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Whitey Learns Japanese Pt. 3

2010.06.25 / Japan / posted by idrawgood

Expressions of Amazement

For my money, Japanese is by far the most amusing language to use to express shock. In addition to enthusiastically using 'heeeeyyy' (see Whitey Learns Japanese Pt. 2), you can throw around sugoi, maji de?!, uso!, and eeehhhhhhhh...

Learning when to call someone out on a lie (uso!) and when to pull out the overly dramatic, often guttural eeehhhhhhh can be a challenge, so here's some help:

Counters

In all the bitching I've done about learning Japanese, I've left out one of the most horrifying aspects. [Drumroll...] Counters.

Counting things in English is exceedingly easy. If you can count, you can express quantities. For example, in a world of pairs, I could count anything around me by slapping the word 'two' before the thing I'm counting: two bananas, two erasers, two books, two shirts, two people, two apples, two cars, two shoes, two rabbits, two elephants...you get the point.

After I learned to count in Japanese, I thought that I had opened the window to quantifying the world around me. False. Let's revisit our world of pairs to see how Japanese says 'two':

Two (for bananas): nihon　 (二本）
Two (for erasers): niko　（二個）
Two (for books): nisatsu　（二冊）
Two (for people): futari　（二人）
Two (for apples): futatsu　（二つ）
Two (for cars): nidai　（二台）
Two (for shoes): nisoku　（二足）
Two (for rabbits): nihiki　（二匹）
Two (for elephants): nitou　（二頭）

And those are only a few examples. Japanese has about 30 basic counters, and well over 100 more complex ones. Can you imagine if English had 100 different ways to say 'two?' You'll at first happily notice that the same kanji ( 二 ) is used in each example, but too bad it has different pronunciations. Beyond that, trying to find patterns is a bit fruitless, seeing that bananas, since they are long, thin objects are counted differently from apples. Rabbits and elephants, although both animals, are counted differently because of their relative sizes. See a more full-bodied list of counters here: Counters on Wikipedia.

Sometimes I imagine a dark wizard perched on the top floor of his mountaintop castle cackling and cooking up ways to make Japanese more difficult.

Particles

The same dark wizard that thought up counters probably created particles too. Particles in Japanese act as little chunks that indicate another word's purpose in the sentence or act on their own as the equivalent of English prepositions or conjunctions. Trying to figure out how to use them and what they mean is about as fun as dental surgery. They create sticky situations for native English speakers, since it seems they either A) have no direct translation or B) can be translated a variety of ways. Here is a non-exhaustive peak at some of my favorite particles...

Japanese to English:

を (literally 'wo' but pronounced 'o'): normally a direct object marker without translation that can also mean at or from
に (ni): at, to, on, in
で (de): at, and, using, by, among, because, used in conjunction with negative commands
か (ka): usually denotes questions and doesn't have a direct translation, but can also mean or

And from English to Japanese, there are at least four ways to say both 'and' and 'but.'

and: to, ya, mo, de　(と、や、も、で )
but: demo, ga, kedo, keredomo (でも、が、けど、けれども）

Indirectness

Not a lot about Japan is straightforward, and it carries over into the language. Directly expressing thoughts and opinions can, at best, make you sound a little rude, and at worst make you sound like a caveman. One of the best examples I've found is a construction that translates to 'have to' in English.

     English Original: I have to study Japanese.
     Japanese Romaji Translation: Nihongo o benkyoushinakereba narimasen.
     Direct Translation: It wouldn't be right if I didn't study Japanese.

Here Japanese indirectness manifests itself in the form of a double negative. So, the next question: Do you enjoy studying Japanese? My indirect answer: I don't not enjoy it.

Also read Whitey Learns Japanese Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 .