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#Japanese Lesson: Introduction of Japanese

Note: This knowledge it's fully from Lingodeer app, since I'm not good in explaining things. So full credits to Lingodeer!!!!!!!!!

1. Categories of Japanese words

By looking at the origins of words in Japanese, Japanese words can be divided into three groups: Wago, Kango, and Gairaigo.

Wago originates from the traditional Japanese language. Every word in Wago has its own unique pronunciation. In most cases, Wago words have their corresponding Kanji forms.

Kango words started to appear around the 5th/6th century as a result of the cultural influence from ancient China. These are either words directly imported from Chinese characters or words newly created in Japan based on the Chinese terms.

Gairaigo was developed mainly under the influence of western languages, and its pronunciation is marked by katakana.

Types

Wago

Example:

私 / わたし / watashi

I

Kango

Example:

日本人 / にほんじん / nihonjin

Japanese person

Gairaigo

Example:

アメリカ / あめりか / amerika

America

2. Basic sentence: Ｎ１はＮ２です(N1 is N2)

This is a simple basic declarative sentence structure in Japanese. N1 and N2 both stand for nouns.

Examples:

Japanese:

watashi wa chuugokujindesu

私は中国人です。

English:

I am Chinese.

Japanese:

watashi wa nihonjindesu

私は日本人です。

English:

I am Japanese.

Japanese:

watashi wa amerikajindesu

私はアメリカ人です。

English:

I am American.

①"は (ha) "is the topic marking particle in Japanese and it usually follows a noun. Its purpose is to introduce the topic of a sentence. Hence, the noun before "は" is the focus of the sentence.

When used as the topic marker, "は" is no longer pronounced as "ha" but "wa".

②"です (desu)" is the predicate part of the sentence, it "declares" the state-of-being of the subject N1, which can be interpreted as "to be" in English. It's also one of the endings for Japanese declarative sentences.

3. N１はＮ２ではありません(N1 is not N2)

This is the negative form of the previous expression "Ｎ１はＮ２です".

①"ではありません(dewaarimasen) "is the negation of"です"(desu/to be)".

②"は" in "ではありません(dewaarimasen)" should also be pronounced as "wa".

③We can also say "じゃありません(jaarimasen)", which is a more casual style of speech.

Examples:

Japanese:

watashi wa chuugokujindewaarimasen

私は中国人ではありません。

English:

I am not Chinese.

Japanese:

watashi wa nihonjindewaarimasen

私は日本人ではありません。

English:

I am not Japanese.

Japanese:

watashi wa amerikajinjaarimasen

私はアメリカ人じゃありません。

English:

I am not American.

4. Sentence structure in Japanese

The word order of Japanese sentences is different from the one English speakers are familiar with. Instead of "Subject-Verb-Object", Japanese sentences follow the "Subject-Object-Verb" order.

Subject:

watashi wa

私は

I

Object:

nihongo o

日本語を

Japanese

Verb/Predicate:

benkyou shimasu

勉強します

Learn

5. Japanese Particles

The key to learning Japanese is mastery of particles. The Japanese language relies heavily on particles, as they connect words together to form a complete sentence. A Japanese sentence would not make sense by simply stacking words. Basically, every word needs to be followed by a particle to indicate what role the word plays in a sentence.

For example, in the sentence "私は日本語を勉強します/watashi wa nihongo o benkyou shimasu/I learn Japanese", "私は" is the topic and "日本語を" is the object.

*Some English translations in LingoDeer are intentionally unnatural. Since some expressions in Japanese/Chinese/Korean simply do not exist in English, for teaching purposes we opted for translations that best correspond to the structure of the original sentence instead of the most natural way of speaking in English. Thank you for understanding.