Japan to flourish, leading swiftly to numerous literary works that are now classics, including The Tale of Genji, numerous poetry collections and others.

Katakana developed similarly, but many of the katakana symbols are based on entirely different characters, as you can see by the chart below. Katakana was originally used to write Buddhist sutras and other religious texts. At the present day, katakana is used mainly to write words borrowed from languages other than Chinese, like ペン(pen) and コンピューター (computer) and onomatopoeic words.

Almost as soon as the syllabaries had developed, writers began to utilize Chinese characters for their semantic value, or they began to use actual words borrowed from Chinese. While this further streamlined writing in some sense, it caused additional complications, namely related to how particular characters should be pronounced.

Consequently, most kanji have multiple pronunciations…some common kanji have as many as 10 different ways they can be pronounced!

Here’s one way to think about all these different pronunciations.

おんよ音読み (Onyomi)—Chinese Reading The onyomi of kanji is the so-called Chinese pronunciation of the kanji as they were pronounced in China originally. In fact, a single kanji may have multiple onyomi, given that kanji and words were borrowed over time, leading to different pronunciations and even slightly different meanings for the same character. In the kanji section, this text will indicate onyomi with katakana. Keep in mind the following: the vast majority of onyomi are a single syllable long, and you will find the so-called Chinese pronunciation in kanji compounds (words containing two or more kanji).

くんよ訓読み (Kunyomi)—Japanese Reading The kunyomi, by contrast, is the Japanese reading of kanji, which is to say using the meaning of the character to indicate a word in the Japanese language. While there are lots of exceptions, you will typically find kanji read with their so-called Japanese readings in verbs and adjectives, and, of course, for Japanese names. In the kanji section, this text will indicate kunyomi with hiragana. You will notice that most verbs and adjectives that are pronounced with the kunyomi have “trailing” hiragana, typically used to indicate parts of the word that conjugate. These trailing hiragana are called おくりがな (okurigana).

VI. Sentence Structure

Word order Japanese is classified as a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) language yet except for the verb appearing at the end of the sentence, the word order is rather free. Japanese is sometimes referred as a verb final language for this reason. For example, both sentence (1) and (2) mean “Tommy ate cookies”, though the position of Subject (S) and Object (O) is reversed.

(1) トミーがクッキーを食べた。 Tommy (S) cookies (O) ate (V) (2) クッキーをトミーが食べた。 cookies (O) Tommy (S) ate (V)

On the contrary, English is an SVO language with extremely rigid word order. When the positions of the words “Tommy” and “cookies” are exchanged in the sentence “Tommy ate cookies” the meaning completely changes.

Particles You may be wondering why the meaning of a Japanese sentence remains the same even if the word order is changed. The reason is that many phrases are marked in formal Japanese with particles that identify their grammatical functions. That is, for the examples above, as long as “Tommy” is accompanied by the particle, が (ga) indicating that he is the subject of the sentence, “Tommy” is interpreted as the subject of the sentence regardless where the word “Tommy” is located. If “cookies” is the word marked 12 by the particle が (ga) then the meaning of the sentence is “The cookies at Tom.” We will be talking about various particles such as が (ga), を (o), に (ni) in this course. For speakers of English and many other languages, grasping the concept of particle is one of the most difficult things you will face in learning Japanese; you will see further discussions and exercises throughout this textbook. (Native speakers of Korean have a little advantage, as a similar concept exists in Korean.)

Non-obligatory subject The subject of the sentence is not required in Japanese. For example, it is common to ask for someone’s name by saying like the following. (The literal translation follows.). The listener will understand from the context if the speaker is asking for his/her name, or someone else’s. This is quite common.

おなまえは何ですか。 “what is name?”

Avoiding second person singular pronoun あなた Japanese has personal pronouns, but they are used less frequently than in English, in part because the subject is non-obligatory. Of the personal particles, there is a particular reluctance to use あなた(anata), the second-person singular pronoun. Although あなた (anata) is the equivalent to you in English, it is not commonly used. Further, the usage of あなた should be avoided since it is primarily used between people in an intimate relationship, such between a husband and wife, or other romantic partners; If you overuse あなた in a regular conversation, you may offend people or make them feel a bit uneasy. Native speakers of English might feel a little uneasy not using the equivalent of “you,” given that English is a subject obligatory nature. Listen to what your teacher says in situation where “you” would commonly be used in English:

ブラウンさんは一年生ですか。 Ms. Brown-topic first year student? (Are you a first year student?)

Infrequent usage of other pronouns There are pronouns such as かれ (kare) and かのじょ (kanojyo) which are the equivalents to “he” and “she;” however, these pronouns are far less commonly used in Japanese. It is more common to use someone’s surname with suffix ~さん (san) meaning “Mr. or Ms.” instead of pronouns. Thus the example above could mean, “Are you a first year student?” or “Is Mr/Ms. Brown a first year student?”