A brief overview of Japanese

Kanji are Chinese characters and are ideograms, that is they are pictures that directly mean a concept or word (Not exactly true, as any Chinese or Japanese linguist will tell you, but close enough for this overview). Hiragana are the more curved, pretty Japanese characters you will see and are used mainly to conjugate kanji words or spell out words for which the kanji is a little too complicated to use. Katakana are the straight, angular, simple strokes that are used mainly for foreign words and for emphasis. Finally, romaji is the latin based alphabet most Western languages use.

(That sentence means “The dog barked”)

Wait!, there’s more. There are at least two main systems of romanization being used in Japan today, so this adds a bit of a challenge to using romaji. All this makes Japanese incredibly tough, but at the same time it is so interesting it keeps pulling one back to learn more.

Phew!

As if all this wasn’t hard enough, the Japanese have also developed a way of using numbers for words.

Using numbers as words

Each number in Japan has at least two main pronunciations, the Chinese and the Japanese, and these can be combined in ways to give even the most seemingly random jumble of numbers meaning. Many businesses pick their phone number, for example, based on what message can be read from the numbers.

Some examples:

• The number for JAL international is 0120-25-5931. The 0120 just is a normal toll-free prefix so we can ignore it, but 25-5931 can be read nikko kokusai which means “JAL international”.
• The number 25-5971 means nikko kokunai, or “JAL domestic”.
• An easier example: 014-0831 can be read oishii yasai or “Delicious vegetables”.

Neat, huh?

Now because of all this, many dates take on special meanings for people. Today is the perfect example. Today is November 22nd. This can be read as ii fuufu, which means “good couple”, or a married couple who are very close to each other, so today is Good Couples Day. Another example would be 29, which can be read as niku, or “meat”. So often supermarkets will have a sale on meat on the 29th.

Using these tricks, car license plates can take on entirely new meanings!

Luckily, we have the internet to help us! [2. If you can avoid being distracted by facebook for five seconds] There are some great resources to help you study Japanese. [3. Like this one.] And many many more to make you laugh at studying Japanese. Here are two youtube videos that are among the latter, but… there is some truth in them. If you are a student of Japanese you will probably find them at least a little funny, if not, they will probably strike you as very very strange.

Either way, enjoy learning how to speak Japanese without saying a word: