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Eric Robbian
Professor Jessica Camargo
ENGL 1101-016
27 April 2013
Writing in Japanese
As a Japanese Major, my studies involve learning a language from scratch. Every
language presents its own challenges, but generally Japanese is often considered one of the
harder languages to master because it requires a lot of time and dedication. I already have
some experience in learning a language; such as back in High School I took all five levels of
Spanish, and to some degree I became literate in the language. So between Spanish and my
current Japanese studies, I feel I could provide some interesting input in a discourse community.
One of the biggest things I have learned is how interconnected a language and its culture can
be, and its only makes a language so much more interesting to learn about. However, because I
am majoring in a language, I won’t be writing a lot of papers or reports in a specific format since
everything would be more oral based. Though, I feel my field of study will involve a high use of
Literacy and Jargon.
As I studied Spanish in high school, and now Japanese in College, I’ve come to realize
that the best way to learn a language is to first know and master your own native language.
Starting off, compared to other languages, Japanese has a unique writing system that consists
of 3 writing scripts, all of which are commonly used in everyday life. The first two are called
Hiragana and Katakana, each of which contains 46 characters and can combine with other each
another to create even more syllabus. Hiragana is used more for native Japanese words, while
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Katakana is used more for foreign words that have been integrated to the Japanese language.
Hiragana characters have more of a curve like strokes to them, when compared to Katakana.
Here are some examples: あ(a), い(i), お(o) in hiragana and ア(a),イ(i),オ(o) in Katakana.
Together this creates the foundation for basic Japanese writing, however the 3rd writing script
is much more complicated and requires countless hours of time and dedication to learn and
master.
Kanji, a writing system that was integrated from China, thus the characters have been
around for several thousand years. There are well over 50,000 characters, but a typical
Japanese person only needs to know roughly 2,000 for everyday tasks like reading the local
newspaper. A kanji is a character that represents a word such as いち(one) or in Kanji 一,
another example is うち(house) or kanji 家. In some cases the cases, the kanji character
actually looks a bit like the object, such げつ(moon) or in Kanji 月. Notice how kanji looks like a
crescent moon. The stroke count for a kanji character can range from 1-29. While they can
become very complicated, they are a very critical part of the Japanese writing script. Next, using
all three of the writing scripts, one can start to construct some basic sentences.
When compared to English, one could say that a Japanese sentence structure is
opposite of English. In English most sentences are structured in this order: subject, verb, object.
("Basic Sentence Structure") While in Japanese the basic structure is: subject, adjective/object,
then ending with the verb, which could imply the subject from conjugation. An example of this
is the sentence “I read a book”, in Japanese the sentence would be organized as “Book I read”.
When writing a Japanese sentence, one will typically use all 3 writing scripts in the same
sentence, and sometimes even Roman alphabet characters are used for certain words, phrases,
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or abbreviations. Like with any language, the manner in which someone speaks will vary based
their relation with that person, which can be described as a type of jargon.
As with any other language, English has its own nuances and manner of speaking when
having a conversation with other people depending on our relation with them. However, in
Japanese society your manner of speech is a reflection of age and social class. They represent
this by adding an honorific to the end of a person name. Some examples include: When talking
to someone younger than yourself or maybe someone your very close friends with, one would
add “~kun” to the end of their name. Secondly, if you are talking to someone who is the same
age or older than one would add “~san” to the end of that person’s name. This is roughly the
English equivalent of adding mister or misses before a person’s name. Lastly, one would add
“~sama” to the end of a person’s name of high power or who is in high respect such the Prime
Minister.(Locus)
Overall, as a Japanese major, learning the language and jargon is critical to my success in
mastering the language. By increasing my literacy, I’ll become much more in tune with the
Japanese language and culture which will only further my understanding of how and why
everything works. As I pick-up more and more of the language, the jargon people use will
naturally begin to catch up to me, making it much easier to communicate with a native
Japanese speaker. Thus, I would less ignorant and that Japanese might be willing to interact
with me. So wheatear it’s the speech, writing, or jargon, I’ll need to learn and master all of
them as I continue down the road of a Japanese major.
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Works Citied
Ager, Simon. "Japanese Kanji." Omnigllot. N.p.. Web. 31 Mar 2013.
<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_kanji.htm>
"Basic Sentence Structure." ESL: ENGLISH STUDY AND LEARNING MATERIALS!. Educational Testing
Service, 15 February 2010. Web. 31 Mar 2013.
Locus, Little. "Anime-to English IV." THE VIRTUAL MEKTON. N.p.. Web. 31 Mar 2013.
<http://virtualmekton.tripod.com/ate-iii-iv.html>.