An Introduction to

the Japanese Language

Saturday, June 17, 2006Kazumi Takahashi

Characteristics

5 vowelsa - /a/; i - /i/; u – /u/; e - /e/; o - /o/

Romanized Japanese words: mine, MikeSOV topic first, verb final, and everything else falls betweenlike Korean

post-positional grammatical markers topic, subject, direct object, indirect object,

instrument, direction, place of action, among others

e.g.) Yoshi reads the bible at 10:00 at home today. Yoshi-wa kyoo uchi-de seisho-o yomimasu.

pitch accent

So… what is pitch accent?

(as opposed to) stress accente.g.) dictionary

⇨　 dic ·tion · ary dic ·tion · ary

two pitches- high and lowhigh pitch can continuesome well-known Japanese words

Toyotato ・ yo ・ takaraokeka ・ ra ・ o ・ keHondaho ・ n ・ daNissanni ・ s ・ sa ・ n

　

Writing Systems

There are three sets of letters and characters, each with its own function

Hiragana 46 letters in modern Japanese, each representing one sound

Katakana46 letters in modern Japanese, each representing one

sound

Kanji “Chinese characters”each character represents meaningOn-reading

approximation to the sound representation of the character at the time of its importation

Kun-readingJapanese original readings of the character based on its meaning

Let’s read Hiragana

か み　さ　ま ka mi sa ma

あ な た a na ta

あ い し て お ら れ ま す a i shi te o ra re ma su

“God loves you.”

かみさま○ 　　あなた○　 あいしておられます　

かみさま -topic あなた -direct object 　あいしておられます

かみさま -wa 　 あなた -o あいしておられます