Learning Japanese

Russ and I learned quite a bit of basic Japanese when we lived in Iwakuni twenty three years ago but when we moved to Okinawa we found we had forgotten some of them but also had many Japanese phrases in our heads that we couldn't remember what they meant. I signed us up for a free Japanese language class that meets every Tuesday and Thursday for a month. I usually drive in and meet Russ at the classroom and then we eat a late supper at one of the restaurants on base. It's been a nice refresher course but also is giving us more vocabulary to add to what we already know.

I thought it might be interesting to those of you who aren't familiar with the Japanese language to learn a little bit about the Japanese writing system. In Japan there are four different forms of written language. First there is Hiragana which is a symbol for each sound of a word. Like the word for good afternoon - konichiwa would have four symbols when written in Hiragana (ko/ni/chi/wa). Hiragana has more curves  than the others do.

Then there is Katakana. It also has a symbol for each sound and has a straighter line look to it. Katakana is usually used for words that come from abroad. A sentence can have a combination of both hiragana and katakana and sometimes kanji in it.

The children in school learn to write these two first before moving onto the more difficult writing of kanji. I guess it would be similar to our learning printed English before learning cursive. Kanji is their main written form of language. It is derived from the Chinese writing system but evolved into unique characters that represents Japanese words and phrases more accurately than the Chinese characters did. So although they are similar in many ways, kanji is different than Chinese writings. If you would like to learn more about how it all evolved into what they use today, you can read this article in Wikipedia. With kanji there is a symbol for each word but when there isn't a symbol for a word it is combined with katakana which phonetically sounds out the word. Kanji looks like this...

In Elementary school, the children learn about 1006 kanji. By middle school and high school they add in another 1130 kanji. So by the time they graduate they know all 2136 kanji that represent their main words. Another 983 kanji are added which represent most of the Japanese names. In total there are about 3119 kanji. 

The fourth form of Japanese written language is known as Romanji. It is the Romanized version of their words that was formed as a means for foreigners who can't read kanji or hiragana to be able to sound out their words and speak them. We, Americans living here rely on romanji on road signs and business signs so we can feel semi-literate when traveling around this country. Since WW2, children in the Japanese schools not only learn all the hiragana, katakana and kanji symbols, they also have to learn how to write them in romanji (roman letters).  It amazes me every time I watch them write to see the complexity of each of the characters but yet they know the order of each stroke of the pen that creates the character and write them quite quickly. Their books are written in vertical lines from top to bottom rather than across the page and they read from right to left.

Most of you know at least one Japanese word if you've heard the song "Mr. Roboto" by Styxx. Domo Arigato means "thank you very much".  Thanks has a kanji character so it can be written in one more complex symbol. Or could be written with four simpler symbols in Hiragana--a symbol for each sound. (a/ri/ga/to). Or when it is written as "arigato" this is the romanized version of the word. I don't know if at my age I would be able to learn 3119 or even 2136 kanji and remember them all but it fascinates me enough that I try to learn a few that are useful to me. We try to pick them apart to remember them in what makes sense to us. We might say, "it looks like a road sign with a running man next to it wearing a triangular hat"...or something like that. Most days when I'm out in town, I feel as if I'm illiterate because I can't read anything unless it is romanized for me. But then even that's not helpful unless I know what the romanized word means. It's an adventure we're on though and somehow we manage to communicate with our skoshi Nihon-go (little Japanese) and their skoshi Eigo (little English) and we make it through each day just fine. Be thankful all you had to learn were 26 letters and the sounds they make.