Introduction
I left my cozy dwelling in Ottawa, Canada, in the summer of 2001. I dumped a dull job in the government of Canada in order to take up a position as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Nishibiwajima-cho (a small town near Nagoya) , Japan. I had no burning desire to come to Japan, it just seemed like an interesting opportunity. My whole life has been spent shuttling from one country to another, so it was just another place to be explored. What all these experiences had in common was that I spent a lot of time studying languages. As a native of Quebec, I already spoke French, had a good deal of German from two years living near Heidelberg, and spent four years studying Russian in university. I have spent many happy hours pondering the locative case in Finnish, and amusing myself that I could stick my tongue out at people and claim I was practicing my velar fricatives. I just like languages. For better or worse, it seemed that I would need to indulge this hobby of mine to learn some Japanese for my new job.
I was wrong.
In Japan, there is no need whatsoever to learn any Japanese at all. Everyday life can easily be negotiated through gestures and pidgin English. All signs are in English, almost any official information of interest to the casual traveller can be obtained in English. All tourist locations are staffed with English speakers, English guides can often be hired for the price of a lunch and someone can always be dragged out who has a passing familiarity with the language. Not only that, but many Japanese people believe that it is impossible for non-natives to learn their language (this is racist thinking, but I digress) and their expectations are very low, indeed. Nothing at all is expected of the newly arrived foreigner. Most jobs inevitably provide for a "nanny", someone at your office who is expected to take care of your troubles for you. In many cases this person will resent your incursions on their already limited precious free time, even if they don't show it. So, maybe learning Japanese isn't such a bad idea.
The author, second from right, at a coming of age ceremony in the Nagoya area, Japan.
In learning languages based on the Latin alphabet, you need only master the variations on the ABCs you already learned at school. So, give or take an umlaut or accent, you can consult your handy guidebook, check the spelling for a word, and be on your way to French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc. Once you've learned the new pronunciation rules, you can't be stopped.
But Japanese is a show-stopper for the linguistic novice, as indeed are most Asian languages? Lots of lines and squiggles. In order to learn Japanese, you need to treat reading as a separate skill from speaking and listening. If I had a dollar for every expatriate I've met here in Japan who has reasonable speaking skills but only a basic reading level, I'd be the proud owner of all of the 50 or so books on my current reading list.
How does this affect you? You need to set your goals. What do you need to learn? What are you seeking to achieve? Have you come into contact with a Japanese expat karate instructor who speaks English poorly and want to return this shoddy treatment in his/her own language? Are you curious about what all those words you've been pronouncing so badly mean? Is your company sending you on a business trip? Vacationing in Japan? Trying to impress the other geeks at your university anime club?
If your intention is to master a reasonable level of Japanese, you have your work cut out for you. Remember that your learning environment will also affect your strategy. It's a given that if you live in Japan, your quality of life will improve immensely if you can communicate with the locals. You won't need the ever-present Japanese nanny that so many expats have, or call your friend Takuya every time your washing machine settings change on you. Even as a tourist, it feels good to be able to say "Thank you" and the other daily pleasantries. Don't forget that there is nothing about learning Japanese which is unique – all concepts/ideas in this article can equally be applied to any language. Attitude/study are everything.
And correcting my Japanese friend's kanji (he told me time and time again kanji is too difficult for "foreigners") feels sooooooooo good…
Casual or serious student?
It's hard to be a casual student of Japanese. Casual to me would mean learning just a few phrases, enough to be able to say the following:
Hello.
Goodbye.
Please.
Thank you.
I want this/that.
How much?
Please write it down.
Help me!
Anything beyond that is pretty much bonus material.
To Romaji or not?
The serious student of Japanese, skip on ahead to the next section. Romaji = bad. That's all you need to know. Romaji is a way of expressing Japanese in English. The most common system of transliteration into English is known as the Hepburn system, which is used in most romaji dictionaries. While this might initially seem like a good thing, it's not. It is a crutch, and once you lean on it, you won't be able to let it go without a fight. For the casual traveller, it's a useful way of being able to pronounce Japanese words in semi-intelligible manner. If your intention is to be able to do a little reading and writing at some point, do not bother with romaji.
On every page of a text book, even if there are Japanese characters on it, your eyes will be drawn to the Latin text, in the form of romaji. That's what you know already, and are comfortable with. In order for you to become acclimated as quickly as possible, you must dive straight in the deep end. Learn hiragana and katakana before you do anything else.
If your intention is nothing beyond the purely practical necessary for the traveller, use romaji. Otherwise, do not.
Japanese – 3 skills
In English, reading and writing are two skills which are easily learned together, since we only have a small alphabet. If you know how to write your ABC's, then you're on the road to Shakespeare, Playboy, or whatever else takes your fancy. Japanese, on the other hand, has an alphabet of about 2200 ABC's known as the Joyo kanji. Whoops. Our analogy ends here, beaten to death by drunken salarymen.
But wait, don't be intimidated. Read on.
Hiragana, katakana, furigana and kanji
Hiragana and katakana are a series of symbols used to express Japanese sounds. It all begins with you chanting "ah, ee, oo, ay, oh…. ka, ki, koo, kay, ko" and so on. The sounds of Japanese are quite simple. All words are spelt as they sound. No tricks, no eccentric spellings or bizarre consonant groupings. With practice, you can quickly master these sounds and learn to write them. Learning hiragana and katakana should not take you more than a few hours of serious study. There are loads of highly unnecessary books which give you more information than you need on how to memorize them.
Hiragana characters are used to write Japanese words. These characters are smooth, flowing and rounded. For example, "ah, ee, oo, ay, oh" are rendered as "あ、い、う、え、お"
Katakana characters are used to write foreign loan words. There are many of these loanwords. For example, the Japanese use the Dutch word for bread ("pan") in katakana (パン). Katakana characters are blocky, linear and out of place among hiragana and kanji. To use our "ah, ee, oo, ay, oh" example again, "ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ"
Katakana is the same crutch for Japanese that Romaji is for people learning Japanese, and the main reason why so many Japanese people cannot pronounce foreign languages properly. Instead of saying "Hello, my name is Kenji" you get "Herro, my-ah name-uh iz-uh Kenji."
Japanese numbers are usually written in the Arabic style familiar to English speakers, but sometimes (notably in restaurants) are written with kanji. For the record, here they are:
| Hiragana | Katakana | Numbers | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| あ | い | う | え | お | ア | イ | ウ | エ | オ | １ | 一 | ||
| か | き | く | け | こ | カ | キ | ク | ケ | コ | ２ | 二 | ||
| さ | し | す | せ | そ | サ | シ | ス | セ | ソ | ３ | 三 | ||
| た | ち | つ | て | と | タ | チ | ツ | テ | ト | ４ | 四 | ||
| な | に | ぬ | ね | の | ナ | ニ | ヌ | ネ | ノ | ５ | 五 | ||
| は | ひ | ふ | へ | ほ | ハ | ヒ | フ | ヘ | ホ | ６ | 六 | ||
| ま | み | む | め | も | マ | ミ | ム | メ | モ | ７ | 七 | ||
| や | ゆ | よ | ヤ | ユ | ヨ | ８ | 八 | ||||||
| ら | り | る | れ | ろ | ラ | リ | ル | レ | ロ | ９ | 九 | ||
| わ | を | ワ | ヲ | １０ | 十 | ||||||||
| ん | ン | １００ | 百 | ||||||||||
| １０００ | 千 | ||||||||||||
| １００００ | 万 | ||||||||||||
So, you've learned katakana and hiragana, but you still can't understand your Asahi Shinbun. All those squiggles look different from the squiggles you've already learned. What gives? You can replace much of your katakana and hiragana doodling with kanji. It will save you space, clear up any inconsistencies, and allow for an elegant and concise means of communication.
Kanji
Enter the kanji
The Japanese have been given regular cultural boosts by the Chinese (incidentally, many Chinese I have met are disgusted with the Japanese claiming credit for many Chinese cultural innovations. My experiences with Chinese claiming to have invented such things as ping-pong are equally numerous, so as always it's best to rely on your own judgement and not the only Asian person you know). Probably the greatest single gift from their neighbours was kanji. But, it is a gift with thorns. Kanji are considered by some linguistic historians to be a heavy-handed attempt to create an unchallengeable cultural and academic elite in an ivory tower. How many Chinese villagers had time to memorize the 3,000 or more characters necessary to read, and up to the 10,000 necessary to be considered educated? Even after the reformation of the Chinese writing system many Chinese are still illiterate. A subject for scrutiny in other texts, but still an interesting conundrum.
Kanji are described by many as crude pictograms. For example (inside the brackets are the hiragana pronunciations) :
Fire – 火 (か) – see the flickering flames?
Cow – 牛（うし） – see the legs and head?
A student attempting to learn kanji in this fashion will memorize 40 or so of the simplest kanji and then give up. To use an extreme example, anyone who tells me that
薔薇 (バラ)
actually looks like a rose is in serious need of the kind of help that only those nice young men in their clean white coats can provide…
Initially, the novice students of Japanese are in awe of these mysterious squiggles. What manner of superior brain, they think, is required in order to make sense of all of this? The answer is none at all. You don't have to change your diet, take up higher mathematics, or begin intensive Zen studies. Trust me, I've been teaching Japanese students for a while now, and they're just as varied on the spectrum of human intelligence as the rest of us. In fact, many of them have difficult reading, writing and remembering kanji. How do they get through life? The answer to that is twofold: the fact that there is actually a logical system behind kanji, and furigana.
If I told you that the kanji 五 meant five, and that 口 meant mouth or opening, you could probably handle that. So what happens when you combine them together? Well, let's see:
五 ＋ 口 ＝ 吾
So what's that mean? Well, let's see five openings. Let's count: on the human body there are two nostrils, two ears, and a mouth. That makes for five. So, we're talking about you! Once you learn this kind of peculiar logic (for us Westerners) , you can readily make the logical jumps used to construct more complex kanji.
OK, your next question is the logical one: how do we read kanji? (out loud, that is) If by learning this system you can understand the concept of each kanji and thus understand their basic meanings. But you can't actually "read" them, ie. out loud, and you won't understand more than one meaning.
The bad news
Kanji for the most part have two or more readings. At least one Chinese reading and at least one Japanese one. How will you know what the readings are? The short, simplistic answer: by learning the roots of the kanji. You've already learned that kanji are simple pictures built into ever more complex ones. Certain of those pictures are "root" kanji and determine the pronunciation. So, by looking at a kanji you will be able to distinguish which part determines the pronuciation. The more complex answer is that often you can't. You will only retain common meanings that you use regularly. While many kanji are easily divided into groups by roots, lots of others aren't. We still need more help.
A commonly asked question is "how many kanji do I need to know?"
The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is the most common proficiency test for the Japanese Language. There are others (JETRO, for example, which is arguably more practical and useful) but they aren't as widely recognized. The JLPT test is a portable skill which will carry credit wherever you go.
The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) :
Level 4 – 100 kanji. A level of Japanese suitable for basic conversations about the weather, your family, and other simple subjects.
Level 3 – 500 kanji. A level of Japanese suitable for daily conversation.
Level 2 – 1024 kanji. A level of Japanese suitable for business life and most situations likely to occur. You would grasp most newspaper articles if you studied the compounds of the 1024 kanji you knew.
Level 1 – All of the Joyo kanji. University level Japanese. If you pass this test, your kanji skills are better than most Japanese, and you will understand obscure grammatical forms which are unused and not understood by the average Japanese.
Even worse news
Kanji are often formed into compounds of two, three, or even four kanji. The best way to remember these is unfortunately by regular practice. Using flashcards helps immensely. There are good systems available which can ease the task, make use of them. I present some of these in my reviews. Some kanji also have different meanings in Japanese than Chinese. Some kanji were also created by the Japanese and thus have no meaning to Chinese speakers.
Saved by furigana
Furigana are hiragana (and sometimes katakana) placed on top of kanji in order to tell the reader the correct meaning where there are multiple possible pronunciations, where the meaning is unclear, or where the kanji/compound is an irregular one or not part of the regular Joyo kanji syllabus. If you read a newspaper you will see small hiragana placed on top of (or next to, remember the Japanese often read top to bottom, right to left. Most business documents these days are written left to right, many restaurants still use the old scheme, along with important notices). You might also see them in subtitles in movies, or along with the text at a karaoke bar to help the singer along. Children's comics are loaded with them, so that they can read more complex kanji than the ones they have learned at their current grade level (as opposed to reading the words they do know in hiragana/katakana).
(Hint: Japanese comics (manga) are a fantastic way to jumpstart your reading. There are manga for everyone no matter your occupation, age, and education. I guarantee you will find something you like.)
Grammar
But wait, there's more…
You have to learn Japanese grammar, too. The biggest single obstacle to the student of Japanese is particles. Ask any university student of the Japanese language which subject they hated, and particles will come out on top. Japanese people often consult each other as to which particles they should use. The substitution of one for another changes the entire meaning of a sentence. A solid grasp of particles is necessary and cannot be avoided. Conjugate your verbs like a champ, have a great vocabulary, but don't understand particles? Then you won't understand anything that you read.
A simple example:
Kore wa nan desu ka? (What is this?)
これは何ですか。
The ha (は) which is pronounced "wa" indicates the subject. The ka (か) indicates that a question is being asked.
A slightly more advanced example:
Ano hito ni setsumei shite mita tokoro de, wakatte wa kurenai darou. (Even if you try explaining it to him, he's not going to understand you.)
あの人に説明してみたところで、わかってはくれないだろう。
Ni (に) indicates the target of the explanation, tokoro de (ところで) indicates a condition which even if met, the results will not be favourable. Finally, the subject marker ha (は) indicates the main subject (the understanding of the subject).
Particles are indicators which mean nothing by themselves. My dictionary gives a good definition, so I'll use it:
1) A particle (助詞 joshi) in the Japanese language follows a word to:
A) show its relationship to other words in a sentence, and/or
B) give that word a particular meaning or nuance."
("A dictionary of Japanese particles" Sue A. Kawashima (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999) , p. i)
There are more than 100 different particles. This is the hardest part of Japanese, bar none. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about. Particles also have different meanings depending on context. In certain situations it is possible to claim you meant something different from what you said by twisting the usage of the particle. My favourite Japanese teacher always used to tell me "during exams, in times of uncertainly (こまったな時) , use に", since it had the widest possible application.
There is some good news. Particles are sometimes omitted from spoken language where meanings are obvious. The bad part of this is that occasionally you're left holding the bag, wondering which particles the speaker meant… The good part is that sometimes you can throw a sentence into the air, insert random particles and more often than not the listener will understand what you meant. Of course, the consequences of misunderstanding can sometimes be hilarious…
You've struck bottom…
Usually Japanese express themselves in one of three fashions – casual, polite, or honorific style. You will only learn the polite style to begin with. Learning the casual and honorific styles requires serious effort on the part of the student, since the vast majority of texts teach only the polite (desu/masu) forms. Worry about this when you reach a reasonable level of Japanese. Then you will understand why you don't have any friends because you're always polite and never casual, even with people you've known for a while. Some Japanese often have the cheek to teach foreigners only the polite style and then complain that "they're always so stiff and formal, I can never get close to them."
Is this a bad time to mention that regional dialects in Japan can be so different to each other that often Kansai dialect speakers misunderstand Tokyo standard speakers? Or maybe that the villager from Oita doesn't have a clue what the salaryman from Nagoya is trying to say?
Back to the good news
Verbs are easily conjugated in Japanese, there are very few cases compared to more advanced verbal languages such as French, which have a plethora of ways to conjugate verbs.
Vocabulary words are just as easy to learn: memorization, same as any other language. German language specialists (the best and most thorough!) tell us that the everyday vocabulary of any language consists of less than a thousand words, so learn those thousand words and you can participate in most conversations. Naturally specialist vocabulary (business, political, medical, etc.) must be learned as you encounter it.
Learning materials
More than students of any other language, students of Japanese are collectors of textbooks. Drifting in the muddled waters of Japanese grammar, frustrated by kanji, beating their heads against particles, they are constantly in search of newer, better learning materials and methods.
- Teachers
- whoever said a bad teacher was better than none was dead wrong. I have seen more students confused by bad teachers of Japanese than any other language I've come into contact with. Naturally, a good teacher is worth his/her weight in gold. Many people learn "bedroom" Japanese from a partner. I have come across the occasional Japanese speaker who learned their Japanese from a girlfriend. It's pretty funny to hear a big guy using feminine speech.
- Flash cards
- necessary to beat the kanji. Make them yourself or buy them, you need them.
- Language tapes/CDs
- I don't use them. But then, I live in Japan and hear the language everyday. These are useful for learning standard pronunciation, but are no substitute for a teacher.
- Dictionaries
- yes. The bigger the better. A good particle dictionary is a must. Going without a kanji dictionary is unthinkable.
- Electronic dictionaries
- These are great if you buy a good model. Unfortunately there are plenty of crap ones, too. Get one with all the giant Kodansha dictionaries crammed into it, and you'll be laughing.
- Phrasebooks
- Get a small one. Keep it on you. Make notes. Ask your friends about particular phrases. Understand the phrases rather than attempting to memorize them.
- Internet sites
- There are many, many, useful internet sites which can provide help with flash cards, translation, kanji, furigana, and many other handy innovations. I provide a list of some of the ones I use at the end of this text.
- A friend
- a friend learning at the same time as you is a partner in frustration, success, and someone to practice with. However, avoid kanji memorization contests and the like. Some people are incredibly competitive about their Japanese skills.
Summary
Casual student:
- Learn the correct pronunciations as best you can using romaji.
- Buy a simple travel phrasebook.
- Go to Japan, have a good time.
- Bask in the praise of the Japanese as they wildly applaud your incredibly poorly pronounced Japanese with such fulsome compliments as "Eeeeeeehhhh!! Gaijin-san no Nihongo wa sugoii desu ne!" ("Mr. Foreigner's Japanese is great, isn't it!")
- Secretly smile to yourself when you realize how much time you avoided wasting.
Serious student:
- Learn hiragana and katakana. Do not do anything else until you have mastered these two writing systems.
- Buy only those textbooks and materials which do not use romajii. This is easier than it sounds. Some excellent books unfortunately include romajii right next to the hiragana and katakana readings. This is extremely annoying. I erase it by means of a black pen, not so heavy so as to stain the next page.
- Approach reading kanji, speaking, and writing as three separate skills. Practice each one separate to the others. As you gain skill, combine them.
- Do not become frustrated. Japanese is not impossible. Try to learn steadily, instead of in leaps and bounds. Get into good study habits. Do not listen to Japanese people. They will constantly tell you that Japanese is difficult and that kanji are difficult for foreigners. Don't worry. They're not any better at it than you are. And, if you learn by the ground-up style and not by Japanese style rote memorization, you will beat them at their own game. For example, most Japanese cannot read relatively common kanji such as 鮪 (マグロ) , which means tuna. If you learn by the ground up rules, you will instantly get the meaning, whereas if a Japanese person doesn't learn it by memory, they haven't learned it. In Japan, I was my junior high school Japanese teacher's favourite son as I constantly queried him about obscure or amusing kanji I learned in a cheap attempt at impressing Japanese girls. (For the record, it usually works….)
- Do not feel you must restrict yourself to one method or system of learning. Practicing several methods at the same time may lead to greater success.
- Don't listen to those who claim to have "the perfect method." Particularly with kanji, there are many approaches. Everyone has a different learning style.
- Do not think that you can learn Japanese passively. You might learn a bit by listening but no matter how much you stare at a newspaper, you won't learn a thing without the proper study foundation. Do not think that you are different and that having a flair for languages will help you. It won't.
- "Practice what you have learned! Help you it can!" If you don't practice, it's gone.
- As with any language, learn what you're interested in. Don't read "Japanese for Busy People" if you're not interested in Business situations.
- Unless you have a photographic memory, don't learn kanji by rote memorization. You will fail. Seek the logic behind the system, the rest will follow.
- Laugh at books which promise you can learn Japanese in only a week.
- Japanese really can be fun. Instead of becoming frustrated with multiple meanings, have fun with them. Change the names of your Japanese friends around, or introduce new kanji with the same meanings for their names. Watch them roll their eyeballs as jokes they thought had disappeared in elementary resurface, given new life by their foreign friend! Why call your friend Mr. Sakura when you can call him Mr. Cherry Blossom? The delightful Ms. Takagi becomes Ms. Tall Tree! And so on, ad nauseum.
がんばって下さい！