How to talk like a Ge1sha

A guide to Japanese as a programmer's language

Andrew GrimmRailscamp X

Hello World

Minasan konnichiwa (Hello everyone)

Vocabulary

Puroguramaa: Programmer

Waaurufu: werewolf

Bagu: bug

Burogu: blog

Paatii: party

Biiru: Beer

Plz halp

Good morning: Ohayou gozaimasu

G'day: Konnichiwa

Good evening: Konbanwa

How you going, mate? Genki desu ka?

Please (halp): Kudasai

Please (go ahead): Douzo

Thanx: Arigatou

Goodbye: Ja mata

How to copulate

Noun, subject marker, noun, desu

Bigg-san wa puroguramaa desu

Mr Bigg is a programmer

!

Japanese uses different verb forms for negative versus positive

Bigg-san wa waaurufu dewa arimasen

Mr Bigg is not a werewolf

From future import present tense

Japanese does not have a future tense

Just use the present tense

Particles

Those pesky small words go after the noun

No: of

Wa: used to indicate subject

O: used to indicate object

Kara: From (some meanings)

Made: To (some meanings)

Nouns

No singular or plural

Different objects have different counters

Five: go

Five beers: go-hon no biru

Five programmers: go-nin no puroguramaa

Five am: go-ji

Metaprogramming

Kore: This (near speaker)

Sore: That (near listener)

Are: That over there (far from listener)

Kore o kudasai (this please) served in every restaurant I went to even McDonald's!

Linguistic prolog

To ask a question, just replace a known with a who/what/where word, and add ka at the end

Nan-ji desu ka? (What o'clock is it?)

Biru-ji desu. (Beer o'clock it is)

Japanese writing

Three writing systems:

Kanji

Hiragana

Katakana

Kanji: the evils of copy & paste

The Japanese copied Chinese characters to represent Japanese words

One character per word

2000+ characters

Hiragana and katakana: shortcuts

More like alphabets

Derived from simplifications of kanji used for sound alone

Each letter represents a syllable

Each has ~ 46 letters

In general, hiragana used in native words, katakana in European loanwords

Legacy encodings

Japanese used to have many letters with the same pronounciation.

The Japanese government declared these letters obsolete (hentaigana) and not to be taught at school

Politeness: -san

-san is put after names

-san obeys what's called ingroup/outgroup rules

Don't use -san when talking about yourself

Don't use -san for someone in your family when talking to someone outside your family

Politeness: verb forms

Different verb forms are used for different levels of politeness.

The form you initially learn is called teinei-go.

Originated with language used by ge1sha to address their guests (hence the title of this talk)

Politeness: o- / go- words

Used for important thingsO-cha: Tea

Go-han: Rice

O-kane: Money

O-sake: Booze / sake

Used to soften dirty wordsO-tearai: bathroom

Politeness: family

When talking about someone else's family, politeness goes up to 11 and you use o-/go- and -san

Father (someone else's): o-tou-san

When talking about your own family to someone else, you use a humble form

Father (your own, when talking to someone else): chichi

Learning Japanese

16 lessons at a community college was enough for me to speak Japanese, even if not understand the response

Japanese for Busy People is slightly boring but good you can use it if you miss lessons

Searching the internet to answer your curiosities about the language can be a time sink

Learning in romaji or kana

Learning in romaji (Roman letters) is technical debt

I was able to visit Japan without learning kana (hiragana and katakana)

Hints for handling Japan Japan specific

Train stations

Station names, exit names, and ticketing is in both Japanese and English

Loanwords

The more modern the word, the more likely it is an English loanword (gairai-go)

Tend to have vowels added in to sound more Japanese-like

American English

Bad news: you have to learn two languages

Good news: one of them is similar to English

English heading, Japanese body

Toilets

Blue for boys, pink for girls, green for disabled

Communication common sense

Pronunciation

50% of language variations are the same words pronounced in a different way

Writing things down can helpGives people more time to understand

Japanese learn written English more than spoken

Likelihood to speak English

Tourist information desk? Pretty likely

Love hotel receptionist? Maybe not

Questions?