Just Another Gaijin Studying Japanese - Lesson One
I was in eighth grade when I decided I wanted to study Japanese. This was when I discovered anime, specifically subtitled anime, and realized there was a pattern behind all the weird sounds the characters were saying. Just one problem: neither my middle school nor the high school I went on to attend offered Japanese language instruction.
I bought a book and tried to teach myself, but that did not end well.
It wasn't until 1997, when I finally got to college, that I could take a class in Japanese. This was absolutely awesome (no more studying French!), I had a fantastic sensei, and I was excited as hell to arrive in class each day. There was only one problem: Japanese wasn't the only class I was taking. On the advice of the school, to make sure I completed my graduation requirements in the customary 4 years instead of dragging it out longer, I elected to take a whopping 18 credit hours my freshman year.
Turns out 18 credit hours was frickin' expensive, even two decades ago. I quit after one year to pay off the student loans for that year, and never went back.
In the intervening years, I've halfheartedly tried to pick up the language using various apps or books, but all to no effect. Teaching myself Japanese is not in the cards. However, fortunately for me, I finally found a local program that meets once a week on Saturdays. It's taught by a native Japanese teacher, staffed with native Japanese classroom assistants, and all of them have the infinite patience required to guide gaijin such as myself through the intricacies of language learning and retention.
I'm having the time of my life, and my only regret is that the classes don't meet more often. But for the money spent and the devotion of the staff, I have no complaints. I love languages, and I absolutely love Japanese, even though I'm still quite the beginner.
Nevertheless, there are some amusing things I've noticed over my weeks of study, and I'll be sharing them here from time to time. Those of you who know the language, maybe you'll correct me. Those of you who don't know Japanese, maybe you'll learn a little something with me. And those of you who like to laugh...well, hopefully I'll amuse you.
Today we're going to get dead simple and talk about Hiragana.
Hiragana is one of three "alphabets" used by Japanese for written communication. It's the most basic one, the one children begin learning first in school, and your success in the language will largely come from your ability to understand Hiragana, because after that it only gets harder.
I use quotation marks around "alphabet" up there because Hiragana isn't really an alphabet, it's a syllabary. With an alphabet, each character represents a specific letter, but those letters can have multiple sounds associated with them (think 'certain' vs. 'curtain' with regards to the letter 'C'). A syllabary, by contrast, uses characters to represent specific sounds. The downside is that you need one character for every 'sound' in your language; the upside is that you never need to 'untangle' how a certain character is pronounced, because they'll always sound the same. (Yes, yes, there are exceptions, but 99.99% of the time, this holds true).
Japanese has five basic sounds which correspond to the English vowels A, I, U, E, and O. Represented in Hiragana, they go like so:
- あ - pronounced like our short 'a' sound, as in 'car' or 'fart'
- い - pronounced like our long 'e' sound, as in 'feet' or 'beam'
- う - pronounced sorta like our long 'u' sound, as in 'route' or 'you'
- え - pronounced like our short 'e' sound, as in 'hell' and 'pelt'
- お - pronounced like our long 'o' sound, as in, 'Oh my God, why does it look so freakin' similar to あ?'
Thanks, folks, I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your servers.
I particularly appreciate this line: "Oh my God, why does it look so freakin' similar to あ?" It took me several days of brute force study to finally keep those two straight! Of course, those were the good ol' days, before I hit the added complexity of ka/ga, to/do, etc.
Thanks, @jeunebug! I notice you're posting from Ibaraki -- how long have you been in Japan?
Yeah! I moved here about a month ago, fulfilling a life-long personal dream! Have you been here yourself?
I have not, although I'm trying to use the money I've been earning on Steemit to visit. My hope is some time next year. :)
Also, definitely didn't mean to vote on myself. To quote the great Homer Simpson: "It's my first day."
I really wanted to learn Japanese in college. I ended up taking a semester and most of another. I ended up dropping the second semester because I just didn't have time for it. It was taking up more time that all of my other classes and I just wasn't that dedicated...
Yeah, Japanese (at least for me) was not a language I could study when there was so much else required of me during my weeks. It gave me the basics, but little more than that. :)
At the elementary school I attended in Sitka, AK, we were offered Japanese in the 5th grade, and I enjoyed it. However, the teacher was not there next year, and I never learned any more Japanese afterwards.
So, the short 'o' sound, as in 'cot', rather than the short 'a' sound, as in 'cat'?
The 'r's confuse me.
Also, I pronounce 'route' 'rowt'. Must be an Alaska thing..
Yeah, my pronunciation examples are inherently flawed I now realize since not everybody says stuff the way I do in the Midwest. For me, 'route' (as in a way of travel) is pronounced like 'root', while 'rout' (as in complete defeat of one side in a battle) is pronounced like 'rowt'. Apologies for the confusion. :)
あ is basically an 'ah' sound, very much like the 'o' in 'cot', yes. :)
Oh yeah, there'll be a post on the 'r' sounds at some point too. Amusingly enough, one of the classroom assistants even has problems with some of the combinations, and he's native Japanese. It's easily the most complex and difficult 'sound' I've had to learn for a language. :)
They way our instructor described the 'r' sound (which isn't exactly an 'r' sound) was as a combination of 'r' and 'l'..kind like an 'r' with a short roll...but not exactly.
The R-line sound is ludicrously difficult to describe with no sound cues. It's like trying to combine 'r', 'l', and 'd' all at the same time. But that's not enough...then you add in the Y-line for 'rya' 'ryu' and 'ryo', and you want to bang your head against a wall. In English, those combinations all come out as two-syllable sounds (like 're-ah', 're-you', and 're-yo').
In Japanese? Screw you, gaijin, those are all one syllable apiece, and you better get the r-sound, the y-sound, and the vowel sound all in that same syllable or you'll sound like a hick. LOL! :)