An Introduction to the Japanese Language Saturday, June 17, 2006 Kazumi Takahashi

1. An Introduction to the Japanese LanguageSaturday, June 17, 2006Kazumi Takahashi

2. Characteristics • 5 vowels a - /a/; i - /i/; u – /u/; e - /e/; o - /o/ Romanized Japanese words: mine, Mike • SOV topic first, verb final, and everything else falls between like Korean • post-positional grammatical markers topic, subject, direct object, indirect object, instrument, direction, place of action, among others e.g.) Yoshi reads the bible at 10:00 at home today. Yoshi-wa kyoo uchi-de seisho-o yomimasu. • pitch accent

3. So… what is pitch accent? • (as opposed to) stress accent e.g.) dictionary ⇨dic ·tion · ary dic ·tion · ary • two pitches- high and low • high pitch can continue • some well-known Japanese words Toyota to・yo・ta karaoke ka・ra・o・ke Honda ho・n・da Nissan ni・s・sa・n

4. Writing Systems • There are three sets of letters and characters, each with its own function • Hiragana 46 letters in modern Japanese, each representing one sound • Katakana 46letters in modern Japanese, each representing one sound • Kanji “Chinese characters” each character represents meaning On-reading approximation to the sound representation of the character at the time of its importation Kun-reading Japanese original readings of the character based on its meaning

5. Let’s read Hiragana • か み　さ　ま ka mi sa ma • あ な た a na ta • あ い し て お ら れ ま す a i shi te o ra re ma su “God loves you.” かみさま○ 　　あなた○　 あいしておられます かみさま-topic あなた-direct object 　あいしておられます かみさま-wa 　 あなた-o あいしておられます