Basic Ideas about Japanese Language
Here are basic ideas about Japanese language that you better know before starting to learn.
Writing System
There are three main characters that are used in Japanese, such as Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and also Romanized Japanese. Numbers and symbols are also used, and we mix them to use in writing.
We write sentences vertically or horizontally.
Pronunciation
There are five vowel sounds in Japanese (a, i, u, e, o).
All the Japanese words end with a vowel sound when pronounced except ‘n’.
Japanese is called a ‘Mora Language’, which is compared with a ‘Syllable Language’ such as English. What ‘Mora’ means is like ‘beat’ in musical terms. For example, one letter counts as one mora except contracted sound (small kana such as ya, yu, yo).
For the above reason, Japanese words tend to be longer and we often shorten those words. It is said that Japanese like three or four ‘Mora’.
The Japanese accent is a ‘High-Lo’ accent and not a ‘Stress’ accent like English.
Grammar
Keys for Japanese sentence structure are ‘Topic’ and ‘Description’, which are indicated by particles.
The particles in a sentence are a very important function and key to Japanese grammar.
In addition, word order in Japanese is very flexible, unlike English.
Japanese verbs and adjectives change their form.
It is according to how they are used and changing part is expressed by ‘Hiragana’.
Other
Japanese people use the concept of space properly, whether it is conscious or not. This includes a ‘sense of comradeship’, ‘group consciousness’, ‘sense of belonging’, etc. and also awareness of ‘one’s status’, ‘age’,’relationship’ etc. This will greatly affect the use of the Japanese language.