Among the first phrases learned by those studying a new language, "Can you speak [my native tongue]?" and "I don't understand", seem to be the best-known and the most often-used.

Unless you're Jess, in which case you learn "I have many cows."

I used to think this was completely counter-intuitive; why learn a language when you're hoping to rely on phrases which allow you to avoid using it? But after almost three months in Japan, I understand completely. Living in a country where the native tongue is X is far different than an X class in high school or at the local community center. I use "I don't understand" (wakarimasen) constantly, at least 2-3 times a day, often far more.

Still, I'm determined to return home with a reasonable degree of competence (ideally fluency, but that's not bloody likely) in Japanese. It's pretty interesting stuff. And I feel like talking about it because yesterday I discovered that I've had the ability to write kanji on my computer all along. Joy!

Written Japanese is clearly designed to ward off all but the most ambitious (or desperate to do their own translation of the dialogue in Finale Fantasy VII) students. It has two syllabaries ("alphabets" for non-linguists) - hiragana and katakana - and a Mess of Ideographs ("cryptic pictures") known as kanji.

Hiragana:
As far as I can tell, every student of Japanese learns this syllabary first. (All 46 of 'em can be seen here.) The Japanese language can be written entirely in hiragana. For instance, "I like beer" can be written

(Read "watashi wa biiru ga suki desu.") But outside of books for those learning the language, it's not. Anyway, given some time and patience, learning hiragana isn't so bad.

Katakana:
After learning hiragana, katakana is a slap in the face. It's an entirely different set of characters representing the exact same 46 sounds that hiragana does! (See 'em here.) What the fuck? I can understand the need for redundant systems in things like missile defense systems, but in a language? OK. There's a reason. Katakana is used when writing words of non-Japanese origin. For instance, in Japanese my name is written as

(read "buraian gurivna"). I've come to realize that in practice, katakana is actually much more useful than hiragana in everyday life in Japan. This is because Japanese has a shit-ton of loanwords, and most of them are taken from English. So, sadly, most of the Japanese I can read is actually Japanized English. For instance, "beer" is written

(read "biiru"). "Ice cream" is

("aisukuriimu"). That staple of Japanese cuisine, "jambalaya chicken" is

("jambaraya chiikin" - the Japanese "r" is pronounced roughly halfway between an English "l" and "r", thus "Engrish"). No, I did not make that up. See? (If I haven't already plugged the insane goodness that is MOS Burger, there you go. I'll do a full write-up on how good it is when I'm pushing five bills on my deathbed.) So techincally, the way I wrote "I like beer" above is wrong because "beer" is a loanword. It should be written

I had a hell of a time with katakana until I got to Japan. I picked it up in less than a week thanks because it's all over the place. Osmosis is good.

Kanji:
Kanji are cute little pictures! Kanji are awesome! They are also the most difficult element of the language (I think) for most non-Japanese. There are thousands of them. The company line is that one needs to know about 2,000 kanji to read a Japanese newspaper. Maybe they're not so cute. And without some guidance, the meanings of even the simplest kanji are difficult at best to determine based on their apperance. For instance, whaddya think this kanji is?

a) grass
b) house
c) mountain
d) male erectile dysfunction

It's yama, mountain. It is probably the easiest kanji in the book (and I'm sure many of you bright kids got it). Whaddya think this one is?

No choices for you! It's hi, fire.

If learning kanji were entirely a matter of learning what word goes with what picture, it wouldn't be so bad. But there's so much more. Alone, the kanji for yama is indeed read "yama". But, as with most kanji, it has multiple readings. In combination with other kanji, it can also be read "san", the canonical example being "Mount Fuji",

, which the Japanese refer to as "fu-ji-san" (hyphens delimit reading of each kanji). hi, fire, can also be read as "ka" when used in a compound. Perhaps now you can see where things get hellish. Given the compound

, what the hell is the reading?

a) ka-yama
b) hi-yama
c) ka-san
d) hi-san

Guess what? It's none of the above. It's ka-zan, "volcano". So, while it's kinda neat that the kanji for "fire" plus the kanji for "mountain" equals "volcano", the fact that there's no way to determine the proper reading is frustrating. It's certainly possible to make some educated guesses, but without a dictionary or native speaker on hand, you can't really be certain. This, then, is the problem. In addition to learning thousands of kanji, you'll likely need to learn tens of thousands of compounds before you can claim complete Japanese literacy.

Loanwords are always written in katakana (because alas, there is no kanji for "jambalaya" and its ilk), but most hiragana gets the boot in favor of kanji. What hiragana remains is (mostly) used for grammatical bits like the endings of verbs, and particles (which indicate the grammatical function of a word in a sentence). So, written in "proper" Japanese, our model sentence would probably look like

The first kanji means "I" or "private", the second means "like" or "love" (and is actually a kanji created by combining the kanji for "woman" and "child", because hey, women love them babies). I know about 200 kanji at the moment, but I'm not familiar with many of the compounds they're used in, so I have a long long long way to go.

I won't even go into the spoken aspect of the language, other than to say I have attained the pinnacle of suckdom in that regard. My first private lesson is next Sunday, hopefully things will improve.

Oh. The title of the entry is based on the Japanese for "Japanese [language]",

which is read "ni-hon-go". The first two characters mean "the nation of Japan", the last, among other things, "language". Good stuff!

Confidential to Jess:

dericious. simpry dericious.

Huh. Do they really use the "wa" hiragana to indicate the subject? I was taught that the Japanese decided to make things even more difficult by using the "ha" character and then pronouncing it "wa". Because why should kanji have all the fun? So, are my textbooks out of touch with the "with it" kids of today's Japan?

Also, I heard somewhere that katakana used to be used exclusively by men, hiragana by women. Any truth to the rumor?

Andy is absolutely right, I am a dope. The "wa"s have been corrected. With it or not, the kidz gots to respect the grammarz of their languagez.

Hm. I've never heard the man/katakana woman/hiragana rumor. I'll ask some of the authorities at my school tomorrow.

after questioning my japanese girlfriend a while back (after hearing a tidbit of trivial knowledge), she affirmed the fact that there is an entirely other language that is used to speak with the emperor. can you, as well, confirm this?

additionally on the topic of linguistic insanity, my same friend related to me how some aspects of navajo (dine') language are quite eerily similar to japanese and that in fact, some words are nearly identical. tell me that doesn't get your brain in a knot!

Little Bri,
I am enjoying your site. You are sooo funny. I also gave Blake your web address and he has also checked in on your progress in Japan. You are sharing a shit-ton of experience. Thanks!
Coreen