Learning Japanese

Author: Edutraveller
Date written: 04/19/2003 04:05:42 PM
Last edited: 2003/05/04 12:44:17
Keywords: Japanese language, Japanese, Travel Japanese, Learning Japanese,

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Learning Japanese

No one claims that Japanese is an easy language to learn if they know anything about it. It isn't, and it will take you longer to learn to a high level than would, for example, French if coming from the background of another European language. However, it is eminently possible to learn and the corresponding rewards are if anything greater in terms of satisfaction, the cultural horizons opened up and the potential gains to your career.

Writing

You should start with learning the basic characters for writing Japanese. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, you need to be able to read, or you will never reach an advanced level in Japanese. Because of the fundamental differences between Japanese and alphabet-based languages, it is simply not possible to truly understand the language without being able to read it. Secondly, and even more importantly, it is much easier and faster to learn accurate pronunciation if you know hiragana and katakana - or even just one of them. The reason for this is that Japanese is a syllabic language: it has vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and consonants paired with vowels (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, ma, mi, etc.) but not consonants (except for n at the end of some words). Hiragana and katakana are the characters that represent these syllables (forty-six characters in each syllabary). The other main form of writing is Kanji or Chinese characters. These are ideograms - that is, they represent an idea, and you have to learn the pronunciation character by character. There are about 2,000 kanji to learn (about 1,000 in common use).

Even if you don't learn all the kanji, learning the hiragana and katakana will help you immensely and speed up your language acquisition hugely. If you are seriously thinking about study in a Japanese university, then of course you will have to learn the written language as well. It generally takes about 18 months to two years to learn the basic 1,000 kanji.

Pronunciation

As mentioned above, Japanese is a syllabic language, which makes it important for those not from a similar linguistic background to learn the basic script. The vowels and consonants are pronounced roughly as in Italian, with clear, non-dipthong tones. That is, "a" is pronounced more like the "a" in father, and not at all like the "a" in may etc. If you learn initially from romanised Japanese texts, try to keep this in mind. If you can, try to keep to these pure tones. Again, the only real solution is to have a native-speaker correct you and study in Japan where you are immersed in the sound of the language.

Vocabulary

You should try to learn as many words as you can before you come, of course, but again, as you get to be slightly more than an absolute beginner, you will find that you need to know more kanji. Try to learn both together from the start, and you will make your life easier later on - tying the concepts that you learn to the character is highly important for when you start reading more complex texts and coming across new words. Even if you can't read them aloud, you may be able to understand their meaning - one of the many quirks of Japanese.

Grammar

Even if you hate it, Japanese has a lot of grammar that you need to learn by heart. It isn't too difficult, but there is a lot of rote-learning, particularly at the higher levels. However, Japanese grammar is fairly straightforward and there are minimal exeptions. As with any language though, you learn grammar properly by using it - so make sure that you are getting plenty of practice not just reading and writing (although there are both vital) but also conversing with people. A few hours of conversation a day will see your grammar and vocabulary increase hugely, much more than double the time just buried in books alone.

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