Japanese My Way

“I saw this kanji before, but it was different then. Why?” “This kanji is written differently in my book. Why?” “This kanji appears different on my sister’s computer. Why?” “This is a different kanji. The one I’m talking about only has one stroke there.” The question of kanji variants often comes up when first learning about kanji.

There are three basic types of variations: variant kanji for a word, variant components for a kanji, and variant proportions within a kanji. In almost all cases, there is essentially no difference in meaning.

Kanji variants

くう with 口偏

くう without 口偏

There are multiple kanji that can be used to write some words. くう can be written as both 喰う and 食う with essentially no difference in meaning. However, there are also many words that can be written using completely different kanji. In these cases, there is usually a slight difference in meaning. E.g., さびしい can be written as 寂しい or 淋しい. Normal Japanese fonts have all these variant characters.

Component variants

贖 with 四

贖 with 罒

逞 with ⻍

逞 with ⻌

Sometimes there are variations within components of a kanji. Normal computer fonts only have one variant available and there is basically no difference in meaning. In the above examples, the component below 士 in 贖 can be written as 四 or 罒 (like a 目 turned on its side in case your computer can’t display this character). The radical in 逞 can be written with either 3 or 4 strokes (⻌ or ⻍).

Stroke style variants

雨 (long 一)

雨 (short 一)

The stroke style and proportions can vary as well. 雨 can be written with a 一 at the top that is wider than ⼌ (the bottom part) or one that is narrower than ⼌ (the bottom part). Again, normal computer fonts will only have one variation.

Once you get used to seeing the different ways of writing the same kanji, you won’t even notice they’re different when reading them.

Technorati Tags: How to learn Japanese, kanji, learn to speak Japanese

Battle to the death! Well, more accurately, it is a matter of a balance between both context and definition. Inspired by a thread on the Reviewing the Kanji forums that went a little off topic, I thought I’d talk about this issue in a little more depth.

If we break the viewpoints into extremes, it seems there are two camps: those who advocate learning words exclusively from context and those who suggest that you can’t learn words without a dictionary. Oddly enough, both sides use the same argument for why their way is better. The supporters of context say that if you don’t learn a word in context, your usage of it will be unnatural, and the supporters of definition say that if you don’t learn a well-defined meaning, your usage will be unnatural. There are other arguments, but I’ll leave those for another day.

In reality, both definition and context are necessary to some degree and that varies with the word. Some words are very well defined and as such are well suited to being learned from their definition. Others have very vague definitions and are difficult to understand even if you look them up.

Technical terms are the extreme of well defined. Take the term “divergent series” from mathematics. It has a very specific meaning that is well defined: A series which is not convergent. Series may diverge by marching off to infinity or by oscillating. This concept is tied more closely to math than language. There’s no need to learn the term of divergent series in Japanese from context. In an English-Japanese dictionary, you can look up divergent series and you’ll find 発散級数. That term will be right 99% of the time.

For a Japanese to English example, consider 文部科学省. In English it is the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). That will again be correct 99% of the time. No context is necessary.

On the other hand, we have words that are not well-defined at all. They are generally words that are tied to the language itself more than to biology, philosophy, government, or any other external field. Consider the word 君. You look it up in a dictionary or ask a friend and learn it means “you”. But if you base your use of 君 just on that information, you’ll end up using it when it would be inadvisable, unnatural, and rude. There’s much more contextual information that you need to know in order to use 君 naturally. There are words far less defined than 君, but it is an easy to understand example.

Most words require both context and definition to some degree in order to understand and use words and phrases naturally. Sometimes a simple, one word definition suffices; other times you need a page explaining the word. Similarly sometime a single sentence of context is sufficient to understand; other times you need to see the word 50 times in 50 different situations before you get a good grasp of it.

I hope you all have fun learning Japanese! As always, I welcome any further discussion, questions, comments, or criticism.

Technorati Tags: context, definition, How to learn Japanese, learn to speak Japanese

There’s a great self-satire on learning Japanese that’s been around since before Christmas 2002, So You Want to Learn Japanese . . . Wrong! It’s a fun read, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should take a look, but remember that it’s a satire.  And that leads into what I want to tell you today: why learning to speak Japanese is easy!  Even easier than English!

Japanese and English are fundamentally the same

One of the lies some people like to spread is “Japanese is so much more difficult than English, French, German, Swahili, or your other favorite language”.  Bull!  This is totally baseless.  Fundamentally, both Japanese and English or any, other language for that matter, use the same parts of your brain: they’re both human languages.

The only fair comparison is to look at an 8-year old Japanese child and see how well he speaks Japanese, look at an 8-year old American or Canadian and see how well he speaks English, and compare the two.  Surprise!  They both speak their respective language just as well.  You can try British or Australian children too, but with their accent, the Japanese child may be easier to understand.  Conversely, if you’re not from North America, you probably want to stay away from those crazy Americans and Canadians.

The point is virtually everyone learns his or her native language with equal ease.  You don’t need to be super intelligent, a genius, or a polyglot.  Whether you have three degrees or decided to leave school early, you’ve already learned one language!  You just need to do it again.

Japanese grammar is simple

Japanese grammar is extremely well structured with very few exceptions.

• Where English has hundreds of irregular verbs, Japanese has two.  That’s right, just 2.
• English has singular and plural; Japanese doesn’t.  Think about it.  You don’t even have to worry about whether there are three books on the table or just one.  Just use the same word, no changes necessary.
• English verbs conjugate for person and number.  Japanese verbs don’t.  Remember “to be, I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, they are”?  None of that matters in Japanese: it’s always the same.  Just like “to be, I be, you be, he be, we be, you be, they be”!
• You can omit more with Japanese.  My favorite example is, “I love you.”  In Japanese, you can say the same thing with just one word!  I’m speaking, and I’m talking to you, so I don’t need to explain me and you.

Of course, you can write Japanese that competes with the intertwined clauses and subclauses of Silentio’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, but the beauty of it is, it’ll be easier to understand in Japanese.

Japanese pronunciation is simple

Unlike English, with its 30 some vowel sounds that can be combined with 20 or so consonant sounds to make hundreds and hundreds of syllables, Japanese only has about 100 syllables.  To make things simpler yet, the Japanese phonetic alphabets have one sound for one letter.  There’s nothing confusing like the ‘a’s in bat, balm, paw, fate, peat, barrow, boar, and mare, which are all slightly different.

This doesn’t mean they’re aren’t tongue twisters in Japanese, but you don’t walk around saying, “She sells sea shells . . .”, do you?

Learning to speak Japanese

I won’t lie to you.  Like any other language, learning Japanese will take some time.  Maybe even a little more time than a language more similar your, but by no means it is difficult.  So if you’re interested, dive in.  A great place to start and get help at is Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar.

Technorati Tags: How to learn Japanese, learn speak japanese