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Introduction

Welcome to Welcome to Japanese!

We emphasize the word "welcome" deliberately because we want readers to feel ‘‘at home" and "at ease." This book is aimed primarily at native English speakers, and because Japanese is a very different language from English and from the typical foreign language that English speakers might be familiar with, such as French or German, it is important that you do not feel alienated, intimidated or stressed. Rather, we want you to enjoy learning about the Japanese language.

Japanese has too often been treated by Westerners as an exotic curiosity, but the reality is that it is a functional language spoken as a mother tongue by more than 125 million people, and ranks as the ninth most spoken language in the world. In the present global age, an age characterized by a vast range of Japanese products including electronic games and anime, more and more Westerners are in one way or another interacting with Japan and its people. But it is nonetheless fair to say that the language, while increasing in popularity as a subject of study, is still not as widely spoken among non-Japanese as we might expect.

In this book we would therefore like to "demystify" Japanese, to show how the language is formed and used, and to encourage you to pursue the study of it. Of course it has its challenges, especially with regard to the writing system, but we try to put these in a balanced context. And we like to think that, by describing the various facets of the language to you, we thereby empower you with a degree of knowledge and familiarity.

Welcome to Japanese is not intended as a language learning textbook. Rather, it is an introductory description, comprising four parts: an overview; an account of how sounds are made into words; an account of how words are made into sentences; and finally an account of how the language is written.

Naturally, in the course of these accounts we will introduce a range of vocabulary, grammar and script, which will be useful in a learning context. In fact, for those interested, we go to fairly advanced levels in the description of grammar. We give you example sentences for each grammar point, and try to make our description as clear as possible, but we stress again that we do not intend this as a teaching text. There are no exercises, for instance, and it's very much a case of going through at your own pace and dwelling on those parts that you find most interesting.

However, having said that, we hope that those readers who wish to go on to study the language will find Welcome to Japanese a handy reference guide. For those who do not wish to pursue study of the language, reading this book will offer a basic understanding of the Japanese language to the satisfaction of one's curiosity.

Because we see this book as a platform for further learning, we have deliberately inclined to polite speech rather than the informal, though not to the point of pedantry and certainly not to the point where it might be deemed "old-fashioned" or "unnatural." Informal language can all too easily become slang, and that is not a good basis for learning a language. This is especially so in a "politeness-sensitive" culture such as Japan's. Hence you will see that, for example, we use people's names wherever possible rather than the pronouns kare and kanojo for "he" and "she," since, contrary to the impression created by some conversation books, these pronouns are not universally used, and can at times be considered quite vulgar and inappropriate.

This is about as dogmatic as we get. Welcome to Japanese is not cluttered with esoteric references or arcane arguments but is about a living language. We hope readers will enjoy discovering Japanese at their own pace, and finding out a range of interesting things that will even make them reflect on their own mother tongue and language in general (one reason we make frequent comparisons between Japanese and English and occasionally other languages). And we have tried to be "reader-friendly," choosing interesting examples where possible and even trying to inject the odd bit of humor.

After all, a language is not just something you learn in a classroom. It's a major tool in interpersonal communication, and the easier that is, the better.

In the preparation of this book we have been invaluably assisted by a number of people, including in particular Flavia Hodges, Adam Lam, and Neil Chandler. Our grateful thanks to them. But our biggest thanks go to those of you who read this book and decide that yes, Japanese is "do-able," and that you can have fun in the doing of it.