Description of Japanese

Phonology- The Sound Pattern

• The Japanese syllabic structure adheres to the form CV (Consonnant-Vowel).

Vowel System

• The Japanese language has 5 vowels that consists of i e a o u.

• The u is unrounded and sounds like this .

• This u and also the high vowel i are often devoiced in certain envrionments.

• The short vowels in Japanese are pronounced similarly to Spanish and Italian.

• The long vowels are made up of the doubling of the short vowel sounds. (audio file?)

• The pronunciation of short and long vowels need to be well distinguished as it is possible that one sound could change the meaning of the word.

Consonantal System

• The consonants in the Japanese language are p t k b d g z h r m n w y.

• Palatization and affrication of dentals also provide the language with a collection of allophones.

Comparing Japanese to English

• Difference: Japanese gives equal stress to each syllable. JAPANESE vs. ENGLISH

• Similarity: Japanese also uses pitch that varies from high to low like the English language.

Grammar- Morphology and Syntax

MORPHOLOGY

• Japanese is an agglutinative language, it forms words by putting together morphemes. For more information click here

• It makes use of many suffixes.

• One Kanji character represents one morpheme.

• There are 3 word formation processes in Japanese

Word Formation Processes

1. Compounding

• Definition: Combining 2 or more words or word elements having their own lexical meaning to produce a new unit that functions as a single word.

• Description: Japanese word formation is heavily dependent on compounding. Hundreds of thousands of compound words can be created from a collection of a few thousand characters.

• Differences to English: A compound word in Japanese can be any combination of free words, already combined forms and affixes that work together to form a single word. In English, compound words are usually a combination of 2 or more free words only.

2. Derivation

• Definition: Creating a new word by adding to a stem word a suffix or a particle that expresses grammatical meaning but has no lexical meaning.

• Description: Words formed by derivation are distinct new words and are not just a variation of the derived word.

• Similarity to English: Japanese use derivation in similar ways to English.

3. Inflection

• Definition: Adding word endings or modifying the form of a word in order to indicate various grammatical functions, such as tense, number or case. It forms another form of the original word but it is not a new word.

• Description: The last syllable of the verb is inflected in Japanese and the word endings are usually written in.

MORPHOLOGY & KANJI

• Kanji, because of its multiple meanings and various grammatical and syntactic functions possessed by each character, require a more close examination.

Description

• Kanji work as word elements that can form a bounty of compound words through the combination with one another.

• In Japanese, Kanji can be combined together and/or have affixes attached and then combine again.

• Japanese words are generally 2 to 4 syllables long, although the compound formation can form longer words.

• Functions of Kanji: Free Word, Combining Form, Affix and Abbreviations.

• It is possible for a Kanji character to be used as a free word in one instance and an affix in another.

• IT is also possible that the free word and the compound word possess the same meaning.

SYNTAX

• Word ordering in Japanese: Subject + Object + Verb.

• Example: Rika wa (S) uchi ni (O) kaerimasu (V)

• Word ordering in English: S + V + O

• Example: Rika (S) goes (V) home (O)

• The Verb is always placed in the final position of the sentence.

• Subject-Object order may change positions in a sentence.

For more information click here

• Questions: In Japanese, questions are formed by adding the particle ka to the end of the sentence.

Example:

Rika wa kita. - Rika came

Rika wa kita ka? - Did Rika come?

• Wh- (who, what, when, where and how) words in Questions: In Japanese the Wh- words always stays in the Object position.

Example:

Rika wa nani katta no ka? - What did Rika buy?

Implications for Japanese English Learners

• When studying English, Japanese Native speakers have to rearrange their thoughts and sentence structures to be able to think and write in English.

Writing System

• A single piece of text can contain all or many of these six very different writing systems.

1. kanji (Chinese characters)
2. hiragana (syllabic symbols)
3. katakana (symbols for foreign words)
4. furigana (keys to pronunciation of Kanji)
5. Arabic (numerals)
6. romaji (roman alphabet)

• KANJI: represent the nouns, verbs and adjectives.

• It is supplemented by the Kana.

• Kana (syllabic characters) designate suffixes, particles, conjunctions and other grammatical forms.

• There are 2 types of Kana, each made up of 46 characters.

• HIRAGANA: Used primarily for grammatical function words and generally in Japanese. It is more cursive in shape.

• KATAKANA: Used in writing proper names and loan words from Western languages and telegrams. It is more angular in shape.

• A comparison chart between the 2 kanas...

(Source: Findlay, M.)

• Each character stands for a single syllable rather than a whole word like Kanji.

• In theory, every Japanese word can be written with Kana but there are many homonyms which are easier to distinguish using a mix of Kanji and Kana characters.

• ROMAJI: Based on the Roman alphabet. It is used in writing names at train stations,signing document in Western languages and acronyms. Romaji has only recently been mixed with the other systems of Japanese writing because the writing from left to right has been accepted.

The Uses of the Writing Systems

Directionality of Writing

• Japanese traditionally written from top to bottom going from right to left, books open the same way right to left.

• Formal writing such as formal letters and newspapers are still written in this traditional style.

• Today, many texts are written horizontally to accommodate English words, Arabic numerals and mathematical and chemical formulas which are not written vertically or right to left.