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This Japanese All About lesson will help you navigate your way through Japanese grammar conventions. We will talk a little bit about how Japanese sentence order differs from that in English, how easy it is to form questions in Japanese, and all the other rules of English grammar you can throw out the window.

Japanese is what’s called an SOV language. This means the subject comes first, followed by the object, and then the verb. Remember that: the verb comes last. This is one of the biggest differences between English and Japanese grammar and one of the most important aspects to keep in mind!

• Tense

• • Japanese only has two tenses: past and non-past. It’s called non-past because Japanese uses the same tense for the present and future.

• • By adding a word like “tomorrow” or “next week” that indicates some point in the future, our present tense turns into the future tense without even changing the verb.

• Conjugation

• • Japanese only has two verbs that conjugate irregularly. The rest follow the same patterns, so they’re easy to get the hang of! Japanese verbs are divided up into three different groups according to how they conjugate, which we will refer to as Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 later on.

• • in Japanese it doesn’t matter who is doing the action, the verb will not change.

• Singulars and Plurals

• • Japanese words almost never change to reflect plurals. Nezumi, the word for “mouse,” could refer to one mouse or ten mice!
    

• Forming Questions

• • In Japanese, it’s extremely easy to create questions. By simply putting ka at the end of a sentence, you can turn it into a question!
    

• Formal and Informal Speech

• • Japanese uses entirely different grammar structures when it comes to polite speech. There are three politeness levels in spoken Japanese: informal, formal, and honorific.
    

• Counters

• • Japanese has a long list of counters, or words that we use to count specific items. The corresponding counter depends on the appearance or makeup of the item. For example, there are different counters for sheets of paper and bottles because they differ in shape.
    

• Omission

• • In Japanese, the writer often omits the subject from the sentence when it’s understood who is doing the action. In fact, stating the subject every time will actually make your Japanese sound unnatural. The key is to only state the subject when it’s absolutely necessary.
    

This Japanese All About lesson will teach you about the three types of artistic scripts that make up the written Japanese language, kanji, hiragana, and katakana, and the roles they play in putting together sentences.

The Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, known separately as hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) and collectively as kana (かな), as well as thousands of Chinese characters known as kanji (漢字). Each script serves a different function.

• Hiragana: grammatical elements and for words that do not use kanji (or for words where the author doesn’t know the kanji).
  • We use the hiragana syllabary for two types of words; okurigana (送り仮名), which are inflected verb and adjective endings; and for grammatical elements called “particles.” Hiragana is also used to write furigana (ふりがな), small symbols placed above or to the side of a kanji character that indicate how it is read.

• Katakana to write borrowed words of foreign origin and onomatopoeic sound effects.
  • We use the katakana syllabary for gairaigo (外来語), words of foreign origin, onomatopoeic words that indicate sounds, scientific names, and also for emphasis, much like how italics are used in English.

There are forty-six characters in the hiragana and katakana scripts, for a total of ninety-two characters in all. These characters represent specific syllables which are made up of a consonant plus a vowel or just one vowel sound.

In Japanese, there are five vowels (a, i, u, e, and o) and fourteen basic consonants (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, and p).

Kanji is used for words of both Japanese and Chinese origin as well as many Japanese names.]

Kanji are made up of smaller parts known as radicals. Many characters have been combined with others to create new ones. When written on the page, each character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how complex it is. In written Japanese, there are no spaces between characters.

Most kanji have at least two different kinds of readings: kun yomi (訓読み), which is the Japanese reading, and on yomi (音読み), which is the original Chinese reading.

In today’s All About Japanese lesson, we’ll share some background about Japan and its native language and boil it down to bring you the top five reasons to learn Japanese-not the least of which is the fact that Japan is the world’s second largest economy!

Background of the Japanese Language

• It ranks in the list of the top ten languages based on number of native speakers, with around 130 million people speaking Japanese as their native language.

• The most well-known dialect is Kansai-ben the “Kansai dialect,” which is spoken throughout the Kansai region of Japan. The Kansai region refers to an area in western Japan that includes major cities Osaka and Kyoto.

• The Japanese written language consists of three alphabets: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets, with the latter being used primarily for writing foreign words. Kanji is a system of characters of Chinese origin used to represent various ideas.

• The Japanese Ministry of Education has created a list of 1,945 jouyou kanji “common use kanji” made up of characters commonly used in everyday life. Japanese children will have studied all of these kanji by the time they graduate from junior high school.

Top Five Reasons to Learn Japanese

• To communicate with Japanese people! Over 130 million people throughout the world speak Japanese, placing it in the top ten languages spoken in the world.

• Japanese pronunciation is easy! Japanese is pronounced just the way it looks, so you can start speaking it right away.

• You will learn more than just a language. Learning Japanese will give you great insight into the world of Japanese culture you just can’t get any other way. By learning how the language works, you’ll learn more about how the culture works.

•  Japanese is fun! Japan has a lot to offer in the way of pop culture-fun and interesting movies, music, TV shows, comics, games-you name it! Learning Japanese will give you even greater access to the rich world of Japanese pop culture.

•  Learning Japanese makes you smarter! Learning a second language also increases your memory and makes you stay sharper, helps your attention span, and sharpens your critical thinking skills.
  

Hi everyone!
Welcome to Everyday Kanji! In this series, we’re going to present pictures of kanji seen in various places in Japan taken by the team members at JapanesePod101.com. That’s right - kanji seen and used everyday!

The theme for this week is kanji found on vending machines. Let’s take a look!

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Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone!
Welcome to Everyday Kanji! In this series, we’re going to present pictures of kanji seen in various places in Japan taken by the team members at JapanesePod101.com. That’s right - kanji seen and used everyday!

The theme for this week is kanji found on forms at the bank. Let’s take a look!

①

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone!
Welcome to Everyday Kanji! In this series, we’re going to present pictures of kanji seen in various places in Japan taken by the team members at JapanesePod101.com. That’s right - kanji seen and used everyday!

The theme for this week is kanji seen on an electric water heater pot. Let’s take a look!

①

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball fans in Japan and abroad are celebrating the win of the Yankees in the World Series, and the performance of one player in particular - Japanese baseball player Hideki Matsui, who helped lead the Yankees to victory and was named MVP. Matsui, who has been playing with the Yankees for seven years, is the first Japanese player ever to receieve the honor of MVP.

Despite having been with the Yankees for seven years, Matsui still does his interviews all in Japanese. Here is one of his interviews conducted right after the Yankees amazing win with the original Japanese and an English translation.

 Hideki Matsui interview

―今の気持ちは？
松井秀喜外野手「最高ですね。この日のために１年間頑張ってきたわけですから。何年もここ（ヤンキース）にいましたけど、初めてここ（ＷＳ優勝）までこれて最高です」

 ― Well, how do you feel now?
Matsui: It’s an awesome feeling – I worked so hard over the course of a year for this day. I’ve been here with the Yankees for several years, but this is the first time we were able to win the World Series Championship. It’s amazing.

Read the rest of this entry »