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INTRODUCTION

Overcoming Instant Illiteracy

Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive in Japan each year go through an experience that is the equivalent of suddenly being struck deaf and dumb. They go from being literate—even brilliant—in their own culture to not being able to speak, understand, read, or write the language of their host country, and to being equally ignorant of the nonverbal language of Japan as well.

If this situation continues for any length of time, the experience results in a trauma known as culture shock—which in extreme cases can cause serious mental and physical damage; sometimes even death.

Short-time visitors to Japan are not likely to suffer significant health problems because of their sudden inability to interact with the culture surrounding them. But there is perhaps no more frustrating feeling than not being able to communicate with other people when we want to or need to. Where visiting businessmen are concerned, the handicap of not being able to communicate directly with their Japanese counterparts, even on the most basic level, has far more serious implications.

At a recent dinner in Tokyo with the president of an American company and his Japanese guests, the frustration of the foreign visitor was evident for all to see. Finally, he said in utter exasperation: “God! If I only knew survival Japanese!” That is what this book is all about.

Most people use fewer than 1,000 words of their own native language in going about their daily affairs. It is not so much how many words one knows but what those words are and how they are used. This is particularly true in the case of a second, foreign language. With a vocabulary of only 300 Japanese words you can communicate several thousand ideas-not only enough to survive but also to enjoy yourself at the same time.

Many Americans in particular seem to have a foreign language phobia. Some have extreme difficulty in pronouncing a single foreign word correctly. This fear might be the result of cultural conditioning stemming from a deep-rooted feeling that speaking a foreign language is un-American; that it is a black mark that cannot be erased.

Most Americans are now intellectually sophisticated enough to know this fear of foreign languages is invalid, and to recognize the social as well as economic benefits of being multi-lingual and multi-cultural. But they are still handicapped by the emotional residue of generations of trying to get away from any hint of foreignness.

Survival Japanese provides you with words, phrases and expressions commonly used in the modern Japanese society, both in Romanized Japanese and in Japanese characters, together with a thorough note on pronunciation. I hope this book helps you suppress the emotional reaction to the language and make the first step to communication with the Japanese in Japanese.

How to Use This Book

Despite the forbidding appearance of Japanese when it is written in the Chinese ideograms known as Kanji or “Chinese characters,” the language is made up of precise syllables that are in fact quite easy to pronounce (people who are not familiar with the language confuse the difficulty of getting several words out in a smooth flow with a phonetic complexity that does not exist).

Unlike Chinese, Japanese is pronounced in a straightforward manner without complicating tones. The only variations in Japanese are double consonants and long vowels that require a slight change in pronunciation. The grammatical structure of Japanese differs from Chinese as well as English, but that does not make it more difficult to learn. Looking at the order of the subject, verb, and object in a Japanese sentence, saying it is “backward” and complaining that it doesn’t make sense is foolish. Of course it makes sense.

Japanese is a very flexible language. You can switch the order of words and phrases around to a surprising degree, even leave things out and it not only makes sense but is acceptable in ordinary conversation. This can be a problem to those who want everything to follow one precise rule and regard this characteristic of the language as a serious complication. But looked at another way, it makes the language easier to use.

There are three distinct levels of Japanese that might be called honorofic, formal and informal. These levels are different enough that they are practically dialects within themselves. It may be very difficult to become fluent in each of these levels because it is almost like learning separate vocabularies. But being able to communicate effectively in formal Japanese is enough for the average foreigner to at least build a footbridge across the language gap.

Survival Japanese is standard Japanese. I make only a few references to grammar. In the early stages of any language study it often serves only to complicate things. The secret to language learning is to mimic the way native speakers use it, without any thought of its structure. After a while the grammar becomes imprinted on your mind, and making up correctly structured sentences becomes automatic.

This learning process is based on nothing more mysterious than repeating the words and sentences out loud, always out loud—a process that imprints the sound on the ear and memory, and just as important if not more so, trains the mouth and tongue to mechanically produce the necessary syllables in a smooth flow.

One of the prime reasons why so many students fail to learn how to speak foreign languages is that they don’t speak them enough. You cannot learn a language by looking at it. The whole Japanese language is based on six key sounds which are the building blocks of two sets of syllables. These syllables never change, so once you learn how to pronounce them, you can pronounce any word in the Japanese language. These six sounds and their pronunciations, as written in Roman letters with hiragana characters in the brackets, are a (あ), i (い), u (う), e (え), o (お), and n (ん), which is a moraic nasal whose sound is determined by the sound that follows it.

Notes on Pronunciation

Japanese uses haku “beat” or more technically, mora, rather than the syllable, as a unit of sounds. Haku and syllable are two different units; a Japanese syllable may contain the second half of a long vowel (e.g. kii), a moraic nasal (e.g. kin) or the first half of a double consonant (e.g. kit.to), in which case there are two haku or two beats within the syllable. So from now on, let’s replace the word “syllable” with haku or “beat.”

There are 101 basic one-haku or one-beat sounds called “moraic sounds,” which make up the Japanese language. The following table shows those moraic sounds with hiragana and katakana characters written underneath each of them.

Vowels

a Similar to the first phase of the diphthong i [ai] in “bite.” Do not use a [ah] in “Bart” or a [á] in “bat.”

i Similar to but slightly shorter than ea [ii] in “beat.” Do not use i [í] in “bit.”

u Similar to oo [uu] in “boot,” but the Japanese u is pronounced without rounding the lips.

e Similar to e [é] in “bet.”

o Similar to the first phase of the diphthong oa [ou] in “boat” in American English. Do not use oa [oo] in “board.”

In standard Japanese, the i and the u are silent or, more technically, voiceless in some words. So, for example, desu (です), which is equivalent to “to be,” may sound like dess and its past tense deshita (でした) like deshta. However, it is not that the Japanese leave out these vowels; in fact they can still hear the difference between such pairs as aki (あき) “fall/autumn” and aku (あく) “evil.” Therefore, it is best that you always pronounce the i and the u clearly until you are certain when they become voiceless.

Long vowels

In Japanese, short vowels (e.g. i) and long vowels (e.g. ii) are used contrastively to differentiate the meaning of words. For example, ojisan (おじさん) means “uncle” while ojiisan (お じいさん) means “grandfather.” Long vowels are more or less twice as long as short vowels, and it is important to learn to pronounce vowels with the right length.

A long vowel may be indicated in Romanized Japanese by a line above the letter. In Survival Japanese, however, a phonetic second letter is added after the vowel as a pronunciation aid, as aa, ii, uu, ee and oo.

Moraic nasal

‘n’ is a moraic nasal, which requires the same length of time as all the other moraic sounds. How it is pronounced depends on what sound follows it. It is pronounced as:

n when followed by t, d, z, r or n (e.g. hontoo ほんとう); m when followed by p, b or m (e.g. tenpura てんぷら). (In English the prefix in is replaced with im before these consonants but in Japanese n is still used to represent m.);

ng as in “singer” when followed by k or g (e.g. tenki てんき);

a nasalized sound of the preceding vowel when followed by s, h, y, w or a vowel (e.g. kinshi きんし, ren ’ ai れんあ い). (In American English, vowels are normally nasalized when followed by a nasal sound, as in “can” and “internet.” In Japanese a nasal is vocalized instead.) For example, konbanwa (こんばんは), a five-beat (ko.n.ba.n.wa) three-syllable (kon.ban.wa) word meaning “good evening,” is pronounced as [ kombaãwa ] ([ã] nasalized [a]).

Consonants

The following moraic sounds and consonants require special attention:

tsu The only English word containing this sequence of sounds is “tsunami,” which is a loanword from Japanese. Try pronouncing tsu by isolating ts from “cats” and adding u to it.

hi The “h” of hi is much closer to the German “ch” in “ich” than the English “h” in “he.” It has more friction of air than its English counterpart.

fu “f” is conventionally used to represent this consonant sound, but actually it is not “f ” at all. Imagine you are blowing a candle very gently. That is exactly how this sound is produced.

r It has two sounds depending on where it is used. Between vowels (e.g. tera てら) it is a flap, which can be heard in such words as “rider,” “water,” and “bottom” in American English, but at the beginning of a word (e.g. roku ろく) most Japanese people use l instead of a flap, andl is exclusively used after a moraic nasal n (e.g. tenran てんらん). When it is followed by y, a flap is used at the beginning of a word (e.g. ryokoo りょこう) but l remains the same after a moraic nasal (e.g. enryo えんりょ).

g It is always pronounced hard, even before the i and the e. In standard Japanese, it is often nasalized between vowels (e.g. kaigi かいぎ) as ng in “singer.”

Double consonants

Some words have a double consonant, pp, tt (or tch before i and tts before u), kk, or ss (or ssh). The first half of the double consonant, which is transcribed with っ, belongs to the preceding syllable and the second half forms a syllable with the vowel. The first half is a kind of preparation time for the second half and it requires one beat, just like all the other moraic sounds. No sound is audible while the first half is pronounced, except in the case of ss where a hissing sound can be heard.

e.g. ki·p·pu (きっぷ) ticket

1 2 3

ki·t·te (きって) stamp

1 2 3

za·s·shi (ざっし) magazine

1 2 3

There are pairs of words and phrases, one with a single consonant and the other with a double consonant, such as kite kudasai (きてください) “please come” and kitte kudasai (きってください) “please cut.” It is absolutely necessary to “hit” a double consonant clearly to be understood.

Other moraic sounds

The following table shows the rest of the moraic sounds, which are exclusively used to transcribe loanwords (note that loan-words are conventionally written in katakana):

Accent

Japanese is a pitch accent language, as opposed to English being a stress accent language. This means that accentuation is made with the pitch of the voice and that to this end either a high or low pitch is assigned to each haku or beat of a word. For example, tookyoo (とうきょう) “Tokyo,” nihon (にほん) “Japan,” and kyooto (きょうと) “Kyoto” are pronounced as follows (H: high pitch, L: low pitch):

to o kyo o	ni ho n	kyo o to
L H H H	L H L	H L L

The pitch is often used to differentiate the meaning of homo-phones, such as hashi (はし :HL) “chopsticks” and hashi (はし :LH) “bridge.” Therefore, if you are really serious about mastering the language, it is highly recommended that you purchase a dictionary that shows the accent of each word and remember it together with the word.

However, even if you pronounce words with the incorrect accent, the Japanese should be able to understand you when you use them in the correct context. For this reason, and in order to reduce the burden of your learning, no accent mark is added to words in this book.

Dealing With Grammar

Word order

The grammatical order of Japanese is subject-object-verb, instead of the subject-verb-object form of English. Having said that, I suggest that you ignore it for the time being (although this is probably the reason why the subject is often left out in Japanese conversation when the meaning is clear without it, and why the verb is often used by itself, playing the role of all the parts of speech).

The verb “to be”

The all important “I am; he/she is; we/you/they are” are all expressed in Japanese by desu (です). The past tense of desu (です), expressing “I/he/she was; we/you/they were,” is deshita (でした).

“There is/are”

There are several ways to express “there is” and “there are.” When referring to human beings, use

orimasu (おります) for yourself or your family/in-group members when you need to be humble.

imasu (います) for anyone, you, your friends, etc. when you do not need to be humble.

irasshaimasu (いらっしゃいます) for someone you should pay respect to.

When referring to animals, imasu (います) is also used. When referring to inanimate objects, arimasu (あります) is used. For the past tense of these words, simply replace masu (ます) with mashita (ました).

Singular/plural

There is no definite or indefinite article (i.e. the, a) in Japanese, and there are very few plurals in the language. With few exceptions, the sense of plural is made evident by the context of the phrase or sentence. Tokee (とけい) means watch (timepiece) or watches, depending on how it is used.

Superlative

It is very easy to “make” the superlative in Japanese. All you do is put the word ichiban (いちばん), meaning “first” or “number one” in front of the term you want to qualify. If big is ookii (おおきい), the biggest is ichiban ookii (いちばんお おきい); the longest is ichiban nagai (いちばんながい); the smallest is ichiban chiisai (いちばんちいさい); the highest is ichiban takai (いちばんたかい); the heaviest is ichiban omoi (いちばんおもい); the best is ichiban ii (いちばんいい), and so on.

Questions

In Japanese a question is indicated by the particle ka (か), usually enunciated with the same “questioning” tone used in English. In written Japanese this ka (か) takes the place of the familiar question mark.

The honorific “O”

It is customary in Japanese to add an honorific “o” or “go” before many words that refer to other people, to things relating to others, and to certain special words, as a sign of respect or as a polite gesture. In the sign-of-respect category are such words as go-shujin (ごしゅじん), meaning “your honorable” husband; o-taku (おたく), “your honorable” residence; o-namae (おな まえ), “your honorable” name; o-toshi (おとし), “your honorable” age, and o-denwa-bangoo (おでんわばんごう), “your honorable” phone number. In the polite category are such words as weather (o-tenki おてんき), sake or rice wine (o-sake おさけ), money (o-kane おかね), boxed lunch (o-bentoo おべんとう), chopsticks (o-hashi おはし), bath (o-furo おふろ), temple (o-tera おてら), and New Year’s (o-shoogatsu おしょう がつ). In many cases, these “o” and “go” honorifics have more or less become a part of the words they precede and are generally included regardless of the circumstances.