Introduction to Basic Japanese
Japanese is a Japonic language with no identified relatives outside of Japan itself (the only relatives being the closely related Ryukyu languages of Okinawa). It is a synthetic language, particularly in the conjugation of verbs. Politeness is a very important part of Japanese, and is encoded in verb conjugation and also expressed in a variety of fixed expressions, pronouns, and active avoidance of pronouns. Japanese is a near perfect model of a head-final language, with few, if any exceptions. Word order is SOV and sentence structure is based on the topic-comment pattern, which at first poses a major headache for speakers of languages such as English. It is also heavily pro-drop, preferring to leave out anything that is recoverable from context.
The phonology is fairly simple, but with a few sounds that are notoriously difficult for learners. The language has a lexical pitch accent that varies considerably from region to region, and is the primary difference in pronunciation between dialects, much like vowels in English.
The system of written Japanese is almost certainly the most difficult modern writing system on the planet to learn. It consists of two phonetic scripts (kana) used in combination with Chinese characters (kanji), a significant number of which have simplifications unique to Japan. While the two phonetic writing systems generally write words exactly as they are pronounced (with only around two very common and easily learned exceptions), most kanji can be pronounced in at least two ways, often three or more, and there are a few with a baffling array of possible pronunciations.
The first two lessons of this guide will focus on pronunciation, the next two on writing, and following that, if there is interest, we will get into practical language lessons.
Contents:
- Lesson 1: Phonology
- Lesson 2: Accent
- Lesson 3: Hiragana Part 1
- Lesson 3: Hiragana Part 2
- Lesson 4: Katakana Part 1
- Lesson 4: Katakana Part 2
- Lesson 5: Greetings and useful phrases
- Lesson 6: Noun basics and some simple kanji
- Lesson 7: Verb basics
- Lesson 8: The copula and adjectives
- Lesson 9: Polite conjugations
- Lesson 10: Pronouns and personal titles
- Lesson 11: Adverbs and Adverbials
- Lesson 12: Transitivity in Verbs
- Lesson 13: Verb conjugations with the -te form
- Lesson 14: Demonstratives
- Lesson 15: Miscellaneous function words
- Lesson 16: Kanji overview
- Lesson 17: Causative, passive, and potential
- Lesson 18: Counting (Part 1)
- Lesson 19: Counting (Part 2)
First I will give you the basics of vowels and consonants, and then I will followed it up with additional information on both.
Vowels:
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<i> i <u> ɯ
<ii, ī> iː <ū> ɯː
<e> e <o> o
<ei, ē> eː <ō> oː
<a> a
<ā> aː
• You may also see <uu ee oo aa> when the vowels belong to different morphemes. Pronounce them the same as long vowels. If <ei> occurs across morpheme boundaries, it is pronounced /ei/, e.g. fu-kei-ki “(economic) recession” is pronounced /ɸɯkeːki/ while tame-iki “sigh” is pronounced [tameiki]. There is no reliable way to differentiate them based on orthography alone.
• As you can see, Japanese has a very simple five-vowel system. The vowels are all pure, with no offglide. Sometimes a glide can change the meaning, e.g. Keiō /keːoː/ and Keiyō /keːjoː/ are two completely different train lines, both originating within Tokyo.
• There are technically no diphthongs, but theoretically any vowel may potentially appear beside any other, in any number, especially across word boundaries. All vowels should be pronounced distinctly, e.g. in this sentence, Arumihoiru de kan no ue o ōi, ana o akete kudasai, “Cover the top of the can with aluminum foil and make a hole.”
• /ɯ/ often poses trouble for learners and is unexpectedly difficult to get right. While it is usually written as /ɯ/ because the lips are not rounded, they are in fact compressed somewhat. It is not unusual to hear this vowel fronted a little as well.
• /i/ is a very high and tense vowel, and causes palatalization or the preceding consonant.
Consonants:
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<m> m <n> n <n(’)> ɴ
<p> p <t> t <ch> ʨ <k> k
<b> b <d> d <j> ʥ <g> ɡ
<f> ɸ <s> s <sh> ɕ <h> h
<z> z
<ts> ʦ
<r> ɺ
<w> w <y> j
• /ɺ/ is problematic. It is easy for English speakers to mistake the sound for a /d/.
• /ɴ/ appears at the end of syllables only. When /ɴ/ appears before <a i u e o y> an apostrophe separates them, to differentiate it from /n/, which can also appear in those places. Its exact pronunciation and how it differs from /n/ will be discussed below.
• Any consonant except /w/, /ɺ/, /j/, /ɴ/ can be geminated, but voiced geminates do not occur in native words, only loan words. When /h/ is geminated in native words it becomes /pp/, but a geminate /h/ does occur in loan words to indicate [x] and similar sounds, e.g. Bahha “Bach”.
• I included /ʦ/ as a basic phoneme (some people may question this, but it is phonemically distinct, albeit not commonly) but you will rarely see it used with any vowel other than /ɯ/. When conjugating verbs it should be treated as an allophone of /t/ before /ɯ/.
• Syllable structure is quite basic, with a maximal syllable of CCVC, where C2 can only be /j/, and C3 can only be /ɴ/ or a geminate consonant.
• A glottal stop /ʔ/ occurs somewhat frequently at the beginning of an utterance and extremely often at the end of an utterance when the word begins or ends with a short vowel.
• Vowel can follow most consonants, e.g.
ka ki ku ke ko
ma mi mu me mo
However, there are some alterations for some consonants:
sa shi su se so
za ji zu ze zo
ta chi tsu te to
da ji zu de do
ha hi fu he ho
ya i yu e yo
wa i u e (w)o
The w in wo is basically never pronounced, except when the speaker is being extremely deliberate and clear. This sequence appears in only one morpheme in the entire modern language (although that morpheme is the accusative marker, so it is extremely common).
Sounds occuring only in loanwords
The following additional sequences occur fairly commonly in loanwords but not in native Japanese words: she, je, ti, di, fa, fi, fe, fo. Some older people may fail to distinguish some or all of these from se, ze, te/chi, de/ji, ha, hi, he, ho. Older loanwords often don’t include these sounds: miruku sēki “milkshake”. Ti and di on the other hand, and are quite well established, and have replaced the older sounds, e.g. kyandei “candy” and birujingu “building” sound fairly quaint and old-fashioned and have been mostly replaced with kyandī and birudingu. My intuition tells me these started becoming distinct somewhere maybe around the 1960s or so (I could be wrong), so the language is still kind of in transition.
tsa, tsi, tse, tso, can sometimes occur in representing foreign place names, people, etc. They do not really occur in any commonly used words.
Some people will distinguish ye, wi, we from ie, ui, ue, though it’s not really obvious (my surname contains wi and I often have to pronounce it ui to get through to people, especially outside of Tokyo).
For this guide I am going to count /ʨ/, /ʥ/, /ɕ/ and /ɸ/ as distinct phonemes. Some people (I’m looking at you, Wikipedia) may dispute this, but this solution requires the least amount of explanation and exceptions to account for their phonemically contrastive presence in loanwords.
Devoicing vowels:
The vowels /ɯ/ and /i/ are devoiced when they appear between two unvoiced consonants, or at the end of a word after an unvoiced consonant.
kita [ki̥ta]
desu [desɯ̥]
You may be wondering what exactly devoicing sounds like. If you recall, I said that /i/ causes palatalization and /ɯ/ causes lip compression. As a result, kita [ki̥ta] sounds very much like [kçta], while kutsu [kɯ̥ʦɯ] sounds a lot like [kɸʦɯ]. This means that hiku [hi̥kɯ] is more like [çkɯ] and fuku [ɸɯ̥kɯ] like [ɸkɯ].
The /ɯ/ of words ending in su and tsu is not so much devoiced as dropped completely at the end of an utterance, so you will hear desu pronounced as [des], hanasu pronounced as [hanas], etc., though native Japanese speakers tend to believe they are still pronouncing the /ɯ/.
This devoicing doesn’t occur on an accented syllable or on a word with no accent that is not followed by another word.
hikŭ /hi̥kɯ/
ashĭ /aɕi/
We will talk about accent later.
A sequence of o vowels can cause the first one to devoice as well, though the devoiced and voiced vowels here are in free varation:
kokoro /kokoro/ or /ko̥koro/
kotoba /kotoba/ or /ko̥toba/
If this is confusing, don’t worry. While failing to devoice vowels is an obvious mark of a foreign accent, it is absolutely unnecessary for clear communication. Don’t worry if you can’t figure out when to do it or not.
Additional notes on consonants
• /ɡ/ can sometimes be softened to /ŋ/ or /ɰ/, particularly in the middle of words, though this is not particularly important to being understood and varies among speakers.
• /ɯ/ causes the mouth to close and the lips to compress, causing /hɯ/ to be pronounced [ɸɯ] and /tɯ/ to be pronounced [ʦɯ] (as previously discussed).
• I also mentioned that /i/ palatalizes any consonant before it:
/ki ɡi ni hi bi pi mi/ are pronounced [kʲi ɡʲi nʲi çi bʲi pʲi mʲi]
These are not important for being understood and the palatalization can safely be ignored if you can’t pronounce it right.
As I mentioned, though, there are some other, slightly more important changes:
/si/ is pronounced [ɕi]
/ti/ is pronounced [ʨi]
/zi/ is pronounced [ʥi]
/di/ is pronounced [ʥi]
The allophones /ɕ/, /ʨ/, /ʥ/ are also triggered by compounding /s t z d/ with /j/, so e.g. /sja/, /tjɯ/, /zja/ and /djo/ are pronounced /ɕa/, /ʨɯ/, /ʥa/ and /ʥo/ respectively.
While some new sequences of sounds have been added from loan words, as a rule, [si], [zi], and [hɯ] do not occur at all, and most Japanese people usually have difficulty pronouncing them or differentiating them from [ɕi], [ʥi], and [ɸɯ].
/ɴ/
The phonetic variation of /ɴ/ warrants giving it its own section. It can only appear at the end of a syllable, but it is by far the most difficult sound for Japanese learners. It has at least five different pronunciations based on the phonetic environment:
before m, p, b: [m]
before n, t, d, ch, j, r: [n] (perhaps before ch and j it is [ɲ] or something similar)
before k, g: [ŋ]
at the end of an utterance: [ɴ]
before vowels, fricatives, approximants: [˜ː(j/ɰ/Ø)]
The pronunciation [˜ː(j/ɰ/Ø)] is obviously the worst one. It took me a very long time to figure out what was going on (i.e. (partial) elision + nasalization + lengthening + palatalization) and to get it to sound right.
It’s easier to just give you a table rather than try to explain it:
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a i ɯ e o
aɴ + ãː(ɰ)a ãːi ãː(ɰ)ɯ ãːje / ãː(ɰ)e ãː(ɰ)o
iɴ + ĩːja ĩːi ĩːjɯ ĩːje ĩːjo
ɯɴ + ɯ̃ːa ɯ̃ːi ɯ̃ːaɯ ɯ̃ːe ɯ̃ːo
eɴ + ẽːja ẽːi ẽːjɯ ẽːje ẽːjo / ẽː(ɰ)o
oɴ + õːa õːi õːɯ õːe õːo
Examples:
kin’en: [kĩːjeɴ] “no smoking”
den’atsu [dẽːjaʦɯ] “voltage”
sen’en [sẽːjeɴ] “1000 yen”
Shin-Ōsaka [ɕĩːjoːsaka] Shin-Osaka
tan’i: [tãːi] “credit; unit”
hon o [hõːo] “book (ACC)”
kan’oke [kãːɰoke] “coffin”
The good news is that you don’t really have to get all the palatalization and so on exactly right. The bad news is that monolingual Japanese speakers often fail to understand you if you pronounce it as /n/, so you have to be at least somewhat careful. There are several minimal pairs as well. Compare:
kinen [kineɴ] “commemoration”
kin’en: [kĩːeɴ] “no smoking”
tani [tani] “valley”
tan’i: [tãːi] “credit; unit”
kanyū [kanjɯː] “signing up; joining; entering”
kan’yū [kãːjɯː] “invitation; solicitation; canvassing”
kanetsu [kaneʦɯ] heating up
kan’etsu [kãːeʦɯ] name of an Expressway between Kanto and Echigo.
Really, just make sure you never pronounce it as /n/ when it comes before vowels or /j/ and you’ll probably be fine.
Romanization
I’m using the modified Hepburn system, which is the most commonly used Romanization scheme. The system was designed not only for learning Japanese but also for the practical purpose of making Japanese more or less pronounceable by all English speakers regardless of how much or little Japanese they know, so it is frequently seen on signs and so on. (though Japanese people are often more familiar with the learner-unfriendly Nihonshiki system, which mirrors native Japanese spelling more closely and thus makes learning to type a little more painless for Japanese speakers).
a i ɯ e o aː iː ɯː eː oː
<a i u e o ā ī/ii* ū ē/ei/ee* ō>
m n ɴ p t ʦ ʨ k b d ʥ ɡ ɸ s ɕ h z ɺ w j
<m n n(’) p t ts ch k b d j g f s sh h z r w y>
* ii, ei, and ee are used when they are spelled as such in Japanese. The spelling ō represents three different spellings in the Japanese script. The spellings ī and ē are used only when the vowels is lengthened in katakana with the nobashibō (ー) which we’ll learn about later.
Geminated ch is written as <tch>, not <cch>. This was done because <cch> could potentially be misread as /kʨ/.
And that concludes lesson 1.