Japanese Language Characteristics and Grammar

This assignment delves into the specifics of the Japanese language. It analyzes its grammatical structure, compares it to English, and highlights the complexities of its writing system. The phonology of Japanese is examined, focusing on key terms like phonemes, allophones, word stress, and annotations to reveal significant differences between Japanese and English sound systems.

RESEARCH OF LANGUAGE:
JAPANESE RESEARCH OF
LANGUAGE: JAPANESE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO Japanese LANGUAGE..............................................................................1
BACKGROUND INFORMATION................................................................................................1
BASIC Japanese GRAMMAR........................................................................................................1
HISTORY OF JAPANESE.............................................................................................................3
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE LANGUAGE.....................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION TO Japanese LANGUAGE
Japanese is one of the most challenging language to learn and is mostly spoken by native
people of Japan. On enumerating this ratio, there exists only 130 million people in the world who
fluently speaks in Japanese language. Much linguistic debate is concerning the agenda behind
learning Japanese language. As a result, to which, Japan is specified to be a language of only
Japanese. Japan having the strongest economic status is specified to be an exclusive nation with
most progressive thinking (Sasit, 2015). This ultimately resulted in much technical advancement
in their country. The term is pronounced as Nippon or Nihon in Japanese where their people are
called as Nihonjin and its language is known as Nihongo. Japanese comprising with three
distinct characters namely Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji forms the writing system of Japan
where all of these acts as its main scripts. However, a significant part of their language has also
been borrowed from Portuguese, German, Chinese, Dutch and most newly, from English as well.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Despite of the fact where Japanese is mostly spoken by its natives, there together exists
many migrant speakers who are spread across the regions of Western Hemisphere. Also, there
exists nearly 2 million students who are mostly spread in the regions of South Korea, US and
Australia (Banno and Kuroe, 2016). A much interesting thing about Japanese language is it’s the
only official language in Japan and none of the Japanese people prefers to speak in English. This
indicates a huge difference among both these languages where English having only 26 letters in
its terminology, Japanese is referred to have 3 distinct set of characters.
These are Hiragana as the most basic one and comprising with 46 characters that are
initially based on another script named Kanji and are relatable to the vowels of English language
that are, a, e, i, o and u. Katakana on other hand is similar to Hiragana and consists of 46 such
characters with a major difference of their shapes (Kamermans, 2017). It is where Katakana is
more straight and angular, unlike Hiragana which is more cursively written. Lastly, the most
apprehensive Kanji due to its major derivation from Chinese and is thus very different from both
Hiragana and Katakana where Kanji implies the meaning rather signifying the sound like the
other two.
BASIC Japanese GRAMMAR
Before referring to learn the basic Japanese grammar, it is important to go through its
writing system that consists of its 3 leading scripts namely Hiragana, Katakana and lastly, Kanji
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that is the most difficult part to learn (Trask, 2013). Now, on considering the basic language
rules of Japanese, below is the grammatical structure of Japanese-
 Sentence structure:
The Japanese sentence structuring is easily understandable when compared to that of English
language which is known to follow the SVO verb agreement, unlike Japanese following SOV
that refers to subject- object- verb (Kim, 2017). Moreover, the Japanese verbs are highly regular
and are known to have only two types of tenses namely past and non-past. However, there
together exist two irregular verbs namely ‘to do’ and ‘to come’. Beside this, Japanese has post
positions unlike the prepositions used in English with similar condition of using adjectives that is
required to be placed before noun in both the languages. Japanese Conjugations:
o Vowels- Japanese language is only referred to have 5 vowels which is a, e, i, o and
u that are also known as terse vowels and is required to be pronounced very
sharply and in a well-defined manner (VanPatten and Smith, 2015). There exists a
very specific trait of pronouncing ‘u’, unlike English, where u in Japanese is
spoken without forward movement of lips.
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o Consonants- This is referred to voice consonants also termed as consonants
sounds that needs a voice to create a sense of vibration in the throat while
pronouncing (Kondo-Brown and Brown, 2017). Consonants can be found in the
two basic scripts of Japanese namely Hiragana and Katakana and indicate terms
that can be altered to the enunciated counterpart. These are k, t, s and h where
these are changed by adding 2 tiny dashes to the upper- right part of the character.
HISTORY OF JAPANESE
The history of Japanese language is referred to be one of the most debatable subject
where it is known to have a rich inheritance. Along with which, the Japanese language has in
turn derived from several other languages with its roots believed to lie upon the family of Altaic
language. Later on, it was found to lent deeply from varied other languages namely Portuguese,
English, Chinese and Dutch (Hallen, 1999). Whereas, the languages of Altaic family involved
Turkish, Manchu, Korean and Mongolian. Amongst which, Korean is the most comparable
language that is often associated with that to the Japanese language. This is however due to a
similar structure of both these languages with same vowel agreement and missing conjunctions
with a widespread usage of honorific dialogue. Although, the pronunciation of both of these
languages largely differs from one another where both of these are equally incomprehensible.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE LANGUAGE
This is to highlight some major point of distinction among English and Japanese
languages as specified below-
Difference Japanese English
Characters Japanese consists of 3
different type of characters
namely Kanji, Hiragana and
Katakana, further composed of
46 phonetic symbols.
English has 26 characters
denoting Latin script with a
distinct sound of each.
Verb tenses 2 main tenses namely past and
non-past is being applied in
Japanese. These are along
with 2 vital forms namely
Plain and Polite.
3 basic tenses namely past,
present and future are being
used where these are
applicable in three 3 distinct
verbs namely present,
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progressive and present
progressive.
Form of writing It is written from top to
bottom starting from right side
by ending to left.
No such top to bottom
approach and is written from
left to right.
Word order SOV or subject, object, verb
order is followed.
SVO or subject, verb, object,
order is followed.
Cultural difference Japanese is always aimed at
being polite and unassertive
while speaking.
No such level of formality
while speaking English.
Sounds of Japanese
Figure 1: Japanese vowels and consonants
(Source: How to Write in Japanese – A Beginner’s Guide, 2016)
This is to discourse upon the phonology of Japanese language where being a branch of
dialectology, it is mostly concerned with a systematic arrangement of sounds. Considering this,
below are 4 vitalities namely phonemes, allophones, word stress and intonation, further specified
as-  Phonemes- This specifies about the total number of vowels and consonants in Japanese
language where both of it depicts a relatively easy sound system of Japanese for an easy
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adaptation for the English native speakers. This is basically on comparing the ease level
of the Japanese native speakers eager to learn English which is comparatively low on
linking both. Also, the Japanese sound system is known to consists of 5 vowels and 17
consonants in comparison to English that has 20 vowels and 24 consonants. Although,
the Japanese language is also known to base upon syllabus with a very less consideration
of following the phonetic system. Allophones- This is also stated to be some relative aspects of Japanese phonemes where
these allophones distinctly refer to the vowels and consonants of Japanese. As a result, to
which, the vowels in Japanese do not have positional allophones, except /u/. However,
the Japanese consonants are in turn known to have positional allophones which are /z/ /t/
and /d/, etc. Also, /h/ is among other allophones which is closest to the sound of an
English /f/. Word stress- This is to depict Japanese pronunciation where on comparing to English
which is a stress timed language, Japanese is referred to be a Mora timed language where
Japanese simply lacks the strained syllabus. This is for instance to state about a very
common term “important” in English, where a major stress is upon ‘port’ pronunciation.
Here, together exists both stress and unstressed syllable with a counterbalance among
both, as and when required. Japanese on other hand is known to consists of short and long
morae with no existence of any such stressed syllable. This is for example on referring to
one such common term called “teriyaki” which is basically a cooking technique is
pronounced differently in English as that of in Japanese with a leading difference in their
stress. It is where in English, a primary stress is upon ‘YAH’ and secondary on ‘ter’ and
it will be pronounced as [ter-ee-YAH-kee]. However, in Japanese pronunciation
considering [the-rih-yah-kee], all of these syllables will require a similar level of stress. Intonation- This is to discourse upon the pitch accent of Japanese language where it has
distinct pitch patterns used to pronounce distinct words. With a negligible use of
intonation in English, this segment can be compared to Mandarin where it is known to
have 5 tone contours with a distinct consent of Japanese that has only 2 pitches. These 2
pitches namely high and low can however be distinguished in several distinct
combinations.
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CONCLUSION
The above report has concluded the specification of Japanese language by scrutinizing its
basic grammar connotations and other related data. It has basically compared Japanese with that
to an official language of many countries called English. However, Japan is found to be among
those unique nations who do not consider speaking English and officially speaks Japan. From
which, it has been found that the Japanese writing system is much more complex than that of
English and not only the Japanese learners but also the Japanese attempting to learn English
faces difficulty in doing so, due to very different composition of both. This is basically on
referring to the acquired findings about the phonology of Japanese that largely differs with that
to the sounds of English. This is mainly on comparing some vital terms considered to explore the
Japanese sound system namely phonemes, allophones, word stress and annotations that has
illuminated some vital differences among both the languages.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Banno, E. and Kuroe, R., 2016. Chapter One: Effects of Extensive Reading on Japanese
Language Learning. Extensive Reading. pp.1.
Kondo-Brown, K. and Brown, J.D. eds., 2017. Teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
heritage language students: Curriculum needs, materials, and assessment. Routledge.
Trask, R.L., 2013. A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. Routledge.
Tsujimura, N., 2013. An introduction to Japanese linguistics. John Wiley & Sons.
VanPatten, B. and Smith, M., 2015. Aptitude as grammatical sensitivity and the initial stages of
learning japanese as a L2: Parametric variation and case marking. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition. 37(1). pp.135-165.
Online
Hallen, C. L., 1999. A Brief History of the Japanese Language. [Online]. Available through:
<http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/japanese2.html>.
Kamermans, M. P., 2017. An Introduction to Japanese Syntax, Grammar & Language. [Online].
Available through: <https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/>.
Kim, T., 2017. Basic Grammatical Structures. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/basic>.
Sasit, M. L., 2015. An Introduction to the Japanese Language. [Online]. Available through:
<http://jpninfo.com/8579>.
How to Write in Japanese – A Beginner’s Guide. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/how-to-write-in-japanese/>.
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