Ten facts about the Japanese language (Part 1)

Where is Japanese spoken?

Japanese is the official language of Japan, which has a population of over 125 million. There are also around 2.5 million people of Japanese origin, many of whom speak Japanese as their first language, living in the Americas, particularly the United States. You'll also find a sizeable expatriate presence in major cities such as London, New York and Paris.

What you already know about Japanese
It will be probably come as a relief that just like English, words have no gender. Japanese doesn't use articles as prolifically as English does and there's no way of showing whether a word is singular or plural. E.g. the word 友達 [tomodachi] can mean a friend, the friend, friends and so on. Sounds confusing, but once you get the hang of it, this actually makes things a lot simpler.

Since Japanese uses a vast amount of foreign loan words (外来語 [gairaigo] - literally words from outside) you’ll constantly hear familiar nouns and adjectives, and not just words borrowed from English. E.g. the word for TV is テレビ [terebi], bread is パン [pan] from the French word pain (and same sound as the word in Spanish) and part-time worker is アルバイト [arubaito], from the German Arbeit, work.

How hard is it to learn?

The most obvious challenge is probably learning the characters, but unfortunately, there's no getting around them! However, if you want to stick to spoken Japanese and just learn the Romanized script, then it can be a lot easier than learning many other languages. There are no pronunciations or tones to remember and each syllable is given equal emphasis.

Getting used to Japanese grammar can be a bit tricky because of the word order, which is Subject - Object - Verb. Great if you're used to other languages, such as German or Turkish which have similar word orders, but possibly a little confusing for English speakers unfamiliar with it. So, the verb is placed at the end, meaning a simple sentence like "I watch television" would be "I television watch". This also means that you have to be patient as until the speaker reaches the very last word of the sentence, you won't know whether they're coming or going, agreeing or disagreeing and so on!

The most difficult words and tongue twisters

The Japanese are rather fond of playing tongue twister games and here's one of the most famous, which is difficult enough to say in English, let alone Japanese!:

生麦、生米、生卵 [Nama mugi, nama gome, nama tamago], raw wheat, raw rice, raw egg.

(To be continued)

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