The Self_teacher of Japan language. Lesson 0.

Peculiarities of the Japanese language
(complex & straightforward)

Lesson 0

Translated from Russian by Alexander Gorsky.
Edited by Tanya Nefyodova.

Japanese seems pretty difficult for beginners, even the task of memorizing new words is a big problem, since Japanese appeared and has been developing outside European languages we're used to. Languages of Romanic group have lots of similar words in the vocabularies, originated from Latin and Greek.

Japan had been feudal until the 19th
century
and this certainly
left its mark.
As a result,
the Japanese language
has a unique
code of
politeness,
You have to adjust your speech
a great deal, depending
on who you are
speaking to
(gender, age and especially
rank).. It's interesting! For a European the Japanese
writing system
is unusual
and complex,
because
it bases on
Chinese
characters
and two
syllabaries.
In
order to study Japanese, you have to know all 1850 ideographs and 146
syllabary characters.

The Japanese language doesn't have [l].
Instead of "Alex" a Japanese will say "Arex"

In the Japanese language verbs have different time aspects (Past, Present, Future) and so do adjectives. For example:
AKAI - RED

AKAKATTA - WAS RED

A Japanese would read a text and understand it by syllables, rather than by letters as Europeans do. That is to say, they have a syllable thinking.
For example: if you ask a Japanese to pronounce 'WATAKUSHI' (I) backwards, he will pronounce: 'SHI-KU-TA-WA' rather than 'ISUKATAW' as we would say.

In Japanese, parts of speech (verb, adjective etc.) don't depend on a person or number (except for personal pronouns) nor gender. Without a context you cannot understand if we are speaking about a he-cat or she-cat, about one species or a few.
When necessary, the number of items can be indicated or clarified in brackets: 'plural.'

!!!
R
E
M
E
M
B
E
R

I
T
!!!

In the Japanese language the 'U' and 'I' vowels aren't pronounced when between breath consonants.
For example: ' pencil' is written 'EMPITSU,' but pronounced as ' EMP'TS' '

!!!
R
E
M
E
M
B
E
R

I
T
!!!

[SH] in 'SHI' is much softer than in English and pronounced with a bit of hissing.

Well?
Not scared?
then...
GO!

Japan had been feudal until the 19th century and this certainly left its mark. As a result, the Japanese language has a unique code of politeness, You have to adjust your speech a great deal, depending on who you are speaking to (gender, age and especially rank)..	It's interesting!	For a European the Japanese writing system is unusual and complex, because it bases on Chinese characters and two syllabaries. In order to study Japanese, you have to know all 1850 ideographs and 146 syllabary characters.
	The Japanese language doesn't have [l]. Instead of "Alex" a Japanese will say "Arex"
	In the Japanese language verbs have different time aspects (Past, Present, Future) and so do adjectives. For example: AKAI - RED AKAKATTA - WAS RED
	A Japanese would read a text and understand it by syllables, rather than by letters as Europeans do. That is to say, they have a syllable thinking. For example: if you ask a Japanese to pronounce 'WATAKUSHI' (I) backwards, he will pronounce: 'SHI-KU-TA-WA' rather than 'ISUKATAW' as we would say.
	In Japanese, parts of speech (verb, adjective etc.) don't depend on a person or number (except for personal pronouns) nor gender. Without a context you cannot understand if we are speaking about a he-cat or she-cat, about one species or a few. When necessary, the number of items can be indicated or clarified in brackets: 'plural.'