Nihon NO-GO! Of linguistic twists & writing by pics
March, 2001
"Writing on Japanese" language is any day a much more pleasant alternative to "writing Japanese language" or even humbly attempting to do it. Japanese is considered to be one of the toughest languages in the world, especially if one goes with the intention of learning to read and write it. For functional literacy level itself, its supposed to take years for native kids. This is because the script is pictorial, so unlike Indian scripts (Devanagari or Dravidian) or any European language, it does not use letters in an alphabet in various permutations to coin words. Instead, each word (or subword) has a picture/notation associated to it in Kanji. Kanji is the traditional Japanese script which is acknowledged to be one of the most complex scripts in the world.
Apart from Kanji, Japanese language (Nihon-go or literally, Japan-language) has a few other scripts as well. One is Hiragana which is used to act as a connector between various Kanji scripts to give them tonal variations. Incidentally, a change in tone of Kanji can give it a totally different meaning, this is the reason why in spite of the script being very similar to Mandarin, the Chinese can only read it, but can't make out much of the meaning. The third script is Katakana, which is used to depict foreign words like alien names (My name stamp called Inkan or Hanko was made with my name in Katakana script since I happen to be a foreigner). Words like TV (terebi to be precise!), Cola (cora) or Beer (biiru) are written in Katakana. A fourth script, more sparingly used, is called Romanji which is a modified version of Roman script for certain specific words.
The sum and substance of all this is that, if someone wants to read Japanese, the first three scripts of the above are mandatory! In fact, to read comfortably, one needs to write/recognize at least 2000 Kanji words. Knowing 3000 will help one to manage with finesse for most cases like reading a novel! This means memorizing 3000 pictures, unlike 26 in English or 50-odd in various Indian scripts, using which we coin words. So here, for instance,a bird could be represented by two Kanjis, may be one for sky and another for animal."Exit" is represented by a Kanji in the shape of a rectangle, meant to be a mouth! Every student has to go through this memorizing process before he/she can really prepare for higher studies for advanced learning in specialized subjects like Chemistry or Physics written with this pictorial script. This has been one of the biggest reasons why in spite of such incredible development and large scale looking upto USA for everything, most Japanese can't even pull together a single sentence in English.
The advent of computers have solved things drastically for many Japanese and its common for a Japanese person these days to say that he can read 15,000 Kanji, but write only 3,000! The keyboard used is still more or less the normal QWERTY keyboard, with some shift commands for certain words in Hiragana (Incidentally, its easier to recognize Hiragana since its much simpler and is less pictorial - in fact, to me it looks similar to Arabic). A Japanese word is typed in English using the English keyboard which is automatically converted into Hiragana script on the screen. If they press the enter-button after a word, it becomes the Kanji equivalent!
This makes typing also a fairly complex exercise, but thats the price the Japanese are willing to pay for retaining their pride in their intricate script. On the other side of the spectrum, one has countries like Malaysia who straightaway adopted the Roman script for their language (Behasa Melayu), which had an offshoot benefit of enabling the entire populace for the cyber-era (with literacy being near 100%). Along with the famed cultural insularity of Japanese with Gaijins (foreigners), the script seems to be one more (powerful) device to keep foreigners at bay (how many will have the time and motivation to spend years to master this humoungous script anway?)
There is another little issue of the missing "L". Japananese (or Nihongo, as its called 'Nihon/Nippon' meaning Japan and 'go' meaning language) does not have the "L" sound! They also don't have "V", only "B" (a little like we Indians converting all Ws to Vs). So "R" is used to replace "L" frequently, so one needs to do a lot of reverse mapping upon hearing a sentence like say, "Prease ret a thousand frowers broom" or some such. Non-vowels are also not combined, so all of us Indians here have slightly modified names, Gopikrishnan is Gopikriushunan, Baljeet is Barajeeto, Viswes is Bisuwesu and Gurpreet is Gurupreeto. Similarly, apple-pie becomes apparey-pie, milk shake becomes miruku shaiku and hot coffee becomes hoto kohi.
Yet, compared to a European or an American, an Indian would do a much better job learning to speak Japanese since structurally its very similar to our languages and totally opposite to English. So Japanese also has nouns at the beginning and verbs (with its forms and question qualifier) at the end. So, "School [present continuous of 'Go'] desu ka?" is similar to the Hindi line "School ja raha hai kya?" instead of the diametrically opposite "Are you going to school?" where question qualifier is "Are you" followed by the verb and finally by the noun. Then there are interesting aspects like the variants of "s". Instead of sa, si and su of in Indian languages, Japanese have sa, shi and su/tsu, so you figure out that Kawasaki shitty is not the smelly place it sounds to be be on the first hearing. Incidentally, among other things, you'll never find a Japanese name starting with "P", though I don't know for sure what P actually did to fall out of favor.
But at the end of the day, learning to speak a few words in Japanese (with their correct pronunciations, of course!) will help one a long way in getting about in this amazingly interesting country, which has steadfastedly retained its language and script while getting itself thoroughly westernized in almost every other parameter, be it fashion, music and umpteen ways of automation.
"Writing on Japanese" language is any day a much more pleasant alternative to "writing Japanese language" or even humbly attempting to do it. Japanese is considered to be one of the toughest languages in the world, especially if one goes with the intention of learning to read and write it. For functional literacy level itself, its supposed to take years for native kids. This is because the script is pictorial, so unlike Indian scripts (Devanagari or Dravidian) or any European language, it does not use letters in an alphabet in various permutations to coin words. Instead, each word (or subword) has a picture/notation associated to it in Kanji. Kanji is the traditional Japanese script which is acknowledged to be one of the most complex scripts in the world.
Apart from Kanji, Japanese language (Nihon-go or literally, Japan-language) has a few other scripts as well. One is Hiragana which is used to act as a connector between various Kanji scripts to give them tonal variations. Incidentally, a change in tone of Kanji can give it a totally different meaning, this is the reason why in spite of the script being very similar to Mandarin, the Chinese can only read it, but can't make out much of the meaning. The third script is Katakana, which is used to depict foreign words like alien names (My name stamp called Inkan or Hanko was made with my name in Katakana script since I happen to be a foreigner). Words like TV (terebi to be precise!), Cola (cora) or Beer (biiru) are written in Katakana. A fourth script, more sparingly used, is called Romanji which is a modified version of Roman script for certain specific words.
The sum and substance of all this is that, if someone wants to read Japanese, the first three scripts of the above are mandatory! In fact, to read comfortably, one needs to write/recognize at least 2000 Kanji words. Knowing 3000 will help one to manage with finesse for most cases like reading a novel! This means memorizing 3000 pictures, unlike 26 in English or 50-odd in various Indian scripts, using which we coin words. So here, for instance,a bird could be represented by two Kanjis, may be one for sky and another for animal."Exit" is represented by a Kanji in the shape of a rectangle, meant to be a mouth! Every student has to go through this memorizing process before he/she can really prepare for higher studies for advanced learning in specialized subjects like Chemistry or Physics written with this pictorial script. This has been one of the biggest reasons why in spite of such incredible development and large scale looking upto USA for everything, most Japanese can't even pull together a single sentence in English.
The advent of computers have solved things drastically for many Japanese and its common for a Japanese person these days to say that he can read 15,000 Kanji, but write only 3,000! The keyboard used is still more or less the normal QWERTY keyboard, with some shift commands for certain words in Hiragana (Incidentally, its easier to recognize Hiragana since its much simpler and is less pictorial - in fact, to me it looks similar to Arabic). A Japanese word is typed in English using the English keyboard which is automatically converted into Hiragana script on the screen. If they press the enter-button after a word, it becomes the Kanji equivalent!
This makes typing also a fairly complex exercise, but thats the price the Japanese are willing to pay for retaining their pride in their intricate script. On the other side of the spectrum, one has countries like Malaysia who straightaway adopted the Roman script for their language (Behasa Melayu), which had an offshoot benefit of enabling the entire populace for the cyber-era (with literacy being near 100%). Along with the famed cultural insularity of Japanese with Gaijins (foreigners), the script seems to be one more (powerful) device to keep foreigners at bay (how many will have the time and motivation to spend years to master this humoungous script anway?)
There is another little issue of the missing "L". Japananese (or Nihongo, as its called 'Nihon/Nippon' meaning Japan and 'go' meaning language) does not have the "L" sound! They also don't have "V", only "B" (a little like we Indians converting all Ws to Vs). So "R" is used to replace "L" frequently, so one needs to do a lot of reverse mapping upon hearing a sentence like say, "Prease ret a thousand frowers broom" or some such. Non-vowels are also not combined, so all of us Indians here have slightly modified names, Gopikrishnan is Gopikriushunan, Baljeet is Barajeeto, Viswes is Bisuwesu and Gurpreet is Gurupreeto. Similarly, apple-pie becomes apparey-pie, milk shake becomes miruku shaiku and hot coffee becomes hoto kohi.
Yet, compared to a European or an American, an Indian would do a much better job learning to speak Japanese since structurally its very similar to our languages and totally opposite to English. So Japanese also has nouns at the beginning and verbs (with its forms and question qualifier) at the end. So, "School [present continuous of 'Go'] desu ka?" is similar to the Hindi line "School ja raha hai kya?" instead of the diametrically opposite "Are you going to school?" where question qualifier is "Are you" followed by the verb and finally by the noun. Then there are interesting aspects like the variants of "s". Instead of sa, si and su of in Indian languages, Japanese have sa, shi and su/tsu, so you figure out that Kawasaki shitty is not the smelly place it sounds to be be on the first hearing. Incidentally, among other things, you'll never find a Japanese name starting with "P", though I don't know for sure what P actually did to fall out of favor.
But at the end of the day, learning to speak a few words in Japanese (with their correct pronunciations, of course!) will help one a long way in getting about in this amazingly interesting country, which has steadfastedly retained its language and script while getting itself thoroughly westernized in almost every other parameter, be it fashion, music and umpteen ways of automation.
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