• ng as in “singer” when followed by k or g (e.g. tenki てんき);
• a nasalized sound of the preceding vowel when followed by s, h, y, w or a vowel (e.g. kinshi きんし, ren’ai れんあ い). (In American English, vowels are normally nasalized when followed by a nasal sound, as in “can” and “internet.” In Japanese a nasal is vocalized instead.) For example, konbanwa (こんばんは), a five-beat (ko.n.ba.n.wa) three-syllable (kon.ban.wa) word meaning “good evening,” is pronounced as [kombaãwa] ([ã] nasalized [a]).
Consonants
The following moraic sounds and consonants require special attention:
| tsu | The only English word containing this sequence of sounds is “tsunami,” which is a loanword from Japanese. Try pronouncing tsu by isolating ts from “cats” and adding u to it. |
| hi | The “h” of hi is much closer to the German “ch” in “ich” than the English “h” in “he.” It has more friction of air than its English counterpart. |
| fu | “f” is conventionally used to represent this consonant sound, but actually it is not “f” at all. Imagine you are blowing a candle very gently. That is exactly how this sound is produced. |
| r | It has two sounds depending on where it is used. Between vowels (e.g. tera てら) it is a flap, which can be heard in such words as “rider,” “water,” and “bottom” in American English, but at the beginning of a word (e.g. roku ろく) most Japanese people use l instead of a flap, and l is exclusively used after a moraic nasal n (e.g. tenran てんらん). When it is followed by y, a flap is used at the beginning of a word (e.g. ryokō りょ こう) but l remains the same after a moraic nasal (e.g. enryo えんりょ). |
| g | It is always pronounced hard, even before the i and the e. In standard Japanese, it is often nasalized between vowels (e.g. kaigi かいぎ) as ng in “singer.” |
Double consonants
Some words have a double consonant, pp, tt (or tch before i and tts before u), kk, or ss (or ssh). The first half of the double consonant, which is transcribed with っ, belongs to the preceding syllable and the second half forms a syllable with the vowel. The first half is a kind of preparation time for the second half and it requires one beat, just like all the other moraic sounds. No sound is audible while the first half is pronounced, except in the case of ss where a hissing sound can be heard.
| e.g. | ki·p·pu | (きっぷ) | ticket |
| 1 2 3 | |||
| ki·t·te | (きって) | stamp | |
| 1 2 3 | |||
| za·s·shi | (ざっし) | magazine | |
| 1 2 3 |
There are pairs of words and phrases, one with a single consonant and the other with a double consonant, such as kite kudasai (きてください) “please come” and kitte kudasai (きってくだ さい) “please cut.” It is absolutely necessary to “hit” a double consonant clearly to be understood.
Other moraic sounds
The following table shows the rest of the moraic sounds, which are exclusively used to transcribe loanwords (note that loanwords are conventionally written in katakana):
e.g.
forudā
(フォルダー)
folder
webusaito
(ウェブサイト)
website
shīdī
(シーディー)
CD
Accent
Japanese is a pitch accent language, as opposed to English being a stress accent language. This means that accentuation is made with the pitch of the voice and that to this end either a high or low pitch is assigned to each haku or beat of a word. For example, tōkyō (とうきょう) “Tokyo,” nihon (にほん) “Japan,” and kyōto (きょうと) “Kyoto” are pronounced as follows (H: high pitch, L: low pitch):
| to o kyo o | ni ho n | kyo o to |
| L H H H | L H L | H L L |
The pitch is often used to differentiate the meaning of homo-phones, such as hashi (はし:HL) “chopsticks” and hashi (はし: LH) “bridge.” Therefore, if you are really serious about mastering the language, it is highly recommended that you purchase a dictionary that shows the accent of each word and remember it together with the word.
However, even if you pronounce words with the incorrect accent, the Japanese should be able to understand you when you use them in the correct context. For this reason, and in order to reduce the burden of your learning, no accent mark is added to words in this book.
Dealing with Grammar
Word order
The grammatical order of Japanese is subject-object-verb, instead of the subject-verb-object form of English. Having said that, I suggest that you ignore it for the time being (although this is probably the reason why the subject is often left out in Japanese conversation when the meaning is clear without it, and why the verb is often used by itself, playing the role of all the parts of speech).
The verb “to be”
The all important “I am; he/she is; we/you/they are” are all expressed in Japanese by desu (です). The past tense of desu (です), expressing “I/he/she was; we/you/they were,” is deshita (でした).
“There is/are”
There are several ways to express “there is” and “there are.” When referring to human beings, use
orimasu (おります) for yourself or your family/in-group members when you need to be humble.
imasu (います) for anyone, you, your friends, etc. when you do not need to be humble.
irasshaimasu (いらっしゃいます) for someone you should pay respect to.
When referring to animals, imasu (います) is also used. When referring to inanimate objects, arimasu (あります) is used. For the past tense of these words, simply replace masu (ます) with mashita (ました).
Singular/plural
There is no definite or indefinite article (i.e. the, a) in Japanese, and there are very few plurals in the language. With few exceptions, the sense of plural is made evident by the context of the phrase or sentence. Tokei (とけい) means watch (time-piece) or watches, depending on how it is used.
Superlative
It is very easy to “make” the superlative in Japanese. All you do is put the word ichiban (いちばん), meaning “first” or “number one” in front of the term you want to qualify. If big is ōkii (おおきい), the biggest is ichiban ōkii (いちばんおおき い); the longest is ichiban nagai (いちばんながい); the smallest is ichiban chiisai (いちばんちいさい); the highest is ichiban takai (いちばんたかい); the heaviest is ichiban omoi (いちばん おもい); the best is ichiban ii (いちばんいい), and so on.
Questions
In Japanese a question is indicated by the particle ka (か), usually enunciated with the same “questioning” tone used in English. In written Japanese this ka (か) takes the place of the familiar question mark.
The