日本語

Nick · 2022-07-15, 20:06

This thread is for anyone interested in learning Japanese from scratch (with English as the metalanguage).
To decode the title: 日本 (say "Nihon") means Japan, and 語 (say "go") means word.

Batalov · 2022-07-15, 21:44

Will we also learn to play go? Neat!

EDIT: I would be very interested. I can tell those who haven't experienced it - it is very useful if you travel to Japan. While at a conference you can converse with colleagues in English, but on the streets? Not really, you would be on your own. Train stations in 2000-04 (ticket machines etc) were not dubbed in other languages; I heard that this is changing, but still strongly depending on the region.

どうもありがとうございます

Nick · 2022-07-31, 09:49

Let's take a first look at the Japanese writing system.
In English, we just have 2 versions of a 26-character alphabet, lowercase and uppercase
(along with spaces and various punctuation marks).
In Japanese, we have 2 versions of a 46-character syllbary, called hiragana and katakana
(together referred to as kana) and also the kanji characters, each representing an entire noun,
verb or adjective, of which 2136 are officially recognized.

Batalov's respectful version of "thank you" above is an example of hiragana.
His joke about Go shows an advantage of using kanji: the board game Go sounds the same
as the Japanese for "word", but is written in kanji as 碁 instead of 語.
In practice, kanji, hiragana and katakana are all used together. As a first approximation,
hiragana is used for grammar (e.g. endings in verb conjugation) and katakana used for
loan/foreign words or for emphasis.

Japanese can be written vertically, in which case we read each column from top to bottom
starting on the right, or it can be written horizontally, in which case we read each
row from left to right starting at the top (as in English). Words are not separated by spaces.
In horizontal writing, our Arabic numerals may be used instead of the corresponding kanji.

Calligraphy is an old Japanese art and, even today, when writing with a pen instead of on a keyboard,
there is a correct way to form each character, giving the order of drawing the strokes and, for each one,
which end to start at. For hiragana, for example, these are given here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraga..._and_direction

Dr Sardonicus · 2022-07-31, 13:11

I'm not sure how well I'll be able to catch on, but I heartily approve of this thread. I will mention one Japanese word which has found its way into the English language, which seems peculiarly amenable to absorbing vocabulary from other languages.

A particular instance of this is the word "tycoon." And thereby hangs a tale...

On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry, under orders from President Millard Fillmore, sailed into Edo (now Tokyo) Harbor with four warships. His mission was to deliver a letter to the Japanese leadership, requesting establishment of trade relations. Practically a defining instance of "gunboat diplomacy." The first expedition did not succeed in establishing trade relations, but Perry returned on 13 February 1854 with more ships and more men, and secured a treaty (Treaty of Kanagawa, signed on March 31, 1854). Fillmore had been Zachary Taylor's Vice-President, and succeeded him when Taylor died in office (July 9, 1850).

Japan, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, had isolated itself from the rest of the world for well over 200 years, with the exceptions of a small Dutch trade concession on an artificial island off Nagasaki, and trade with China.

The Shogunate was a hereditary military dictatorship. Japan had an Emperor, and a hereditary caste system which had been imposed by the ruler who had ended a seemingly unending series of battles between the local warlords (Daimyo), and unified Japan into a single nation - Hideyoshi, the Taikō or "peasant king." In this system, peasants were the caste below the Samurai, who were the warriors. No more "peasant kings."

The Taikō had also forbad the lower castes from possessing weapons, which engendered a type of martial arts among the peasants, based on the use of farm implements as weapons.

After he died, there was a power struggle which Tokugawa Ieyasu won after a decisive military victory, and the Tokugawa Shogunate was established.

Anyway, when the Americans came knocking on the door, the Japanese were not about to explain their internal politics to the barbarians, so in talking to the Americans, they referred to the Shogun as their "Great Lord/Prince," which is pronounced like tai kun.

Nick · 2023-01-01, 12:02

Let's try learning 2 Japanese characters a day, starting with the hiragana and katakana syllabaries
(in order to get the boring stuff done first). This will be over by Valentine's day!
Each of these characters is primarily associated with a sound, just as in our alphabet (and unlike the
kanji characters).
Pretty much all alphabets begin with the character for the "a" sound, and Japanese is no different.
In hiragana and katakana respectively, it is:
あ and アsay "a"
Reminder: the stroke order when writing with a pen can be found here and here respectively.
I am just a beginner in Japanese too, so feel free to comment if you see a mistake!

Nick · 2023-01-02, 09:38

In our alphabet, the vowels come in the order aeiou but are scattered throughout the list.
In Japanese, they all come together at the start but in the order aiueo.
So today we learn the hiragana and katakana characters for the sound "i":
い and イsay "i".

Nick · 2023-01-03, 09:48

The vowel sound "u" is written like this:
う (in hiragana) or ウ (in katakana): say "u".

Nick · 2023-01-04, 09:35

The vowel sound "e" is written like this:
え (hiragana) or エ (katakana), say "e".

firejuggler · 2023-01-04, 11:03

The order of stroke and their counter is what is maddening to me.
OTOH the non-arab numeral system is easy...

Nick · 2023-01-04, 15:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by firejuggler

The order of stroke and their counter is what is maddening to me.

It is possible to analyse it and create rules of thumb,
but probably simpler just to practise the correct way until it
lodges in our "finger memory" (like playing a musical instrument).
The following videoclips may help.

Writing hiragana (with pronunciation):

Writing katakana (with pronunciation):

Nick · 2023-01-05, 11:11

The vowel sound "o" is written like this:
お (hiragana) or オ (katakana), say "o".

In English, many vowel sounds are actually diphthongs. For example, when we say the
English word "boat", the vowel sound changes just before the "t", so that we are almost
saying "bowut". (In German or Dutch, we have the same word for boat but without this
change - we just say "bo" followed by "t".)
In English, we also have a short and a long version of each vowel sound.

In Japanese, the vowel sounds are pure (no diphthongs) and short.
Any vowel can be followed by any vowel, however, creating a similar effect to
diphthongs if the vowels are different, or a long vowel if they are both the same.

2022-07-15, 20:06	#1
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 11100001011₂ Posts	日本語 This thread is for anyone interested in learning Japanese from scratch (with English as the metalanguage). To decode the title: 日本 (say "Nihon") means Japan, and 語 (say "go") means word.

2022-07-31, 13:11	#4
Dr Sardonicus Feb 2017 Nowhere 6,217 Posts	I'm not sure how well I'll be able to catch on, but I heartily approve of this thread. I will mention one Japanese word which has found its way into the English language, which seems peculiarly amenable to absorbing vocabulary from other languages. A particular instance of this is the word "tycoon." And thereby hangs a tale... On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry, under orders from President Millard Fillmore, sailed into Edo (now Tokyo) Harbor with four warships. His mission was to deliver a letter to the Japanese leadership, requesting establishment of trade relations. Practically a defining instance of "gunboat diplomacy." The first expedition did not succeed in establishing trade relations, but Perry returned on 13 February 1854 with more ships and more men, and secured a treaty (Treaty of Kanagawa, signed on March 31, 1854). Fillmore had been Zachary Taylor's Vice-President, and succeeded him when Taylor died in office (July 9, 1850). Japan, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, had isolated itself from the rest of the world for well over 200 years, with the exceptions of a small Dutch trade concession on an artificial island off Nagasaki, and trade with China. The Shogunate was a hereditary military dictatorship. Japan had an Emperor, and a hereditary caste system which had been imposed by the ruler who had ended a seemingly unending series of battles between the local warlords (Daimyo), and unified Japan into a single nation - Hideyoshi, the Taikō or "peasant king." In this system, peasants were the caste below the Samurai, who were the warriors. No more "peasant kings." The Taikō had also forbad the lower castes from possessing weapons, which engendered a type of martial arts among the peasants, based on the use of farm implements as weapons. After he died, there was a power struggle which Tokugawa Ieyasu won after a decisive military victory, and the Tokugawa Shogunate was established. Anyway, when the Americans came knocking on the door, the Japanese were not about to explain their internal politics to the barbarians, so in talking to the Americans, they referred to the Shogun as their "Great Lord/Prince," which is pronounced like tai kun. Last fiddled with by Dr Sardonicus on 2022-07-31 at 13:12 Reason: xignif posty

2023-01-01, 12:02	#5
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 3413₈ Posts	Two characters a day Let's try learning 2 Japanese characters a day, starting with the hiragana and katakana syllabaries (in order to get the boring stuff done first). This will be over by Valentine's day! Each of these characters is primarily associated with a sound, just as in our alphabet (and unlike the kanji characters). Pretty much all alphabets begin with the character for the "a" sound, and Japanese is no different. In hiragana and katakana respectively, it is: あ and アsay "a" Reminder: the stroke order when writing with a pen can be found here and here respectively. I am just a beginner in Japanese too, so feel free to comment if you see a mistake! Last fiddled with by Nick on 2023-01-02 at 09:40 Reason: clarity

2023-01-02, 09:38	#6
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 3413₈ Posts	In our alphabet, the vowels come in the order aeiou but are scattered throughout the list. In Japanese, they all come together at the start but in the order aiueo. So today we learn the hiragana and katakana characters for the sound "i": い and イsay "i". Last fiddled with by Nick on 2023-01-02 at 09:41 Reason: clarity

2023-01-04, 11:03	#9
firejuggler "Vincent" Apr 2010 Over the rainbow 2²×7×103 Posts	The order of stroke and their counter is what is maddening to me. OTOH the non-arab numeral system is easy... Last fiddled with by firejuggler on 2023-01-04 at 11:10

2022-07-15, 21:44	#2
Batalov "Serge" Mar 2008 Phi(4,2^7658614+1)/2 10011101000101₂ Posts	Will we also learn to play go? Neat! EDIT: I would be very interested. I can tell those who haven't experienced it - it is very useful if you travel to Japan. While at a conference you can converse with colleagues in English, but on the streets? Not really, you would be on your own. Train stations in 2000-04 (ticket machines etc) were not dubbed in other languages; I heard that this is changing, but still strongly depending on the region. どうもありがとうございます

2022-07-31, 09:49	#3
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 3·601 Posts	Let's take a first look at the Japanese writing system. In English, we just have 2 versions of a 26-character alphabet, lowercase and uppercase (along with spaces and various punctuation marks). In Japanese, we have 2 versions of a 46-character syllbary, called hiragana and katakana (together referred to as kana) and also the kanji characters, each representing an entire noun, verb or adjective, of which 2136 are officially recognized. Batalov's respectful version of "thank you" above is an example of hiragana. His joke about Go shows an advantage of using kanji: the board game Go sounds the same as the Japanese for "word", but is written in kanji as 碁 instead of 語. In practice, kanji, hiragana and katakana are all used together. As a first approximation, hiragana is used for grammar (e.g. endings in verb conjugation) and katakana used for loan/foreign words or for emphasis. Japanese can be written vertically, in which case we read each column from top to bottom starting on the right, or it can be written horizontally, in which case we read each row from left to right starting at the top (as in English). Words are not separated by spaces. In horizontal writing, our Arabic numerals may be used instead of the corresponding kanji. Calligraphy is an old Japanese art and, even today, when writing with a pen instead of on a keyboard, there is a correct way to form each character, giving the order of drawing the strokes and, for each one, which end to start at. For hiragana, for example, these are given here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraga..._and_direction

2023-01-03, 09:48	#7
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 3×601 Posts	The vowel sound "u" is written like this: う (in hiragana) or ウ (in katakana): say "u".

2023-01-04, 09:35	#8
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 70B₁₆ Posts	The vowel sound "e" is written like this: え (hiragana) or エ (katakana), say "e".

2023-01-05, 11:11	#11
Nick Dec 2012 The Netherlands 70B₁₆ Posts	The vowel sound "o" is written like this: お (hiragana) or オ (katakana), say "o". In English, many vowel sounds are actually diphthongs. For example, when we say the English word "boat", the vowel sound changes just before the "t", so that we are almost saying "bowut". (In German or Dutch, we have the same word for boat but without this change - we just say "bo" followed by "t".) In English, we also have a short and a long version of each vowel sound. In Japanese, the vowel sounds are pure (no diphthongs) and short. Any vowel can be followed by any vowel, however, creating a similar effect to diphthongs if the vowels are different, or a long vowel if they are both the same.