hey, mike: Learning Japanese

Is learning to read and write the Japanese language as difficult as people say? Also, why does there seem to be so many misspelled English-worded signs?

— Chris R. Parcells

Learning to read and write in Japanese is not as difficult as some people believe. While basic comprehension of the intricate kanji characters is necessary for reading most Japanese publications and writing a professional letter, it isn’t a mandatory requirement for basic communication. In addition, the ability to read and write Japanese isn’t always necessary for speaking the language—and learning to communicate verbally should be the first step anyway.

Japanese is generally written in a combination of three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji originated from Chinese characters that were introduced to Japan nearly 2,000 years ago and it is said that approximately 50,000 kanji characters exist—each with its own meaning. However, many of these kanji are no longer used on a regular basis in Japanese society. In 1946. the Japanese Ministry of Education designated 1,945 of the most commonly used characters as Jôyô Kanji (Chinese characters for daily use). These have become the standard, and although it would be very helpful to learn all of Jôyô Kanji for permanent residents, knowing about 1,000 are sufficient to read about 90 percent of a Japanese daily newspaper.

Hiragana is also used in many forms of Japanese literature, and was developed from kanji to express each syllable of the Japanese character phonetically. Katakana was created to express foreign terms (like television, Levi’s, and McDonald’s). Both hiragana and katakana are simpler than kanji— comprised of an “alphabet” of only 46 characters each. And, it is possible to write an entire Japanese sentence of considerable complexity in either form. Japanese children begin their education in hiragana before even attempting to learn the many thousands of commonly used kanji.

When writing Japanese you can also use Romanji—which is basically Japanese written with Roman (or English) characters. With Romanji, you can write in Japanese without even knowing how to write a single Japanese character. Most adult Japanese are able to read romanji, and although the Japanese normally don’t use it for everyday writing, knowing the different spellings of English words in Romanji can come in handy—especially in understanding why misspelled English signs are so prevalent.

Many English-speaking people new to Japan often wonder (and sometimes even scoff at) the strange quirky Romanji spellings that they see, and the sometimes bizarre mispronunciations that they hear. Even people that fully understand both languages find many of them entertaining.

Because the Japanese spell and pronounce many foreign words phonetically in romanji, (for example, beer is pronounced “biiru,” and remote control is pronounced something like “remooto contorooru”) the spelling changes with the pronunciation. Many times the word is spelled the way it sounds and sometimes the results can be disastrous (for example, “fried rice” becomes “flied lice”). However, not all of the misspellings can be blamed on Romanji or bad translation, and sometimes ideas don’t translate regardless of whether the spelling is correct or not. Hmm, maybe a refreshing sip of “Pocari Sweat” will help me think of a couple good examples.

—Mike Daley

Got questions for Mike? E-mail editor@okinawa.usmc-mccs.org.