The Japanese language is a unique and beautiful language. There are approximately 120 million people living in Japan, with more than 99% of the population speaking the language. However, the language is rarely spoken outside the countries, only probably in some parts of the world such as Hawaii, Japanese born in America, some Chinese and Korean who happens to live under Japanese occupation earlier this century.
It is believed that the Japanese language was linked to the Altaic languages such as Turkish and Mongolian. It has been widely acknowledge that its syntactic is somehow or rather similar to the Korean language. Some also believed that the language shows similarities to the Malayo-Polynesian languages to the south.
Not only does the Japanese language consist of an abundance of native words, but also a large number of words originally from the Chinese. The Japanese language that you listen or learn is based on the speech of Tokyo. This has been spreading slowly to the other region in Japan through media such as radio, television and movies.
The Japanese writing is made up of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.
Japanese write in both Chinese origin (Kanji) and native Japanese words.
Japanese Kanji consist of several thousands of Chinese characters or words, are implemented in the Japanese writing system. They are actually ideograms with each character symbolizes a thing or an idea. The written characters may have the same meaning, yet they are pronounced completely different. The Chinese characters were introduced sometime between the fifth or sixth century. There are roughly about 48,000 Kanji characters but only about 5,000 to 10,000 are commonly used.
The Japanese writing was also supplemented by two phonetic scripts. These scripts were also transformed from the Chinese characters. A special software or keyboard is required to type out these scripts.
The Hiragana and Katakana are two of the phonetics or Kana scripts as mention earlier. Both these scripts consist of 48 characters. The Hiragana was used mainly by women in the olden days. It is basically use to write the native Japanese words such as verb endings and Chinese loanwords, whereby the characters need to be officially approved before it can be release for general use.
The katakana on the other hand, is used mainly to write loanwords from western languages such as English, French and German. For example Hotel is pronounced as Hoteru, beer as biru, coffee as kohi, Christmas as kurisumasu, bus as basu, television as terebi etc.
It is not unusual to find Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana usage in the same sentence. Go to a book store and browse through Japanese language books and you will know exactly what I mean. Both the Kana scripts are easier to write than the Chinese characters. It is something like learning the English alphabet. All you need to do is to memorize all the 48 Kana words, for example a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko etc, just like how you learn the English alphabet as a child.
The basic Japanese grammar is relatively simple. In a basic sentence construction, the subject comes first, then the object followed by the verb. For example, Watashi-wa (I) hon-o (book) yomu (read) which is "I read a book". Another example, Anata-wa (you) tokei-o (watch) kau (buy) which is "You buy a watch".
All verbs in dictionary form ends in the vowel u. Thus, nomu (drink), taberu (eat), yomu (read), akeru (open), kiku (listen), miru (see). Action verb include nomu - to drink, nominai - will not drink, nomitai -want to drink, nomita - drank, nomi-nakatta past tense of not drinking.
Japanese's pronounciation is also less complicated. It has short vowels such as a, i, u, e, o which is similar to the Spanish and Italian vowels. The long vowels aa, ii, uu, ei, oo are pronounced by doubling the length of the short vowels. It is important to pronoun the short and long vowels correctly as this can change the meaning of the words.
The Japanese language has pitch accent, or musical accent, which is quite different from the stress accent of the English, French, German and other European languages as well as some Asian languages. The pitch accent can be classified as high and low. The accentuated syllabus is usually pronounced with regularity and at the same pitch throughout.
There are many ways to learn the Japanese language. Firstly, you must have an interest in the country, the people, language and culture. There are Japanese language schools which you can enroll in your local area. The easiest and quickest way is to do an online home study course, whereby, you can learn the language at your own terms and time. Look for the one which deliver the course in multimedia format. This method allows you to listen and learn to speak like the native speaker. A course, which teaches you some basic grammar lesson can be helpful too. There are also language packages with games and flash cards. Look for a language package which comes with interactive audio, software learning games, fully illustrated and easy to follow grammar lessons and lastly plenty of support and also learner's forum.
The one I recommended allows you to try the Japanese language for free for 6 days. The free course includes interactive audio, grammar, learning games and forum. At the end of the 6 days period, if you decide the language is not for you, then there is not a need to purchase anything at all. For more information, please visit my website and go to learn a language.
Larisa is the web owner of http://www.clixaholiday.com . Feel free to surf my web while you are there. Compare hotels worldwide before booking and also bid cheap holiday for family. I have extensive travel experiences to Asia, US, United Kingdom, Canada and Europe. To get the same program (Build a Niche Store) I use to set up my store, scroll down to the bottom of my home page. To learn a new language, sign up for a 6 days free lessons on the language of your choice
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