If I may, I'll let you in on some details. Before I begin, have you learned the kana? Kanji are necessary if you want to write "real Japanese", but everyone starts off with kana. (I have read many accounts of people who can't get around to writing kanji or even kana, even though they can speak Japanese fluently.)
Should you find yourself in Japan and wish to send a letter domestically, knowing how to write is important! People do pay attention to the form in which their letter is presented, even down to the very words used. As you may already know, basic word order for a Japanese sentence is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), according more or less to the following model: [dissociated material, when present] [subject + particle] [object + particle] [verb] [emphatic or interrogative particle, if applicable]. For example, "Kyô no taikai de shachô wa okâsan no moratta haizara wo misemashita ka?" [Today + gen. particle + meet + loc. particle] [company boss + topic particle] [mother + appos. particle + given + ashtray] [dir. obj. particle + 'has shown' + int. particle] Well, that's basics. Perhaps you already know that, so I won't elaborate further. One thing I've noticed in Japanese speech is a tendency toward passive constructions. Instead of hearing, "Ningyô wa onêchan ga are o moratta", one may more likely hear, "Onêchan no moratta ningyô (desu)". I believe this is in keeping with the Japanese social more of indirectness. Often, one on the lower rungs of society will address his superior by his professional title, rather than his surname. As for the "difficulty" of Japanese, Japanese is as different from English as Arabic and even Dutch are different from English. Obviously, there are many idiosyncrasies to watch out for when going between English and Japanese. One is the word order in sentences. Another is the use of particles as key grammatical devices, as opposed to word order relationships in English. (This allows Japanese to display a certain flexibility with word order.) Besides that, agglutination is present in Japanese, so it is common to find words that are actually compounded from two or more words. Fortunately, the agglutination scheme is what makes Japanese verbs rather easy to form, unlike some Indo-European languages (which rely on fusion of suffixes to the stem). In fact, a verb can be changed into a noun simply by changing suffix. English does not use such a device; one word often serves as both noun and verb. For example "I UPSed the package." vs. "I sent the package through UPS." Or "I will kill that bastard!" vs. "I just scored a kill". Still another is the use of different verb conjugations according to social relationships, as opposed to 2-word pronoun + verb conjugations in English. If you speak Japanese in an English mindset, you will sound rather "off" to most Japanese speakers. The same is true when one speaks English with a Japanese mindset. Which leads me to say, to speak another language is to adopt another state of mind. This I found out in my experiences with Japanese and languages in general. I could go on and on, but truth is I am still learning Japanese and have even developed an interest in trying my hand at a dialect variation some time in the future. Of special interest to me is Satsuma- ben. - Arian I. --- In [email protected], Lance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Arian, > > arigatou gozaimasu! I was just writing to a peer, so the language doesn't have to be highly polite as I also know them well. I hope I can learn much from this site. You're right, Japanese is tough when trying to translate from English - almost the opposite language! > > Lance > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> AIDS in India: A "lurking bomb." Click and help stop AIDS now. http://us.click.yahoo.com/VpTY2A/lzNLAA/yQLSAA/9rHolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Japanese_Language/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
