Learn about Japanese Language

INTRODUCTION

Japanese (日本語 Nihongo, [ɲihoŋɡo] or [ɲihoŋŋo]) is an East

Asian language spoken by about 128 million people, primarily in
Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the
Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, and its relation to
other languages, such as Korean, is debated. Japanese has been
grouped with language families such as Ainu, Austroasiatic, and the
now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained
widespread acceptance.Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed
language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic
vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent.
Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking
the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–
comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or
emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical
number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated,
primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese equivalents
of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of
honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative
status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.Little is
known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in
Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few
Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th
century. During the Heian period (794–1185), Chinese had
considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old
Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) included changes in
features that brought it closer to the modern language, and the first
appearance of European loanwords. The standard dialect moved
from the Kansai region to the Edo (modern Tokyo) region in the
Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid-19th
century). Following the end in 1853 of Japan's self-imposed
isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased
significantly. English loanwords, in particular, have become
frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have
proliferated.Japanese has no genetic relationship with Chinese,[3]
but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji (漢字), in
its writing system, and a large portion of its vocabulary is borrowed
from Chinese. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system
primarily uses two syllabic (or moraic) scripts, hiragana (ひらがな
or 平仮名) and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名). Latin script is used
in a limited fashion, such as for imported acronyms, and the numeral
system uses mostly Arabic numerals alongside traditional Chinese
numerals.
CHAPTER 1: HISTORY OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE

°Prehistory

A common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan languages or dialects

is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from
either continental Asia or nearby Pacific islands sometime in the
early- to mid-2nd century BC (the Yayoi period), replacing the
languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor
of the modern Ainu language. Very little is known about the
Japanese of this period. Because writing like the "Kanji" which later
devolved into the writing systems "Hiragana" and "Katakana" had
yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and
anything that can be discerned about this period of Japanese must be
based on the reconstructions of Old Japanese.

1. Old Japanese

Old Japanese (上代日本語 Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested

stage of the Japanese language. It is attested in documents from the
Nara period (8th century). It evolved into Early Middle Japanese in
the succeeding Heian period, although the precise separation of these
two languages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member
of the Japonic family; no conclusive links to other language families
have been demonstrated.Old Japanese was written using Chinese
characters, using an increasingly standardized and phonetic form that
eventually evolved into man'yōgana.Man'yōgana (万葉仮名) is an
ancient writing system that employs Chinese characters to represent
the Japanese language, and was the first known kana system to be
developed as a means to represent the Japanese language
phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not
clear, but it was in use since at least the mid seventh century. The
name "man'yōgana" derives from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry
anthology from the Nara period written utilizing man'yōgana.Texts
written with Man'yōgana use two different kanji for each of the
syllables now pronounced き ki, ひ hi, み mi, け ke, へ he, め me,
こ ko, そ so, と to, の no, も mo, よ yo and ろ ro.[5] (The Kojiki
has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo1 and
mo2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.)
This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though
some were added through Chinese influence.

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A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and

place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts such
as the "Wei Zhi" portion of the Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd
century AD), but the transcriptions by Chinese scholars are
unreliable. The oldest surviving native inscriptions, dating from the
5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the Suda Hachiman
Shrine Mirror, the Inariyama Sword and the Eta Funayama Sword.
These inscriptions are written in Classical Chinese, but contain
several Japanese names transcribed phonetically using Chinese
characters. Such inscriptions become more common from the Suiko
period (592–628). These fragments are usually considered a form of
Old Japanese.Due to these extra syllables, it has been hypothesized
that Old Japanese's vowel system was larger than that of Modern
Japanese – it perhaps contained up to eight vowels. According to
Shinkichi Hashimoto, the extra syllables in Man'yōgana derive from
differences between the vowels of the syllables in question.These
differences would indicate that Old Japanese had an eight-vowel
system, in contrast to the five vowels of later Japanese. The vowel
system would have to have shrunk some time between these texts
and the invention of the kana (hiragana and katakana) in the early
9th century. According to this view, the eight-vowel system of
ancient Japanese would resemble that of the Uralic and Altaic
language families. However, it is not fully certain that the alternation
between syllables necessarily reflects a difference in the vowels
rather than the consonants – at the moment, the only undisputed fact
is that they are different syllables. A newer reconstruction of ancient
Japanese shows strikingly similarities with Southeast-Asian
languages, especially with Austronesian languages.

Old Japanese does not have /h/, but rather /ɸ/ (preserved in modern
fu, /ɸɯ/), which has been reconstructed to an earlier */p/.
Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before
the end of the period.Several fossilizations of Old Japanese
grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive
particle tsu (superseded by modern no) is preserved in words such as
matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be
visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain what may have been a
mediopassive suffix -yu(ru) (kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive
form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian
period) > kikoeru (as all shimo-nidan verbs in modern Japanese
did)); and the genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic
speech.
Old Japanese is usually defined as the language of the Nara period
(710–794), when the capital was Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). This
is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112
songs included in the Kojiki (712). The other major literary sources
of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki (720)
and the Man'yōshū (c. 759), a compilation of over 4,500 poems.
Shorter samples are 25 poems in the Fudoki (720) and the 21 poems
of the Bussokuseki-kahi (c. 752). The latter has the virtue of being
an original inscription, whereas for all the other texts the oldest
surviving manuscripts are the results of centuries of copying, with
the attendant risk of scribal errors. Prose texts are more limited, but
are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately
than verse. The most important are the 27 Norito (liturgies) recorded
in the Engishiki (compiled in 927) and the 62 Senmyō (imperial
edicts) recorded in the Shoku Nihongi (797).

2.Early Middle Japanese

Early Middle Japanese (中古日本語 chūko nihongo)[1] is a stage of

the Japanese language used between 794 and 1185, a time known as
the Heian Period. It is the successor to Old Japanese. It is also
known as Late Old Japanese, but the term "Early Middle Japanese"
is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (after 1185) than
to Old Japanese (before 794).Early Middle Japanese sees a
significant amount of Chinese influence on the language's phonology
– length distinctions become phonemic for both consonants and
vowels, and series of both labialised (e.g. kwa) and palatalised (kya)
consonants are added.[citation needed] Intervocalic /ɸ/ merges
with /w/ by the 11th century. The end of Early Middle Japanese sees
the beginning of a shift where the attributive form (Japanese
rentaikei) slowly replaces the uninflected form (shūshikei) for those
verb classes where the two were distinct.

The most prominent difference is the loss of Jōdai Tokushu

Kanazukai, which distinguished between two types of -i, -e, and -o.
While the beginnings of this loss can already be seen at the end of
Old Japanese, it is completely lost early in Early Middle Japanese.
The final phonemes to be lost are /ko1/ and /ko2/.

During the 10th century, /e/ and /je/ merge into /je/ while /o/ and
/wo/ merge into /wo/ by the 11th century.

An increase in Chinese loanwords had a number of phonological

effects:

-Palatal and labial consonant clusters such as /kw/ and /kj/

-Uvular nasal [ɴ]

-Length became a phonetic feature with the development of both

long vowels and long consonants

The development of the uvular nasal and geminated consonants

occurred late in the Heian period and brought about the introduction
of closed syllables.

3.Early Modern Japanese

Early Modern Japanese, not to be confused with Modern Japanese,

was the dialect used after the Meiji Restoration. The period spanned
roughly 250 years extending from the 17th century through half of
the 19th century. Politically, this generally corresponds with the Edo
period.At the beginning of the 17th century, the center of
government moved to Edo from Kamigata under the control of the
Tokugawa shogunate. Until the early Edo period, the Kamigata
dialect, the ancestor of the modern Kansai dialect, was the most
influential dialect. However, since the late Edo period, the Edo
dialect, the ancestor of the modern Tokyo dialect, became the most
influential dialect, during the time in which the country closed its
borders to foreigners. Compared to the previous centuries, the
Tokugawa rule brought about much stability. The newfound stability
made the importance of the warrior class gradually fall, to be
replaced by the merchant class. There was much economic growth,
and new forms of artistic developments appeared such as Ukiyo-e,
Kabuki, and Bunraku. This included new literary genres such as
Ukiyozōshi, Sharebon (pleasure districts), Kokkeibon (commoners),
and Ninjōbon developed. Major authors included Ihara Saikaku,
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Matsuo Bashō, Shikitei Sanba, and Santō
Kyōden.

During Middle Japanese, word-initial /e/ and /o/ were realized with
the semivowels [j] and [w] preceding the vowel,
respectively[dubious – discuss]. Both were realized as simple vowels
by the middle of the 18th century.The high vowels /i, u/ become
voiceless [ii , ɯi] between voiceless consonants or the end of the word.
This is noted in a number of foreign texts.

d.Modern Japanese

Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period, which

lasted between 1603 and 1868. Since Old Japanese, the de facto
standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect, especially that of
Kyoto. However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo)
developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect
became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed
isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages
has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen a large
number of words borrowed from other languages—such as German,
Portuguese and English.[12] Many English loan words especially
relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal
computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
the large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has
developed a distinction between /tɕi/ and /ti/, and /dʑi/ and /di/, with
the latter in each pair only found in loanwords.

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Chapter 2: Katakana And Hiragana

1. Katakana

Katakana (片仮名, かたかな, カタカナ, Japanese

pronunciation: [katakana]) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of
the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some
cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word katakana means
"fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from
components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and
hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions,
each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented
by one character, or kana, in each system. Each kana represents
either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a
vowel such as "ka" (katakana カ); or "n" (katakana ン),
a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like
English m, n, or ng ([ŋ]), or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese.
In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese
words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the
katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English;
specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign language
words into Japanese and the writing of loan
words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to
represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for
names of plants, animals, minerals, and often Japanese companies.
Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and sharp
corners. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-
fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.
 Gojūon – Katakana characters with
nucleus
a i u e o
∅ ア イ ウ エ オ

A. Writing k カ キ ク ケ コ
system s サ シ ス セ ソ
t タ チ ツ テ ト
Script
The complete katakana n ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ
script consists of 48
h ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ
characters, not
counting functional m マ ミ ム メ モ
and diacritic marks: y ヤ ユ ヨ
 5 nucleus vow
els r ラ リ ル レ ロ
 42 core or bo w ワ ヰ ヱ ヲ
dy (onset-
nucleus) n ン
syllabograms, dakuten ゛
consisting of
nine handakuten ゜
consonants in
combination with each of the five vowels, of which three
possible combinations (yi, ye, wu) are not canonical
 1 coda consonant
These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, literally "fifty
sounds"), as shown in the adjacent table, read ア (a), イ (i), ウ (u),
エ (e), オ (o), カ (ka), キ (ki), ク (ku), ケ (ke), コ (ko) and so on.
The gojūon inherits its vowel and consonant order
from Sanskrit practice. In vertical text contexts, which used to be
the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5
rows, with vowels on the right hand side and ア (a) on top.
Katakana glyphsin the same row or column do not share common
graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be
expected, yi, ye and wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with
varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and
are not present at all in modern Japanese.
The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character, the
nasal stop ン (n). This can appear in several positions, most often
next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of
many mu hentaigana, below the ucolumn. It may also be appended
to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its
own.
The script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of
the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. A
double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration; most
often it voices the consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d and h→b; for
example, カ (ka) becomes ガ (ga). Secondary alteration, where
possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: h→p; For example; ハ
(ha) becomes パ (pa). Diacritics, though used for over a thousand
years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the
second half of the 20th century. Their application is strictly limited
in proper writing systems,[clarification needed] but may be more extensive in
academic transcriptions.
Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when
used in smaller size after a normal one (see below), but this does
not make the script truly bicameral.
The layout of the gojūon table promotes a systematic view of kana
syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single
consonant followed by a vowel, but this is not exactly the case (and
never has been). Existing schemes for the romanization of
Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script,
e.g. nihon-siki チ ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics,
usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of
the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki チ chi. Both approaches conceal
the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs,
especially those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda
position, too, where the vowel is unvoiced and therefore barely
perceptible.

b. Syllabary and orthography

 Katakana used in Japanese
orthography

ueo
Of the 48 katakana ∅a
syllabograms described ア イ ウ エ オ
i
above, only 46 are used in
modern Japanese, and k カ キ ク ケ コ
one of these is preserved g ガ ギ グ ゲ ゴ
for only a single use:
-wi and we are s サ シ ス セ ソ
pronounced as vowels in z ザ ジ ズ ゼ ゾ
modern Japanese and are
t タ チ ツ テ ト
therefore obsolete, being
supplanted d ダ ヂ ヅ デ ド
by i and e respectively.
n ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ
-wo is now used only as
a particle, and is normally h ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ
pronounced the same as b バ ビ ブ ベ ボ
vowel オ o. As a particle,
it is usually written in p パ ピ プ ペ ポ
hiragana (を) and the m マ ミ ム メ モ
katakana form, ヲ, is
uncommon. y ヤ ユ ヨ
A small version of the r ラ リ ル レ ロ
katakana
w ワ ヰ ヱ ヲ
for ya, yu or yo (ャ, ュ or
ョ respectively) may be n ン
added to katakana ending
in i. This changes
the i vowel sound to a
glide (palatalization)
to a, u or o, e.g. キャ (ki +
ya) /kja/. Addition of the
small y kana is called yōon.
Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to
represent trailing off sounds (ハァ haa, ネェ nee), but in katakana
they are more often used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed
to represent phonemes not present in Japanese; examples include
チェ (che) in チェンジ chenji("change"), ファ (fa) in ファミリ
ー famirī ("family") and ウィ (wi) and ディ (di) in ウィキペディ
ア Wikipedia.
A character called a sokuon, which is visually identical to a small tsu
ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled);
this is represented in rōmaji by doubling the consonant that follows
the sokuon. In Japanese this is an important distinction in
pronunciation; for example, compare サカ saka "hill" with サッ
カ sakka "author". Geminated consonants are common in
transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example English "bed" is
represented as ベッド (beddo). The sokuon also sometimes
appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop.
However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables'
consonants; to double these, the singular n (ン) is added in front of
the syllable. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-
native sound: Bach is written バッハ (Bahha); Mach as マッハ
(Mahha).
Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with
the addition of a second vowel kana. However, in foreign loanwords
katakana instead uses a vowel extender mark, called
a chōonpu ("long vowel mark"). This is a short line (ー) following the
direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and
vertical for tategaki (vertical text). For example, メール mēru is
the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the ー
lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as ローソク
(rōsoku (蝋燭, "candle")) or ケータイ(kētai (携帯, "mobile
phone")), where Japanese words written in katakana use the
elongation mark, too.
Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as ヽ
and ヾ respectively.

Usage
 An example of Japanese writing in 1940 using katakana
exclusively. パアマネントハヤメマセウ ("Stop the permanent wave")
In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription
of words from foreign languages (other than words historically
imported from Chinese), called gairaigo.[3] For example, "television"
is written テレビ (terebi). Similarly, katakana is usually used for
country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For
example, the United States is usually referred to as アメリ
カ Amerika, rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of 亜米利
加 Amerika.
Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia,[3] words used to
represent sounds – for example, ピンポン (pinpon), the "ding-
dong" sound of a doorbell.
Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and
plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana.
[4]
Homo sapiens, as a species, is written ヒト (hito), rather than its
kanji 人.
Katakana are also often (but not always) used for transcription of
Japanese company names. For example, Suzuki is written スズキ,
and Toyota is written トヨタ. As these are common family names,
Suzuki being the second most common in Japan,[5] it helps
distinguish company names from surnames in writing. Katakana are
commonly used on signs, advertisements, and hoardings
(i.e., billboards), for example, ココ koko ("here"), ゴミ
gomi ("trash"), or メガネ megane ("glasses"). Words the writer
wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in
katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.[3]
Pre-World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the
same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese
texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such
as wa or o.
Katakana were also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for
computer systems – before the introduction of multibyte characters
– in the 1980s. Most computers in that era used katakana instead of
kanji or hiragana for output.
Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written
in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects which are
borrowed directly use katakana instead.

Examples of modern Chinese loanwords in Japanese

Japanes Source
Rōmaji Meaning Chinese Romanization
e language
マージ mājan mahjong 麻將 májiàng
ャン
ウーロ ūroncha Oolong tea 烏龍茶 wūlóngchá Mandarin
ン茶
チャー chāhan fried rice 炒飯 chǎofàn
ハン
チャー barbecued
chāshū 叉焼 chā sīu
シュー pork
Cantonese
シュー shūmai shumai
焼賣 sīu máai
マイ
The very common Chinese loanword rāmen, written in katakana as
ラーメン, is rarely written with its kanji (拉麺).
There are rare instances where the opposite has occurred, with
kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An
example of this is コーヒー kōhī, ("coffee"), which can alternatively
be written as 珈琲. This kanji usage is occasionally employed by
coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty.
Katakana are used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived
readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary. For instance, the kanji 人
has a Japanese pronunciation, written in hiragana as ひ
と hito (person), as well as a Chinese derived pronunciation,
written in katakana as ジン jin (used to denote groups of people).
Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give
the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a
foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but
intended to be pronounced as the original.
Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken
in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga,
the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by
コンニチワ konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical
hiragana こんにちは. Some Japanese personal names are written
in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly
women often have katakana names. This was particularly common
among women in the Meiji and Taishō periods, when many poor,
illiterate parents were unwilling to pay a scholar to give their
daughters names in kanji.[6] Katakana is also used to denote the fact
that a character is speaking a foreign language, and what is
displayed in katakana is only the Japanese "translation" of his or her
words.
Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in
dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. Some examples
include マンガ ("manga"), アイツ aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him;
her"), バカ baka ("fool"), etc.
Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana
(hiragana is also used for this purpose). This phenomenon is often
seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word 皮膚
科 hifuka ("dermatology"), the second kanji, 膚, is considered
difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written 皮フ
科 or ヒフ科, mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, difficult-to-read
kanji such as 癌 gan ("cancer") are often written in katakana or
hiragana.
Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in
the Tozan-ryū of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles
with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi.
Some instructors teaching Japanese as a foreign language
"introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and
write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the
rules."[7] Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have
great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well.[8] Other instructors
introduce katakana first, because these are used with loanwords.
This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana
with meaningful words.
B.THE BASIC OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE

1. Japanese words list

2. Japanese Phonology

The phonology of Japanese has about 15 consonant phonemes, the

cross-linguistically typical five-vowel system of /a, e, i, o, u/, and a
relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few
consonant clusters. It is traditionally described as having moras as
the unit of timing, with each mora taking up about the same length
of time, so that the disyllabic [ɲip.poɴ] ("Japan") may be analyzed as
/niQpoN/ and dissected into four moras, /ni/, /Q/, /po/, and /N/.

Standard Japanese is a pitch-accent language, wherein the position

or absence of a pitch drop may determine the meaning of a word:
/haꜜsiɡa/ "chopsticks", /hasiꜜɡa/ "bridge", /hasiɡa/ "edge" (see
Japanese pitch accent).Unless otherwise noted, the following
describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo
dialect.Another thing that must be understood is that the use of IPA--
International Phonetic Alphabet--symbols will be necessary in
transcribing Japanese at this point. Symbols will be explained, but
there will be no wavering in their implementation.

a.Vowels

The Japanese vowel space is significantly less complex than any

variety of English. If we were to map the Japanese vowel space, it
would look like the chart to the left. Now,this chart uses one ad hoc
character that is not the typical IPA symbol for it so that you at least
know at this point that the Japanese u is still not the English u. 　

The Japanese /a/ is rather low like in English, but it is pronunciation

wise a central vowel (though the phonology treats it as a back
vowel). The Japanese /i/ is very similar to English. However, there is
no lip spreading like there is for English speakers, and because
Japanese phonology has no tense and lax distinction for high vowels
like English does (beat vs bit), the actual value of a Japanese /i/
could easily sometimes sound like an "ih" to English speakers.

What do it mean by low and high and front and back? The diagram
to the left is a rough representation of the vowel space inside your
mouth and the position of your tongue. High vowels are made with
your tongue high and the opposite is true for low vowels, and in
between are mid vowels. Your tongue is raised to the back for back
vowels and in the front for front vowels and in the center for central
vowels.

The high-back vowel in Japanese is unrounded and if there is any lip

protrusion it is actually lip compression, very similar to the Japanese
/w/. [ɯᵝ] is the correct IPA notation for this sound. For speakers
outside of East Japan, this vowel is actually closer to [u]. Meaning,
there is lip rounding and it is then almost identical to the English
vowel. However, this is not the case for Standard Japanese spoken in
Tokyo and surrounding areas.

Aside from the positions being slightly different, the Japanese /e/
and /o/ are not that much different. Though, one important detail to
not overlook is that these vowels are never diphthongized in
Japanese. Meaning, when you pronounce them, the vowel quality is
maintained and does not shift to another vowel in the vowel space.
This is obligatory for many vowels in English but it is forbidden for
all vowels in Japanese. This is something that English speakers in
particular have a problem with understanding and should be
something that you take especial attention to.

b.Time and Quality

Japanese vowels are usually always pronounced as monophthongs

because they essentially remain unchanged. The word "eye" was
used as an example to find an equivalent to あ. However, the word
"eye" is pronounced as a diphthong and the Japanese vowel is only
equivalent to that sound's onset. Diphthongization does exist to an
extent in Japanese. For example, the combination あい is often not
so moraic and resembles a diphthong depending on the speaker. To
test whether this is true or not, you would have to examine
individual speaker variation.
Long vowels are treated as two separate morae. Pitch often rises or
falls in long vowels. Vowel sequences are also not spoken as one
unit for the same reason. Morae are ideally supposed to be spoken
with the same amount of time. However, っ, a moraic obstruent,
disrupts this and causes a pause and intensification of the following
phoneme. Things like the fact it's humanly impossible to exactly say
each sound unit with the same time and other things like moraic
obstruents, vowel length, and diphthongization make this ideal
slightly unrealistic.

Note: Diphthongs exist in certain varieties of Japanese which will

not be discussed in this lesson.

c.Elongation & Nasalization

Vowel length differences create contrast in Japanese. A long vowel is

a vowel two morae long. The vowel sequence ei often becomes [e:]
in Standard Japanese, and many words spelled with ou are
pronounced as [o:] instead. You can find long vowels in words of all
sorts of origins.

酢 (Vinegar) VS 吸う　(To inhale) ビル (Building) VS ビ

ール (Beer) 里 (Village) VS 砂糖 (Sugar)

この (This) VS 効能 (Efficacy) 外 (Outside)　VS 相当

(Befitting) 木 (Tree) VS 紀伊 (Kii)

炉 (Hearth) VS 牢 (Jail) 血 (Blood) VS 地位 (Position) 二

(Two)　VS 二位 (2nd place)

Nasalization
 Technically, vowels are natural nasalized to some extent in
Japanese before nasal sounds.

ẽɴɴ = Yen

sẽɴɴ = Line

tãɴɴ = Phlegm

jã.ma = Mountain

kãɴɴ = Can

Devoicing

High vowels are frequently devoiced in East Japanese dialects

including Standard Japanese, though it is a feature almost non-
existent elsewhere in Japan. Its restrictions are not that difficult to
figure out, but you will need to put some thought into this to
understand.

The existence of devoicing of high vowels means that there are

two allophones of /i/ and /ɯᵝ/. They are represented in IPA as [i, ɯᵝ]
and [ii ɯiᵝ] repectively. The dot you see simply stands for being
unvoiced.

kii ta = North
ki-da = Is a tree

tɕii .ka.i = Close

ɯmi = Sea

ni.ho.ŋɴ.go = Japanese language

tsɯ.jɯ = Rainy season

ki.se.tsɯ = Season

ga.sɯi = Gas

haɕi = Bridge

haɕii = Chopsticks

The rule is this:

Low pitch V[+high] → Vi / C[-voice]___ {C[-voice]}

Getting to the chase, devoicing happens between two unvoiced

consonants importantly not in a stressed syllable.

2.Japanese Grammar

Japanese is a synthetic language with a regular agglutinative subject-

object-verb (SOV) morphology, with both productive and fixed
elements. In language typology, it has many features divergent from
most European languages. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and
compound sentences are exclusively left-branchingOne of the
trickiest part of Japanese is that there is no verb for the state-of-
being like the verb “to be” in English. However, declare what
something is by attaching the Hiragana character 「だ」 to a noun
or na-adjective only.

a.Word Order

The sentence order is very different from English. In English, it's

usually use Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), but in Japanese it is usually
Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).

English :

(S – V – O)

I – eat – bread

Japanese :

(S – O – V)

watashi wa – pan o – tabemasu.

Notice the “extra” words wa & o.

b.Copula

です desu is a copula (a word used to link the subject of a sentence

with a predicate).

It shows that something is or isn’t something else.

It is one of the very few irregular forms in Japanese.

です can act like the English “to be” (you know; is, am, are…) in
the sense that です is used to explain who or what something or
someone is.

It is also used when equating one thing with another.

Examples of the Japanese Copula

ゾウ は 大きい です。

Romaji: zou wa ookii desu.

Literal:

elephants (topic particle)

big

are

Natural: Elephants are large.

これ は ねこ です。

Romaji: kore wa neko desu.

Literal:

this (topic particle)

cat

is

Natural: This is a cat.

Most of the time you want to use the “to be” verb you will use です.

Later, we will learn other forms to show existence.

だ as the plain copula

As a beginner, you will want to use です in speech. However, a less

formal version, the plain copula, is だ. It is often used among friends
and in informal situations.

これ は ねこ です。 (This is a cat)

Is the same thing as:

これ は ねこ だ。 (This is a cat.)

Main Points
is, are, am

always at the end

it doesn’t change like its English cousin (is, are, am) in the present
tense

usually pronounced like “dess“

the plain form is だ and is used in informal situations or among

friends.