An Introduction to the Japanese Language Saturday, June 17, 2006 Kazumi Takahashi

Characteristics 5 vowels a - /a/; i - /i/; u – /u/; e - /e/; o - /o/ Romanized Japanese words: mine, Mike SOV topic first, verb final, and everything else falls between like Korean post-positional grammatical markers topic, subject, direct object, indirect object, instrument, direction, place of action, among others e.g.) Yoshi reads the bible at 10:00 at home today. Yoshi-wa kyoo uchi-de seisho-o yomimasu. pitch accent

So… what is pitch accent? (as opposed to) stress accent e.g.) dictionary ⇨ dic ·tion · ary dic ·tion · ary two pitches- high and low high pitch can continue some well-known Japanese words Toyota to ・ yo ・ ta karaoke ka ・ ra ・ o ・ ke Honda ho ・ n ・ da Nissan ni ・ s ・ sa ・ n

Writing Systems There are three sets of letters and characters, each with its own function Hiragana 46 letters in modern Japanese, each representing one sound Katakana 46 letters in modern Japanese, each representing one sound Kanji “Chinese characters” each character represents meaning On-reading approximation to the sound representation of the character at the time of its importation Kun-reading Japanese original readings of the character based on its meaning

Let’s read Hiragana か み さ ま ka mi sa ma あ な た a na ta あ い し て お ら れ ま す a i shi te o ra re ma su “God loves you.” かみさま ○ あなた ○ あいしておられます かみさま -topic あなた -direct object あいしておられます かみさま -wa あなた -o あいしておられます