Lindsey McCullough
Japanese is considered to be one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to master; according to the Defense Language Institute, it takes roughly 2.5 times longer for native English speakers to attain a basic understanding of the Japanese language than to attain an equivalent understanding of a language such as French or Spanish (“DLI’s Language Guidelines,” 2010). Immediate differences between English and Japanese are many, the most obvious of which being the written language. While English uses one set of characters to represent its entire language, Japanese, as cited in the Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary, “…is written using three different basic scripts: kanji (Chinese characters), hiragana, and katakana, the latter two being two distinct types of… phonetic script known as kana” (Nakao, 1997, p. xv). If this is not enough to deter potential learners, there are plenty of syntax differences to explore; for example, one chapter’s title in Making Sense of Japanese, a book by Jay Rubin, professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University, reads, “Warning: This Language Works Backwards,” referring to the fact that Japanese verbs are always at the end of sentences, no matter how long and complicated those sentences may be (Rubin, 1998, p. 106).
With all these differences in mind, one may wonder how well a native English speaker could ever hope to learn Japanese. Is it possible for an English speaker to understand Japanese the way a native speaker can? What can be done to make the process easier? To what extent does one’s native language affect the ability to learn new and different languages?
Kana and Kanji
Perhaps one of the most intimidating aspects of the Japanese language from a native English perspective is the writing system. Kana and kanji are the building blocks of the written Japanese language. That the Japanese writing system is vastly different from that of English barely needs explaining; anyone who opens his or her multilingual digital camera instruction booklet can plainly see this. Aspects that make Japanese challenging for native English speakers are not hard to appreciate, but one may wonder if there is anything about the language that may prove to be less, rather than more, difficult to learn. Comparing the two languages brings some interesting findings to light.
English is composed of twenty-six letters that may be combined in a vast number of ways to create different sounds and spellings. According to Seigo Nakao, assistant professor of Japanese at Oakland University in Michigan, the Japanese kana syllabaries, which can be considered equivalent to the English alphabet in many ways, have over one hundred syllables each, with the hiragana syllabary representing native Japanese sounds and the katakana syllabary representing foreign sounds (Nakao, 1997). This fact could be discouraging to potential learners of the Japanese language, for there are far more kana than there are letters in the English alphabet. However, the pronunciation of any given kana is very consistent in that, with very few exceptions, it will not change no matter where it is placed in relation to other kana, nor does it have more than one pronunciation (as cited in Nakao, 1997). The 2004 Merriam-Webster Dictionary cites at least five possible pronunciations for the vowel “a” in the English language (Mish, 2004). In contrast, Japanese has a total of only five vowel sounds, and they are perfectly predictable according to their associated kana (Nakao, 1997). According to Gene Nishi, founder of the Nishi Institute of Language Education, one Japanese professor wrote that there are more than 3000 different syllables in the English language, a great deal more than there are in the Japanese language (as cited in Nishi, 2000). A 2008 study by Ann Bradlow, PhD., professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, has shown that native Japanese speakers have quite a bit of difficulty with some English sounds, an example of which would be the difference between “r” and “l”; Japanese contains a sound approximate to English “r,” but nothing approximate to English “l,” and this fact in combination with the similarity between these two sounds makes mastering them a challenge for the native Japanese speaker (Bradlow, 2008). This is not so for native English speakers learning Japanese; all sounds in Japanese have some approximate equivalent in English (Nakao, 1997). It is possible to conclude that the pronunciation of Japanese is less complex than that of English; kana, perhaps, is not so intimidating, but kanji may yet be.
Nakao states that kanji originated in China, and that these symbols are used to represent native Japanese words—and some Chinese loanwords—along with hiragana; the pronunciation of these more complex symbols varies based on context, and some may have more than one possible use (Nakao, 1997). In The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary, linguist Jack Halpern writes that there are thousands of kanji, and that some are made up of as many as thirty strokes each (Halpern, 1999). This aspect of the Japanese writing system is obviously quite complicated, and will prove challenging for the native English speaker. However, Halpern also says the following:
…The effort is well worthwhile. Kanji have the ability to generate hundreds of thousands of compound words from a basic stock of a few thousand units. They form a network of interrelated parts that function as an integrated system, not as an arbitrary set of disconnected symbols. (p. 18a)
Looking at some of the entries in The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary, it is not difficult to appreciate this fact. The entry for the “water” kanji easily illustrates this. Combining this kanji with the one meaning “middle” creates suichuu, a phrase meaning “in the water.” Sui can also be combined with ryoku, or power, to create the term suiryoku, or “hydraulic power” (p. 2). According to language expert Florence Sakade and Japanese language professors Kenneth Henshall, Christopher Seeley, and Henk de Groot, both of these last two kanji are learned by Japanese children in the first grade, making them very basic (Sakade, Henshall, Seeley & de Groot, 2003). So long as a person knows the kanji for “water” and “power,” that person may easily gather what the two of them together mean. “Hydraulic,” having its roots in the Greek language according to The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is not so immediately accessible (Mish, 2004). Through the use of kanji, a first grade child in Japan would likely have a better comprehension of the term “hydraulic power” than would a first grade child in America. This building block approach is consistent with much of the Japanese language (Halpern, 1999). In short, the Japanese writing system may be complicated, but it is not incomprehensible.
Understanding Syntax
Together, kana and kanji form the words and phrases of the Japanese language; as with any language, however, these parts need assembling to form complete, coherent thoughts. Japanese grammar is different from English grammar in ways too numerous to detail here, but a few of these discrepancies can be used as examples. Jay Rubin has written a section each in his book for the concept of both verb placement at the end of the sentence and the apparent lack of subject in some Japanese sentences (Rubin, 1998). How does one go about learning a language so different from one’s own? Nishi (2000) rejects the idea of “direct method” learning, “using only Japanese to teach Japanese,” for its impracticality, choosing instead to use English to explain the language (p. 5). Rubin (1998) does this often, himself, in his own book, but he also mentions that “just as it is a mistake to expect students to master a language by translating it into their own, it is also a mistake to exclude translation… entirely” (p. 18). A combination of translation-based techniques and more natural understanding is necessary.
It would make sense, therefore, for a native English speaker to rely on techniques based upon translation and understanding of native language while he or she learns to become a more natural speaker. There are many tools to aid those learning Japanese. One textbook consists of nothing but sample sentence structures that learners may adapt by simply inserting the necessary parts of speech like variables into equations; Nishi’s book takes a similarly formulaic approach to the construction of sentences, but goes in depth, allowing the student more understanding of syntax. Rubin uses memorable anecdotes to explain somewhat difficult concepts; an example is his comparing the end of Patrick Henry’s famous speech to the effect a certain Japanese particle has on the sentence it is placed in (Rubin, 2000).
However, these techniques may not need to be relied upon forever. One study, conducted by Sanako Mitsugi and Brian MacWhinney of Carnegie Mellon University, has shown that English speakers can obtain language processing speeds similar to that of native Japanese speakers. The experiment measured the processing speeds of native Japanese, native Korean, and native English speakers for scrambled Japanese sentences; the native English speakers had spent three years on average studying Japanese, but the study showed no significant difference in the effects on processing speeds as compared to the native Japanese speakers (Mitsugi & MacWhinney, 2010). The case markers, used to infer meaning, were left attached to the appropriate parts of speech; English depends more on word order than things such as case markers, and the fact that the native English speakers were able to make use of the case markers to interpret the scrambled sentences meant that they had acquired considerable understanding of basic Japanese grammar (Mitsugi & MacWhinney, 2010). This finding may prove encouraging to aspiring Japanese speakers; despite the dissimilarity of English and Japanese grammar, native English speakers can make progress in understanding Japanese with practice.
Mimicking Native Learning
After exploring the idea of understanding Japanese based on knowledge of English, one may wonder how to obtain the more natural understanding of the language as mentioned earlier. As the difficulty of Japanese for English speakers seems largely determined on the difference between the two languages, it may be beneficial to observe the differences in how native speakers learn them. Waxman et al. (2013) reference a study comparing three year old and five year old children acquiring new nouns and verbs as they learned their native languages—English, Japanese, and Mandarin acquiring children were included—that bears interesting results in regards to English and Japanese speaking children:
English-acquiring 5-year-olds successfully mapped verbs to actions if the surrounding nouns were mentioned explicitly (e.g., “She is blicking something!”) but not if they were dropped (e.g., “Blicking”). In contrast, Japanese 5-year-olds more successfully mapped verbs to actions when the surrounding nouns were dropped than when they were explicitly mentioned (p. 3).
This means that while English-speaking children were more comfortable with verbs when connected to nouns, Japanese-speaking children were more comfortable with verbs alone. When remembering the fact that Japanese sentences sometimes lack deliberately mentioned subjects, something that regularly confounds native English speakers, this proves quite illuminating.
Knowing this, it would seem there is merit to approaching the Japanese language in the same way native speakers do. This idea can be applied to the acquisition of the written language, as well. One thing Japanese children undoubtedly learn about kanji, for example, is that the symbols are based on pictographs that explain their meaning (Kusuya, 2001). Examination of the origins of these characters may aid learners in remembering what they mean. Another imitation of Japanese schoolchildren’s learning style may be found in books such as A Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese, which contains the first 1,006 kanji learned by Japanese children in grades one through six in the order in which they are taught (Sakade et al., 2003). This guide, like The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary by Halpern, as mentioned earlier, also contains examples of how kanji and kana may be put together to form new words and ideas, but the order of the characters provides a different perspective in learning.
Learning kanji in the same order as Japanese children provides benefits most people may not realize. Nishi (2000) employs a technique in his book in which he prints romaji—phonetic representations of the Japanese language written using the English alphabet—above kana and kanji to aid the learner in pronunciation. This idea was originally found in children’s books and other such things, in which kanji would be accompanied by hiragana “ruby,” small text to help children with unfamiliar or complex characters. (Nishi, 2000, p. 6). Materials intended for very young children may have “ruby” accompanying every kanji that is printed; an example for this would be the instruction booklet for a new Japanese Tamagotchi toy, in which every kanji has “ruby” printed above it. In more advanced material, such as a novel based off a video game, some of the more complex kanji still have “ruby,” while more basic ones do not. This book may be printed differently than the instruction booklet—vertically rather than horizontally—but the “ruby” simply appear to the immediate left of the characters rather than above them. If one were to acquire such things, he or she could progress from basic reading materials to more advanced ones. When a word or phrase is still unfamiliar after learning its pronunciation, one of the many helpful smartphone or tablet applications available today would allow for easy lookup through either romaji or kana. This would allow the learner to gain experience with material meant for native Japanese speakers rather than rely simply on texts written for those acquiring Japanese as a second language. If native learning is important—and it appears it is—there are approaches that may be taken to gain a perspective that mimics it.
Japanese for English Speakers
Japanese is very different from English; there is no debate about this. It is, however, quite possible for English speakers to gain proficiency in the Japanese language. The writing system is complex, but the relative simplicity of kana pronunciation does offer easy access to beginning students of the language. Kanji may prove challenging to memorize, but it has been shown that there is coherence and structure to their use, meaning progress can be made. Japanese grammar is complicated and different from that of English in many ways, but with theories like those of Nishi and Rubin, native English speakers can gain proficiency. Native language has a large impact on ability to learn other languages later on, but mimicking native learning will aid English speakers in learning Japanese.
It may be best for traditional classroom learning of Japanese to be supplemented with materials that allow the foreign speaker to approach the language in the same way native speakers do; this would allow for a more natural understanding of the language to develop alongside the technical skills that allow students to decipher the more advanced, everyday speech and writing typically used among adults. There are aids to help native Japanese children understand kanji—such as hiragana “ruby”—that foreign students could easily use. All that is necessary is that they acquire the basic skills and perspective that allow them to do so.
This perspective, in particular, is very important. Japanese and English are two very different languages, and Japanese will prove challenging for the native English speaker to learn. It is only because the language is so different, however, that this is so. Japanese is not, in itself, a confusing language; it actually makes a great deal of sense when one stops to appreciate it. In fact, some aspects of the Japanese language arguably make more sense than do their counterparts in English—pronunciation being the most obvious example, the expediency of kanji as compared to the numerous Greek and Latin word roots of English being another. When these facts are realized, the native English speaker may approach the learning of the Japanese language from a different angle—one that allows for understanding of this unique language through both tools that utilize their understanding of their native language and techniques that allow for natural understanding.
References
Bradlow, A. (2008). Training non-native language sound patterns. In Edwards, J. G. H., & Zampini, M. L. (Eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (pp. 293-308). Amsterdam: J. Benjamin’s Pub.
DLI’s language guidelines. (2010). Association of the United States Army. Retrieved from http://www.ausa.org/publications/ausanews/specialreports/2010/8/Pages/DLI%E2%80%99slanguageguidelines.aspx
Halpern, J. (Ed.). (2001). The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary (2nd ed.). Saitama, Japan: Kodansha International, Ltd.
Kusuya, D. (2001). Kanji Starter 1. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press.
Mish, F. C. (Ed.). (2004). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.
Mitsugi, S., & MacWhinney, B. (2010). Second language processing in Japanese scrambled sentences. In VanPatten, B., & Jegerski, J. (Eds.), Research in second language processing and parsing (pp. 159-175). Amsterdam: John Benjamin’s Pub. Co.
Nakao, S. (1997). Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary. New York, NY: Random House, Inc.
Nishi, G. (2001). Japanese Step by Step: An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese. Tokyo, Japan: Shufunotomo Co., Ltd.
Rubin, J. (1998). Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You. Tokyo, Japan: Kodansha International Ltd.
Sakade, F., Henshall, K., Seeley, C., & de Groot, H. (2003). A Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese (3rd ed.). Tokyo, Japan: Tuttle Publishing.
Waxman, S. et al. (2013). Are Nouns Learned Before Verbs? Infants Provide Insight Into a Long-Standing Debate. Child Development Perspectives, 7(3), 155–159. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdep.12032/full