Nihongo
~ Japanese language ~
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By Teri Mitchell | Published August 2007

There are three different types of characters in Japanese. Those are Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. The basic character set should be Hiragana. Katakana is mainly used for imported words from foreign languages. For instance, one of them is “camera”. This word has been adopted using a similar Japanese pronunciation ‘kamera’ and is written ‘カメラ’ in Katakana. Kanji is helpful as it enables you to instantly understand the meaning when you look at the character. However, a large amount of effort is required to learn Kanji because of their complexity and the fact that there are about 2,000 daily Kanji characters.

Japanese language students usually start to learn Japanese from Hiragana. Romaji (which utilizes letters from the Roman alphabet as substitutes for Hiragana just to see the pronunciation) is available. Romaji is used in places such as train stations mainly for the benefit of foreigners, but it is not widely used in the daily life of Japanese. However, Westerners learning Japanese seem to feel more familiar with Romaji and can take advantage of the familiar characters to learn Japanese without studying Japanese characters.

Originally, Romaji letters were substituted directly with Hiragana. However, some Hiragana characters do not have a direct representation in English. The “Hebon method,” which substitutes these particular Hiragana characters with letters that are more understandable to English speaking people, is most commonly used. The Hebon method comes from the creator’s name “Hepburn.”

Foreign words are expressed in Japanese using Katakana except those words that are from regions where Kanji is used. These foreign words are called “gairaigo” (adopted words from foreign languages), and recently their number has been greatly increasing. In particular, the more widely English spreads as an international language, the more often English words are adopted into Japanese. Let’s take personal belongings as examples - Neck-tie, suit, skirt, shoes, watch, and other many words have already been adopted into the Japanese vocabulary.

Until only a few decades ago, the word ‘Ryoken’ was used for “passport,” and ‘Sashou’ was used for “visa,” but these days, hardly anyone uses those words. It is very probable that more and more English words will be adopted into the Japanese vocabulary in the future. In order to protect the “beautiful Japanese language,” not a small number of people have issued warnings about this phenomenon. However, the Japanese, who once had no written characters of their own, have a history of adopting Kanji from China (about 1500 years ago) and creating Hiragana and Katakana from them.

English words are converted into Katakana in a way that maintains a very similar pronunciation, therefore, they are not correctly written. Japanese may assume that foreigners will be able to study Japanese more easily if more English words can be adopted into Japanese, but in fact many Japanese learners seem to be puzzled. Katakana words can be confusing to you.

For more information about Nihongo or classes,
contact Teri Mitchell @ teri_mitchell@ hotmail.com
You can learn Nihongo even through Shodo (Japanese calligraphy)!

Teri Mitchell, Shoji is a Shodo artist from Yokohama, JAPAN. She gives private Lessons in Shodo (Japanese calligraphy), Nihongo (Japanese language) and Japanese cooking in the NW Orlando area, also performs Chanoyu (Tea Ceremony). email: teri_mitchell@hotmail.com