JAPANESE WRITING

 

               Spoken Japanese is different from spoken Chinese, but Chinese characters were borrowed as a writing system.  These Chinese letters are called Kanji by the Japanese, where Kan refers to the Han Chinese and Ji means Character.  When Japanese read kanji they have about the same meaning as when Chinese read them, but they say different words out loud.   Over time, as language changes, some of the kanji have taken on different meanings than they have to the Chinese, so they no longer always have exactly the same meaning.

               In addition, the Japanese have phonetic characters which they use as suffixes and prefixes to the kanji to clarify the meaning.  These characters are called Hiragana.  Since these characters express the sound of syllables instead of single letters, there are more than 100 of them. 

               For some reason the Japanese use a different set of characters for expressing the sound of foreign words.  These characters are called Katakana.  Since they refer to the same syllables as do hiragana, it's not clear to me why they need two sets of phonetic characters to refer to the same syllables.   These katakana are sometimes used in official documents too.

               Subway signs and other signs are often written both in katakana symbols and in kanji mixed with hiragana.  In addition, they sometimes are written in romaji, which is the Latinized spelling.  The romaji is used for Japanese names and places in publications written in English and other European languages.  The pronunciation of romaji vowells is similar to Spanish:  a as in father, e as in pen, i as in ink, o as in open, and us as in true.  The consonants are similar to English, except for l and r.  The l is pronounced more like r, so Hill would be pronounced he-ru. The r is pronounced more like a Spanish r without a trill, so it sounds almost like a d, so Obirin sounds about like Oh-bee-deen.

              So there are four writing systems to learn for Japanese.  I would like to learn some of it, but the task is overwhelming. 

              In addition to the original Japanese words, there have been words borrowed from Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and especially English.  But when English words are borrowed they are modified to fit the 100 or so Japanese syllables.  Thus television becomes terebijon, and elevator becomes erebata.  So if you heard it you might not recognize it as English, until you learn how the Japanese speak English!

              Often it's funny to see English expressions here because of the mistakes in spelling or misunderstanding of the way Americans use the terms.  On a menu I saw that I could order wine by the bottel or by the grass.  I also saw crap fingers. instead of clap hands.  But one of my favorites is a sports drink like Gatorade that calls itself Sweat -- how'd you like to drink a can of sweat?   Fractured English is called Japlish and there are a couple of books which have collected examples.

               However, you have to be careful mixing English and Japanese because some English words have a different meaning in Japanese.  For example, chin is a slang word for penis.  The same is true for gestures.   A raised thumb, which means okay or great to American teenagers, refers to a boyfriend or male lover for Japanese teenagers.  A raised little finger refers to a girlfriend or female lover.  So you have to be careful.  Sometimes students laugh in class when I don't expect it -- like the time I was talking about facial expressions and used the word chin!