Preliminary
Foreword:
An (increasing) number of people have been
encouraging me to put up a quick and pr0ny guide to Japanese
grammar. This guide is designed to showcase as much Japanese grammar in the
least amount of space possible, and as such, doesn’t help your vocabulary a
whit. There may be wordlists and phrase lists at the back, but largely, it’s
meant to allow you to, with the help of a dictionary, read Japanese. Because
goodness knows you can’t read that stuff even with a dictionary if you don’t
know how the grammar works.
This is a series. I’ll start off with some simple
verb forms, move on to adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, return to verbs, and
close with a guide on how to put them all together. Feel free to ask me
questions through the comments system – and you might like to check back
because I’ll post my answer there. Unless, of course, you want me to email you
privately, in which case, please say so and leave your email address.
I don’t warrant that this is accurate. I don’t
warrant that I am, in any way, qualified to teach Japanese. This is strictly
non-profit, and may contain errors or inconsistencies. Please correct me if I’m
wrong.
Dictionary:
I use the JWPce dictionary, which is downloadable and runs offline. It
uses the Jim Breen English to Japanese to English dictionary, allows for kanji
look up by radical and stroke count, translates both ways, and really easy to
use. I may occasionally make references to its notation in the course of this
guide.
Download it for free from:
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html
Hiragana and Katakana
Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
for a hiragana chart and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
for a katakana chart.
Hiragana and katakana are Japanese writing systems, along with Kanji and
furigana.
Hiragana is phonetic, and can be used to represent any Japanese word.
Katakana is also phonetic, following the same sounds as hiragana, except
that it is used for foreign words – typically English – as well as foreign
names. It is also used, on occasion, for sound effects.
For example, ‘ice cream’ in Japanese phonetics would be ‘a i su ku re mu’
, and written in the corresponding katakana characters. To access the katakana
function on the JWPce dictionary, press capslock and type.
Since many Japanese words are homonyms – i.e. they sound the same, kanji
characters are used to differentiate the words in writing.
For example, ‘kiru’, written in hiragana, would be きる. This could mean two things:
(or 3. To kill, if written in katakana.)
In Kanji, this would be represented as
respectively.
How do you learn what the characters mean? I’m afraid there’s no easy
solution to that besides picking up kanji dictionary or guide and learning them
off by heart.
Furigana, however, makes checking the dictionary that much easier. These
are the little hiragana characters you sometimes see above the kanji (when
written Western style from left to right), or beside the character on the right
(when written traditional japanese style, from top to bottom.) These are the phonetics
of the sound, because kanji characters, when used in different contexts, can
have different sounds.
Checking up kanji in the JWPce dictionary
Kanji all follow a system of radicals – that is, fixed components.
If you press Ctrl-L in the JWPce dictionary, it’ll bring up a list of
radicals and numbers. The numbers are the number of strokes in each radical.
Let’s close that for the moment and press Ctrl + Shift + S to bring up
the SKIP lookup. This is the system that normal (paper based) kanji
dictionaries use.
Notice that there are four types of kanji characters, based on how they’re
written.
If you know how to count strokes, you can look up kanji by the SKIP
method fairly simply. Simply choose the type of character and key in the
strokes for each side. For example, kiru number 2 would be
Type 1, Strokes 2 (for the left side), Strokes 2 (for the right side)
However, this isn’t always easy if you don’t know how to identify the
type, or count the strokes, and even I can’t seem to find kiru number 1 using
this method. Most of the time I use radical look up. So let’s close this and
fire up Ctrl-L.
For this method, simply click on the radicals that the word contains. For
example, for kiru number one, click on the 6th radical after number
6 and the 15th radical after number 5 (7th from the left
on the same line). This immediately gives you your kiru character. If you don’t
know how to count the strokes, you can do an approximation, and scan the chart.
Sometimes, though, the word isn’t conveniently composed of radicals, or
easily identifiable radicals. Take this character:
席
It only has one identifiable radical – that is, the outside (it’s in the
same class as the first example character under type 3, just a few lines above.
Can you tell?)
To look that one up, choose the radical you can identify – it’s the one
just under the number 3 on the chart. That brings up a list of all the
characters with that radical. You can either scroll through, or you can do a
stroke count for the entire character. The outside bit is 3, and the inside bit
is 7, giving a total of 10. Key ‘10’ into strokes, and it’ll pop up. If you can’t
find it, you might like to click on +/- 1 or +/- 2 to give you characters
between 8 to 12 strokes, just in case you’ve miscounted.
I can’t seem to find a good guide to kanji stroke counting, and if you’re
interested, you should do a google search and try to find one. In the meantime,
however, there is this page:
http://tomyee3.home.comcast.net/WriteKanji.htm
Which has an applet that teaches you how to write kanji stroke by
stroke, which you can use to familiarize yourself with the way kanji strokes
are written and counted (and introduces you to some of the simpler kanji!).
Romaji
Romaji is the writing of japanese words using roman alphabets. (Romaji,
not romanji, by the way.) There are many different systems, but the probably
the most common one in use today is the Hepburn system, which I’ll be using for
the entirety of this guide. The wikipedia charts linked above also use it.
Long sounds
Pronunciation is beyond the scope of this guide. You can find plenty of
websites with sound clips on pronunciation that are probably better than this.
However, a brief note on long sounds.
I’m sure that some time, somewhere, you’ve seen someone write it as ‘Domo
arigato’.
Strictly speaking, under the Hepburn system, this is dead wrong. It
should be ‘Doumo arigatou’.
The ‘u’s represent a long ‘o’ sound, where you drag it out for
approximately twice the length of the normal syllable. ‘Dohhh mo a ri ga tohhh’
Long sounds are represented as follows:
Long a: syllable ending in a + a. e.g. kaa san. (Or if you’re Kadaj,
kaaaaaaaaaaaa saaaaaaaaaaan.)
Long i: syllable ending in i + i. e.g. nii san (Or if you’re Kadaj,
niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii saaaaaaaaaan.)
Long u: syllable ending u + u. e.g. taifuu (Typhoon)
Long e: syllable ending e + i. e.g. sensei (sen sehhhh)
However, syllable ending in e + e is also used. E.g. nee san
Long o: syllable ending in o + u. e.g. Sanzou.
…Now that was useless, wasn’t it? Let’s move on to some verbs.
Or if you have questions, comments, or would like to say thank you, drop a note here.