The Japanese Language

 

Ok, let's get one thing straight right away.  Japanese is not the same as Korean or Chinese.  A Japanese person cannot understand a Korean nor a Chinese, and vice versa.  That sounds ridiculous I know, but it has been asked before.

 

The sounds and writing systems are very different.  The one characteristic they do share though, which also happens to be the reason why people think Japanese, Korean and Chinese can understand each other, is that they use Chinese characters (e.g. 日、川、山、時) in various ways.  The way it is written (i.e. shape of the character and the sequential order of the strokes) is more or less the same when used in all three languages, owing to its ancient beginnings.  However, the way each character is pronounced is completely diffferent.  My knowledge of the Chinese language is very very minimal, but I know that each character is often pronounced in one or two different ways.  For example, the character 日 in Chinese can be prounced in one or two ways, but in Japanese it could be pronounced in more than 6 different ways depending on the context in which it is used.  This is something that you will not need to worry about in basic Japanese though.  For a native English speaker, this sounds daunting but really it is nothing to worry about... yet.

 

Without doubt, the Japanese language is one of the most fascinating known to man.  It was once called 'the devil's tongue', which I think it it probably still is by many mature learners of the language.  The most interesting aspect of all in my opinion is that it has three different scripts, two of which are seemingly unrelated to any other language on the planet.  As complicated as that sounds, Japan still boasts literacy rates higher than any English speaking nations, Australia included.  This is an interesting report by the OECD (2013) I recommend you glance over.  I am not surprised by the findings in a "technology-rich environment", which I will probably address in a blog post in the future.

 

Japanese is the native language of just under 130 million people (2013) and is one of the ten most spoken languages in the world.  I know it sounds obvious, but there is a close relationship between the Japanese and their language. This is largely due to the fact that with a few exceptions, Japanese is only spoken by Japanese people.  In fact, as a foreigner learning the language you are one of the exceptions. This is unlike many other languages such as English and French where people from many different countries can speak them and can be recognised by many other people.

 

Learn more about this language and use it.  You earn an enormous amount of respect whenever you attempt to speak another language in their country.  As the late Nelson Mandela once said,

 

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.

If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.

 

 

頑張って下さい　(がんばってください)　Ganbatte Kudasai  

"Give it go and good luck".