Japanese is a superb language to discover, but it can be challenging, particularly for native English speakers. That being said, you can make the whole process much easier by simply realizing a few crucial distinctions between English and Japanese. This article is going to explore those variances.
Formal Speach
In most English speaking places, it's completely acceptable to speak the same way to everybody, within reason. As an example, you'd probably say the phrase "Good morning," to your significant other, your superior, your pals, and to a complete stranger. Things are completely different in Japan. There, you should speak in different ways to different people, depending on their age and their relationship to you.
To illustrate, I am going to talk about this particular Japanese morning greeting:
"ohayo" (informal) or,
"ohayo gozaimasu" (formal)
When you get up and see your kids and your wife or husband, you would say, "Ohayo." When you've arrived at your workplace and see your superior, on the other hand, saying that may get you let go! To your manager, you need to use the more formal, "Ohayo gozaimasu."
How about your colleagues? To most of them, you should speak formally, saying, "Ohayo gozaimasu." To the ones you have developed close relationships with, however, you would forget the formality and say, "Ohayo." Anytime you speak to people you don't know, always use the more formal variation.
Exactly how essential is this? Very! Speaking informally to unknown people, your manager, or people significantly older than you is rather rude. To get a greater understanding, suppose that you have a teenage daughter.
Now suppose that she brings a teen boy home for supper. This guy steps into your house, goes to your 70-year-old father, and says, "Hey gramps, how's it going." Just what would you think about his etiquette? I imagine that although you wouldn't kick him out immediately, you probably would not invite him to come back either. Understanding the right way to communicate in Japanese using correct formality will ensure that you do get asked back!
Word Order
With The English language, we order our sentences in the following way:
Subject + Verb + Object.
As an example, we will look at the very simple sentence, "I love you." In this short sentence, the verb is "love." The subject is "I," and the object is "you."
Hence, we produce the sentence. I (subject) love (verb) you (object). Japanese syntax is a little different. In the Japanese language, word order is such:
Subject + Object + Verb
The above mentioned example sentence would be composed like this (Romanized).
Watashi wa (Subject [I]) anatao (object [you]) aishiteru (Verb [love]).
Understanding this one important variation between English and Japanese will significantly boost the speed at which you master Japanese grammar--remember it.
Subject and Object Markers
This is fairly easy. Japanese has subject and object markers, and the English language does not. Making use of these types of markers appropriately is often rather tough. Here, though, I'll simply give you the fundamental principles.
We will consider the short sentence, "I ate Japanese food." The particular markers we'll use, in Romanized form, are "Wa" and "Wo."
English language word order: I ate Japanese food.
Japanese word order: I Japanese food ate.
Japanese word order together with markers: I wa Japanese food wo ate.
"Wa" marks the subject "I," and "wo" marks the object "Japanese food." When you dive deeper into the Japanese language, you will study more about exactly how these markers are used to make slight changes to sentence meanings. For the time being, though, just be aware that they are there, and make sure to use them correctly when conversing.
Conclusion
Understanding the Japanese language is sometimes tough. You can make it less challenging, however, by comparing it directly to English. Remember the variation in word order, the use of subject and object markers in Japanese, and the various formality differences between the two languages and you will definitely have great results studying the Japanese language.
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