mangaFAMILY
| お父さん otōsan | father |
| お母さん okāsan | mother |
| お兄さん onīsan | older brother |
| お姉さん onēsan | older sister |
CULTURE NOTE Manga
In Japan, people of all ages read manga, or comic books. At restaurants in the business district, it’s common to see office workers in suits reading manga during their lunch breaks. Most cyber cafés in Japan offer their clients shelves of manga. There are popular long-running manga magazines like Shonen Jump, and some super-popular manga—for example, Nana by Ai Yazawa—have been turned into anime and/or movies. Manga’s history can be traced back to the twelfth century, but the modern style of manga has flourished since World War II, with themes varying from action-adventure to romance, history, comedy, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror, among others. Manga are studied by scholars, and there are even manga museums (for example, the Kyoto International Manga Museum). One reason for the appeal of manga is that they are very much accessible to anyone. They can influence people’s lives, giving them courage, offering enlightenment, and releasing stress. Near 40 percent of the total sales of books and magazines in Japan are from manga publications. In fact, many supplementary teaching materials take the form of manga, teaching kanji, proverbs, history, and other subjects. Manga can be a good study tool for learners of Japanese like you, because they introduce kanji with the aid of a pronunciation guide (furigana), vocabulary words, colloquial phrases, onomatopoeia, and other features in illustrated contexts.
ANIMALS
| 犬 inu | dog |
| 猫 neko | cat |
| 兎 usagi | rabbit |
| 猿 saru | monkey |
| 馬 uma | horse |
LANDSCAPE
| 山 yama | mountain |
| 川 kawa | river |
| 海 umi | ocean, sea |
| 池 ike | pond |
| 湖 mizuumi | lake |
Structure Notes
1.1. Pronunciation
Every language has a system of sounds, and no two systems are exactly alike. The same organs are used in pronouncing the sounds of Japanese and those of English, but they are used in somewhat different ways. These organs are parts of the mouth, the tongue, the nose, and the throat. You will find it helpful to learn a bit about how these organs are used to make the sounds of English and those of Japanese. Many of the sounds in these two languages are so similar that you can use English sounds for the Japanese ones without being misunderstood, but there are some English pronunciation habits that you must avoid if you are to speak understandable Japanese. And if you don’t want your Japanese to have a marked American accent, you will want to pay close attention to the slight differences between even those sounds that are most alike in the two languages.
1.2. Rhythm
English is spoken in a SYNCOPATED fashion—we bounce along, rushing syllables in between heavy stresses, keeping an irregular rhythm and tempo based on our stress system. Each normal English syllable is spoken with one of four stresses—and there’s even an extra one, especially loud, to show unusual emphasis. If you listen to the word windshield wiper you will notice that the first syllable (‘wind-’) is more heavily pronounced than the others; the last syllable (‘-er’) is the weakest; and for some speakers there is a difference in stress between the remaining syllables (‘-shield-’ and ‘-wipe-’). Those Americans who hear no difference in stress between ‘-shield-’ and ‘-wipe-’ may hear the somewhat stronger stress on the syllable ‘new’ in the phrase “a new windshield wiper” (with the strongest stress still on the syllable ‘wind-’).
Japanese, on the other hand, speak in a METRONOMIC fashion—as if there were a musician’s metronome evenly beating out each syllable. Instead of putting a heavy stress on some syllables and various weaker stresses on the others, the Japanese gives each syllable a moderate and even stress. And instead of rushing syllables in between the heavy-stressed ones, speeding up the weaker syllables, slowing down for the stronger ones, the Japanese speaker allows about the same amount of time for each of his syllables, regardless of the apparent prominence of the syllable. To the ears of an American, accustomed to hearing distinctive stresses, not all Japanese syllables are heard evenly strong. This is because not all Japanese syllables are equally PROMINENT. The prominence of a syllable is conditioned by a variety of factors, such as stress, vowel color, pitch, voicing, etc. Of these factors, stress is the most important in English, but the least important in Japanese. Of course, those syllables that have voiceless or dropped vowels in Japanese will sound weakly stressed to an untrained American ear. So the first English habit to overcome in speaking Japanese is syncopation. Try to time your Japanese syllables evenly, giving them an equal stress.
1.3. Syllables
Now, what is a Japanese syllable? An English syllable, as noted above, is a sound or group of sounds accompanied by one of four stresses. A Japanese syllable isn’t that sort of thing at all. It’s a sound or group of sounds that take up a certain relative space of time. In other words, one of those metronome beats. A Japanese syllable may consist of a SHORT VOWEL (e ‘picture,’ o ‘tail’), or A CONSONANT + A SHORT VOWEL (te ‘hand,’ ta ‘field,’ yo ‘world’), or A CONSONANT + Y + A SHORT VOWEL (the first syllable of kyonen ‘last year’). Note that the sounds sh, ch, ts are in each case single consonants even though we write them with two letters.
In addition, a syllable may consist of a consonant when followed by another consonant (other than y) or a pause. For example, the first k of yukkuri ‘slowly,’ the first s [a spelling abbreviation for what is really sh of irasshaimashita ‘(you) came,’ the first n of kon’nichi ‘today,’ and both instances of the n in konban ‘this evening.’ The syllabic consonants are further discussed in note 1.9.
Finally, a syllable may consist of EITHER HALF OF A LONG VOWEL. In other words, what we write as ā, ē, ī, ō, ū are really just abbreviations for aa, ee, ii, oo, uu—two syllables each. Long vowels are further discussed in note 1.6.
Below are some of the words occurring in the Basic Sentences, with the syllable divisions indicated by hyphens.
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| [cue 01-3] |
| はい | hai | ha-i |
| ちょっと | chotto | cho-t-to |
| おはよう | ohayō | o-ha-yo-o |
| こんにちは | kon’nichi
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