Japanese I Wiki Page (Fall, 2013)
Staff Members: Takako Aikawa, Yoshimi Nagaya, Masami Ikeda-Lamm
Orientation Day:
Introduction of Japanese I Syllabus
Usage of ~ sensee and ~ san
Introduction of Classroom Instructions and Additional Expressions (see Orientation Day on Stellar)
Characteristic Features of the Japanese Language
Japanese is similar to Korean in structure; and some of its grammatical aspects resemble features of Turkish and Mongolian. Japanese and Chinese are totally different in terms of structure. However, Japanese borrowed a part of the Chinese writing system (Kanji Characters) and quite a few words from Chinese. Thus the two languages are similar in writing and vocabulary.
Writing Systems: Japanese has three writing systems: (i) Hiragana; (ii) Katakana; and (iii) Kanji. We will start learning Hiragana first and then, Katakana. Starting from Lesson 3, we begin learning basic Kanji. See the Reading & Writing Section (P.290~) of the textbook.
Sounds: Japanese has 5 vowels (/a, i, u, e, o/) and 46 basic syllables (the minimum sound unit that consists of a consonant and a vowel). Japanese is a pitch language; the rising or falling of sounds matters. English on the other hand uses stress (the strengthening or weakening of sounds).
Word order: The Japanese word order is quite different from the English one. English is so-called a "Subject-Verb-Object" language whereas Japanese is called a "Subject-Object-Verb" language. In Japanese, predicates (verbs and adjectives) always occur at the end of a sentence.
Particles: In English, you can tell which noun corresponds to the subject/the object of a sentence based on the location of that noun. For instance, the subject of the sentence, "John read a book.", is John and the object is a book. Japanese utilizes so-called "particles" to indicate the grammatical function(s) of a noun. Take a look at Examples a-b below.
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- John read a book.
- John-ga book-o read. (where the partcile 'ga' indicates that John is the subject and the particle 'o' indicates that 'book' is the object.)
Styles (Politeness): Japanese has many styles of speech and depending on the context or depending on who you're talking to, you need to change the so-called 'registry' of your speech. Styles can be instantiated by adding certain expression(s) (e.g., Ohayoo vs. Ohayoo gozaimasu (Polite)) or by different forms of a predicate.
Pronouns: The use of pronouns in Japanese (in particular, personal pronouns such as 'you', 'she', etc.) is very different from English. In Japanese, the tendency is to use actual names as opposed to pronouns. (see p. 47, for instance).
Lesson 1: New Friends
- X is Y. (X wa、Y desu.）
- Question Sentences (~ka）
- Noun-no Noun (e.g., MIT no gakusee）
- Echo Quesiton
- ~san wa？(How about you, ~?); saa／ano／eeto/
- soo desu ka...('I see')
- Numbers
- Time Expressions
- Telephone Numbers (p.47)
- Nan (Q-Word) + -ji (o'clock), -jin (nationality), -sai (age), -nensee (grade)?
- Japanese names (p.45)
- Family Terms
- Majors