Saturday, April 14, 2007

   Hey!
um...i hav to do a speech on the Japanese Language tomorrow so i was just wondering wat you guys think of it...

Language!

Konnichiwa!
Everyone knows what that word means right? Well, just an’ case ya’ don’t, it means good afternoon.
Th’ name’s Aiyama, a girl who’s a large pain in the rear an’ has knuckle-headed opinions about everything. I’ll be going to Tokyo University soon, so I need to know at least something about the Japanese language. Since you’re going to be going to Japan, I guess we’ll learn some together…since I’m not the best at it!
The first two types of writing are called Hiragana and Katakana. Both together have a name an easier name of Kana. Hiragana is the one that is actually used to write Japanese words and adjective and verb endings while Katakana is used for foreign words, emphasis, rude words, and sound effects inside a manga.
*Pull out a paper that has samples of both Hiragana and Katakana on it*
As you can see, each symbol is different between each part of Kana. Instead of upper and lower case letters in English, they are just two completely different ways of writing. Even though it seems unnecessary to have Katakana, it’s much easier when trying to understand something written down in tons of Kanji. That way can at least try to understand it!
Well…since I’m on the subject, Kanji is not an original part of the Japanese writing system like Hiragana and Katakana. Like many other countries in Asia, Japan had adapted a Chinese writing over the centuries. These pictograms are way more com-plicated than Kana and they can be sounded out in many different ways.
Each Kanji alone will mean a certain word, but when combined with another Kanji, the sound of that syllable changes an’ the word means somethin’ absolutely different. Jeez! And what makes it worse, is there are more than 300,000 Kanji in writing… And by Junior High, all students in Japan should already know 1000 of them!
But don’t panic! I know some Kanji!
*Pull out large paper with all the Kanji I know on it and look at it oddly*
…And here’s all the Kanji I know……three.
Besides, that was the easy stuff. That’s right, the easy stuff. Now on to the more COMplicated.
After about High School, each student should know the 3000 kanji symbols needed to read books and signs and write. Some spend their whole lives memorizing all the kanji in the system. I don’t recommend doing that if ya’ wanta have some free time.
Onto more Kanji stuff! For instance, compound kanji! What it is, is when you push two kanji together to make one kanji that means somethin’ either a little bit different or completely different than th’ original Kanji. An example is th’ kanji for “tree”. If you put two of them together in a squished kinda way, then you get the kanji “wood”.
*Get another paper and show the example to everyone on a piece of medium-sized paper*
If it helps, and it only helps if you know Kana, is a thing called “Furigana”. This is a small portion of Kana writing above a Kanji t’ show how you pronounce it. I can tell you this much, trying to just read something without Furigana, is near impossible for me.
Oi, and if you thought trying to remember that was hard, try this on for size—Japanese doesn’t really have prefixes, suffixes, or past, present, and future action. They express verbs with a non-past continuing action—then there’s a tense that would describe something that has happened or was completed and an action that hasn’t been carried out.
Not only is that something you have to remember, but if you said “the snow is white”, there are two different readings an’ ways t’ say it. One is “Yuki ga siroi” and the other is “Yuki wa siroi”. Now, you might think that they both mean the same thing…but that’s wrong. “Ga” is if you’re referring to a particular bunch of somethin’, while “Wa” is for when saying it as a topic to be described or judged.
Don’t worry! I have a simple solution!
*Long Pause*
Okay, I actually don’t have an easy solution—so sue me. Now let’s get on with this elongated speech shall we?
Definitely enough with the Kanji. Let’s just say if I try to make more sense of it…it’ll make your brain hurt like mine’s doin’ right at this moment. Now I’ll try to tell you how to speak in Japanese. This is the fun part, and probably much easier to understand.
*Have a very large piece of paper and tape it to the wall with how to pronounce stuff on it and examples *
Now here we go, first of all, sentences. Japanese isn’t put in them like they are in English. It more goes “sentence-object-verb” than in a “subject verb-object”. Please don’t ask me what that exactly means…’cause I don’t really know muh-self. All I know is that th’ sentence is backwards-ish.
The Japanese alphabet includes most of our letters but not L, Q, V, or X. “L” is usually changed into an “R”, “X” usually altered into a “Z”, and “Vs” replaced with a “B”. Each syllable is either a consonant and a vowel, just a vowel, or in one case, the letter “N”.
*Motion to pronunciation paper*
Now, for most syllables they only have one way of speaking it. Which, makes everything all the easier. To start out, the vowels—“A” is said with an “ahh” sound like in the word father and “I” as in machine with the sound of “E”. For “U” it’s pronounced like in recuperate. “E” is like when saying net and “O” is always said just like when you say “oh”.
Then there’s “Tsu”, “Fu”, and the letters “G”, “R”, “S”, an’ “N”. “Tsu”, as you just heard, are always pronounced as in “Tsunami” while “Fu” sound more with a “who” sound than an “F” sound. That one’s even hard for me. Gs, Rs, Ss, and Ns are faster to learn. Gs are always as in “GO” not “AGE”, Rs kinda rolled like how I say Naruto, Ss always sound like Ss never a Zs, and Ns are pretty much the same as in English but when it occurs before a “B”, “P”, or “M” it sounds more like an “M”.
The only syllables that change in tone are “N”, “I” and “U”. “I” and “U” become silent between unvoiced consonants such as K, S, SH, T, CH, H, F, P, or at the end of a word, for example, instead of saying “How’s it going” as Ikaga desU ka, ya’ say Ikaga deSu ka.
For the last thing—long vowels. Some words have a long vowel sound in ‘em. To make a long vowel they either put another of the same vowel next to it, or when using an “O”, they sometimes have an “OU”. This may seem odd, but some words that sound the same are completely different from each other. Like when you say “biru” it means building and if you say “biiru” is means beer.
See? Completely different. Kinda like how Kanji can be said in diverse ways. Confusing, but if you try hard enough at it you just might get the hang of it!
And if I confused you, or you just want to ask something just raise your hand and ask. It can be pretty much anything about language. I’ll just try to the best of my ability!!
*Answer any questions*
Well, to tell you the truth, that wasn’t everything about the Japanese language. I just didn’t want to say it all because it would most likely take an hour. Anyway…
Dewa Matta!!
(See you later!)

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