My own experience has been between the two. Search the internet (and even this blog!) and you’d probably get tons of articles written by foreigners in Japan. But very few of them come from people who actually can blend in, and this in itself brings an entirely new and different set of issues.

The Good Stuff

Not standing out can be a very good thing sometimes. Many foreigners complain about the constant staring that they receive – if they speak English in public they get stared at. If they speak Japanese in public they get stared at. In the toilet doing their own business they get stared at. Some people embrace the attention – some do not.

In addition to this, seemingly harmless and often well-meaning Japanese remarks such as “oh you are so good at using chopsticks!” or “oh you can write kanji!” are perfectly fine – at first. After a few months in Japan however, these start grating on many people because it just signals to them how “foreign” they are in Japanese society.

For us however, we never do receive that kind of attention unless perhaps we open our mouths and speak a different language. And while I do get “do you use chopsticks where you come from?” or “oh you can write Kanji” (my race invented it dammit!), I most certainly do not get it as much as the majority of the other foreigners in Japan.

Another very true thing is that many Japanese get very self-conscious around foreigners because, quite simply, they simply do not know how to act around someone from a different cultural background. This is partly because the Japanese are very keen to avoid offending other people – however, when placed in a situation with someone visibly different and probably from a different country,  their offense-avoiding radar goes into overdrive. As East-Asians we don’t naturally put the Japanese “on guard” by default, sometimes because they think you’re Japanese, but also perhaps because you don’t look that different from them. Therefore, perhaps on a subconscious level I am not recognized as being that “different” too.

Furthermore, if you register yourself as a resident of Japan, you are even allowed to create a Japanese common name (tsuumei), or basically a Japanese alias for yourself. Nothing stops you from using it to apply for jobs, use at school or printing it on your name-card. Basically, if you make a tsuumei for yourself and can speak an at least near-native level of Japanese, there is nothing stopping you (except for the “nationality” box on forms… and grammar mistakes) from passing off as and living life as a typical Japanese person. This is in fact what many ethnic Koreans, especially those descended from families who came to Japan before the end of World War II, do in real life. Japan’s original peoples, the Ainu, had to do it too.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

Unfortunately, not standing out has its drawbacks too.

Take for example something which is utterly obvious to most foreigners in Japan – being a foreigner you get to take many liberties that the Japanese cannot themselves take. For example, you will be allowed to be much more direct, honest and critical about issues in a way that would invite bullying if you were Japanese. Can’t really understand how to divide the rubbish? It’s okay, after all you’re a gaijin. Some people do take this to an extreme though – there are some who, for example, buy the cheapest train ticket available and pretend to be lost when they get to the station they wanted to go to. The station staff often apparently just let them exit – after all, they are just a bunch of lost gaijin.

To give an extreme example, can you imagine three East Asians doing the same thing (not that they should)? It is clear that they would have much less success doing so than if they were visibly foreign. Similarly, in terms of being able to speak freely and other things, we don’t get that many “gaijin liberties” living in Japan.

There are many different reasons to this. As said earlier, because you look the same, people will subconsciously assume that you are the same. Secondly, one strand of logic, which isn’t actually wrong, goes: Hey you’re Asian. Shouldn’t you know how Asia works with all the rules and politeness?

Exoticism

There’s a subtler dimension to this though. This appeared on one of my friend’s Facebook wall one day.

“Was with a group of white friends last night. Japanese guy approaches, introduces himself, talks to all the white guys, looks at me, ignores, walks away. Maybe it’s time I put on makeup to make my eyes bigger and nose taller…”

Perhaps said Japanese guy mistook him for another Japanese person but the point is clear: There are actually lots of Japanese people who want to make friends with foreigners. Often, this is because they really do want to know more about the outside world or really just because they want to be friends. However, sometimes it’s just because foreigners are “exotic.” Thus, it’s no surprise then that they gravitate towards the more “exotic” looking ones over the Asian ones.

This is also expressed in other ways. For example, many of my friends who are looking to teach English say that private English schools and people looking for private English tutors prefer to hire non-Asians over visibly Asian people – even if said Asian person is a native speaker of English.

How To Deal With It

The above does not mean that Asians cannot make themselves stand out though. As said earlier, get a weird haircut or a tattoo or speak loudly in a different language (especially English) and voila – you’ve announced to anyone that you’re different. Likewise, be extremely extroverted, frank and/or rude in a stereotypically gaijin way and you’d be treated like a full-fledged gaijin at least by the people who have known you for a while.

The extremely odd thing, and the counter to the point said above about how being Asian allows you to lower the guard of the Japanese that you first meet, is that sometimes, you have to go through this “gaijin coming out” process. If you can’t speak fluent Japanese, this is often after the Japanese person realizes that your Japanese is a bit off and asks you where you are from. If you can speak fluent Japanese, this is often after the Japanese person has had a perfectly normal conversation with you and asks where in Japan you are from, your name or about your high school.

You then tell them that you’re from this-and-this country and the conversation usually simply continues, after the customary 日本語上手ですね (Your Japanese is so good!). Occasionally there is this sense of awkwardness – then you know that the offense-avoidance radar is getting scrambled. And very occasionally, as described by a friend of a friend: “you feel that a wall comes up and that the conversation stops.”

As you can see, very coming out-ish.

It’s Not About Which Is Easier

It really is not. Neither is it about who has the advantage or who has the disadvantage – because we all have our different advantages and disadvantages. Some people would much rather have the freedom that comes with being obviously different but then to some people being stared at by nearly everyone wherever one goes is extremely stressful.

What is true is that each situation has its different challenges and they often require different approaches to handle them. Some use the opportunity to lie low and under the radar; others make the extra effort to stand out.

But then again, everything has its own challenges. Being Japanese in Japan definitely has its challenges too. So, all else being said, all there is to do is to recognize your own situation, and choose your method of life.

Before coming to Taiwan, I probably spent close to six hours compiling and preparing “Koichi’s Amazing and Unbelievably Sexy Mandarin Learning Method” but then spent only two or so hours actually studying with it. Oops. To say the least, it wasn’t enough prep time, but I wasn’t terribly worried. These strategies focused on efficiency and getting the most bang for my buck. If anything it would help to focus me even more. I’d say that over these three weeks I didn’t become good at Mandarin by any means, but I do have a basic understanding of how most things work and also know how to build upon what I’ve learned. I’m at the point where learning comes quickly and I can understand why something works the way it does, and probably my biggest weakness is vocabulary.

But, my actual Mandarin level isn’t what really matters here. What does matter is what I learned about learning a new language. It’s been a while, and it was a good experience since it’s sometimes difficult to imagine what it’s like to start learning Japanese (which is a terrible thing for teaching). So, let’s get started. Here’s the stuff I learned about Mandarin that is relevant to starting to learn Japanese as well. I hope it helps you to learn any new language just a little bit better.

The Magic 12 Sentences

The biggest and most overarching idea that I tried on this trip was the concept of the “12 sentences.” These twelve sentences are sentences that focus on grammar and when learned they teach you pretty much all of the basic grammar that you need to know. Once you know them all, you can mix and match ideas from each to create your own even more complicated sentences. You can spend two or three hours going through these sentences, breaking them down, understanding how they work (very important step), and then memorizing the patterns.

Of course, by learning these sentences you can grammatically express just most things. In fact, I bet you that 80% or more of the grammar used on a daily basis comes from these twelve sentences. Not too bad for a few hours of study. That being said, the vocabulary in these sentences is repetitive by design (so you can focus on grammar) which means you can pretty much only talk about John’s apples and what you want to do with them. More on that in a minute. Using this method, vocabulary does have to be learned separately, but since that’s such an important topic it will get its own section(s) later in this article.

In case you’re interested, here are the sentences I used:

The apple is red
這個蘋果是紅色的
Zhège píngguǒ shi hóngsè de

This is John’s apple
這是約翰的蘋果
Zhè shì yuēhàn de píngguǒ

I give John the apple
我給約翰這個蘋果
Wǒ gěi yuēhàn zhège píngguǒ

We give him the apple
我們給他這個蘋果
Wǒmen gěi tā zhège píngguǒ

He gives it to John
他把它給約翰
Tā bǎ tā gěi yuēhàn

She gives it to him
她把它給他
Tā bǎ tā gěi tā

She gives it to him
她把它給他
Tā bǎ tā gěi tā

Is the apple red?
這個蘋果是紅色的嗎？
Zhège píngguǒ shì hóngsè de ma?

The apples are red.
這些蘋果是紅色的。
Zhèxiē píngguǒ shì hóngsè de.

I must give it to him.
我必須把它給他。
Wǒ bìxū bǎ tā gěi tā.

I want to give it to her.
我想把它給她。
Wǒ xiǎng bǎ tā gěi tā.

I’m going to know tomorrow.
明天我會知道的。
Míngtiān wǒ huì zhīdào de.

I can’t eat the apple.
我不能吃這個蘋果。
Wǒ bùnéng chī zhège píngguǒ

*You’ll notice that I made the mistake of using simplified Mandarin, which isn’t used in Taiwan (whoops). You’ll have to ignore that for me, if you don’t mind. Traditional is actually much easier for me anyways because it’s what gets used in Japanese.

In order to get these sentences translated, I used Gengo to get a translation, then VoiceBunny to get a recording. Alternatively, I’m sure people on Lang-8, Reddit (find an appropriate subreddit), and Rhinospike would be happy to help, though I needed to make sure the quality was there (and I needed them fast) so I paid for the two services at the top of this paragraph.

If you look at these twelve sentences, you’ll begin to notice how they build upon each other. The first sentence “The apple is red” gives you the grammar pattern “The [noun] is [adjective].” Personally, I’d have simplified this down further and built up to the first sentence, but we’re on an express train here and there’s no time for local stations. In the second sentence, “This is John’s Apple,” you learn the pattern “This is [noun]‘s [noun].” Just with these two sentences, you can also make other sentences as well. Ones you’ve never learned before! You could figure out how to say “John’s apple is red,” for example, just by combining what you learned. As each sentence comes up, it teaches you a new bit of grammar that you can also apply to the previous sentences. You’re really learning a lot more than meets the eye. Of course, if you learn only these twelve sentences and never mix and match you’d still know a lot too, but I think the potential for greatness comes with the combinations as you build up. As I think you can see, there is a huge amount you can learn just from a few hours of study. Even if you took a long time with these (say a week) you’re still learning an immense amount in a very short timespan. I’m pretty sure most Mandarin classes would take three to six months to teach what you could learn in the time it takes to watch a baseball game.

This is easily applicable to Japanese as well. Going through these sentences in Mandarin made me find the parts that were a little more difficult to understand. I can see where these sentences need to be broken down further, and where I need to build up the explanations and lessons to get people to learn and understand how these sentences work. You will definitely see a modified version of this method in TextFugu in the future as I (correctly) thought it would be very effective for new learners. This trip only solidified my belief that these sentences truly are a kind of magic trick… It’s not a trick, Michael, it’s an illlusssion.

Common Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the bread and butter of language learning. Even if you don’t know a lick of grammar, you can get by with words and body motions. “Food. Hungry. Eat. Good.” You get the idea.

Since I failed to prepare and was learning Mandarin on the fly, I tried to make things as efficient as possible. I found and compiled various sources listing out the “most frequently used Mandarin words.” I then went through that list and categorized things by type (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, particle, etc). I found that these lists really lacked nouns, and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. There are so many nouns out there. So, of course they get spread out on the frequency charts. You can “to eat” a lot of things, but there’s only one time you use “tomato” and that’s when you’re talking about a tomato. At first I was a little worried about this, but then I had another epiphany. Every single noun can be replaced with the word “this” or “that.” In the long term nouns are important… but when it comes to learning a language and being able to communicate right away, it’s the adjectives and verbs that really say the things you want to say. I then cut my list down to focus on verbs and adjectives making my study even more efficient.

Cutting down what I had to learn and also learning words in order of frequency helped a lot. I was able to say and understand a lot more (thank you “context”) and I found that the nouns I did need to learn just sort of learned themselves. If I needed to talk about a tomato I just looked up how to say tomato. After using it a few times I new it and could use it in the future. Naturally, the more common (or more useful in the situation) nouns came up more often, which means I was learning the nouns via a natural IRL frequency chart / SRS, but more on that later.

In terms of what I learned from this experience, I think it’s a multi-parter. First, vocabulary is super important. Second, verbs and adjectives are the most important vocabulary to know if you want to communicate with as few words as possible. Third, nouns will come naturally. Of course, with a textbook or something like that, the nouns have to be injected in a way that makes them appear in a “natural” order, but that’s good for me to think about as well. In terms of your own Japanese learning, just be sure to focus on verbs and adjectives and really solidify your knowledge with those and build from there. It will help you to learn your grammar and nouns more quickly and effectively over the long term.

Natural SRS Of Immersion

Photo by Emily

Speaking of learning vocabulary, I found myself thinking more and more about SRS, though not so much the kind that’s found in resources like Anki (mechanical, scheduled, etc). Instead, I was thinking about “natural SRS,” which relates to how you learn a new language when you’re in an immersed environment. It’s not as scientific and probably not as efficient, though it is still very effective. Sometimes the timings will be good, sometimes they’ll be off, but the most common words will make their way into your long term memory over multiple repetitions and over a long period of time until it gets into your long term memory. It doesn’t involve flashcards but it does really work. This is why immersion is the greatest way to learn a language.

So, as I thought about this I thought about how this idea could be applied to learning resources. Of course, we have an SRS in WaniKani, though that’s not quite the same since it’s man made. In TextFugu, for example, I could introduce and then reintroduce vocabulary at set intervals throughout the text, effectively putting an SRS into the content and material without you even noticing it was an SRS. It would be a lot more natural this way and you’d find yourself learning without having to try nearly as much. Gone would be the time spent looking through flashcards because you’d be getting your repetitions in without knowing it. It would be a much more efficient way to put something in your head, compared to just saying “hey, learn this, ok, moving on.” This is definitely something you’ll be seeing in some of our future stuff.

Kanji Is Boss

Photo by Travis Juntara

This one I did know. Kanji is amazing. Everyone should learn kanji if they’re going to be learning Japanese, hands down, right from the start. Not learning kanji is why people take so long to learn the Japanese language. It’s like trying to learn English without learning the alphabet. Why should you learn kanji? Let me list the reasons:

1. Kanji meanings will help you to understand the meanings of words you don’t know. It also means you can associate new words to something (kanji) already in your head which is way better for memory. Associations are the grease that keep the wheels turning.
2. By learning the kanji readings, you’ll be able to read most words even if you don’t know the word. This makes it way easier to learn a word, since the sounds aren’t just random sounds, they’re sounds you’ve associated to kanji and already know. You start off knowing things you don’t know, if that makes sense. It would be like if you knew the words “account” and “ability” already, then learned the word “accountability.” You’re putting together only two things instead of fifteen things (the number of letters in the word “accountability”).
3. With kanji knowledge you can read more, which means the things you can use to study and get better at Japanese really expand, which means you have many more avenues to learn with. It just gives you options. Not knowing kanji gives you very few options.

With Mandarin it’s the same thing, though I found that Japanese kanji is a lot more broken and confusing. Even for things I couldn’t read out loud in Mandarin (because the readings are different most of the time… not to mention tones!) I could still understand the meanings. Watching the news, I knew that fruit prices were going up due to too much rain fall in Taiwan (random!). I could also figure out that a food place we stopped at required you to bus your own table. The list goes on and on. Things that I have no right understanding were understandable, all thanks to knowing kanji meanings. I knew things I didn’t know, which is a pretty amazing feeling. Kanji can give you that feeling in Japanese too. And, should you be interested in learning Mandarin in the future, it will help with that as well. It also will help you to envision new words and grammar in your head. Learning becomes easier. It’s just that simple. Put in the time, your future self won’t regret it.

You Learn A Lot More Being There

You probably already knew this, but being in a country that speaks the language you’re learning helps a ton. Immersion is good. That’s an obvious statement.

But, I started to think about what part of it was good. While watching a lot of television and listening to people speak is nice in huge quantities, the real learning and memorization didn’t come from this… it came from forcing myself to recall information I had learned. I’ve touched on in the past how recalling information (not stuffing it into your brain) is how memories are formed. That’s the reason why a lot of people feel like they know the content of an exam better after the test rather than before it. You’re forced to recall information during the test for the first time ever (what bad study habits you have!). In immersion situations, if you want to communicate you have to recall and pull out vocabulary and grammar from your brain and you have to do it a lot. Even though recalling shaky information is naturally an uncomfortable thing, the necessity of recall in a foreign place makes you do it more than you would if you were just sitting around in your home country watching television all day long.

In fact, that brings up another point: the necessity. Necessity is a huge motivator. In fact, it’s not too different from procrastinating on a big school essay. For the first seven days, you don’t work on your paper. Then, for the last twelve hours you go gangbusters and finish it all up at the last minute. Being at home in your home country is like those first seven days. Being in another country that speaks the language that you’re learning is like the final twelve hours before the essay is due. Except instead of being just twelve hours it’s all the time. You will learn a lot this way.

This is why I’ve said in the past that flying to a country for two weeks instead of joining and paying for a six month language class can often be more effective. It’s also sometimes less expensive, depending on which language class you’re looking at, and you’ll surely have a lot of fun. There’s something to say about the power of necessity when paired with recall. The intensity is just so hard to replicate.

Lastly, I want to point out that immersion is great for all these reasons, but it only gets better with study. It’s not like you can be using the language you’re learning all the time, even if you’re in Taiwan or Japan or wherever. Use your off time to do some actual study. In high school in Japan they made me do Kumon. And while I hated it, I learned a lot more because of it. Things you study while you’re in an immersive language environment seem to magically pop up. You notice them, and then you recall what you studied, and then you use it. Things that would normally go over your head suddenly become familiar, and by pairing regular study with this you’ll learn much, much faster. In fact, I’d say it’s a necessity to do regular study while being immersed. A lot of people will rely solely on immersion. You can look back on these people as you leave them in your dust. Studying just puts more things into your natural SRS queue.

I’m glad I was reminded about all this because it’s going to make me think a lot more about these ideas for TextFugu. I’ve already focused on straight-up motivation over there, but attempting to replicate the feeling of “necessity to learn” and focusing on forcing recall within that necessity is going to be a big goal of mine. I don’t know if I’ve figured out the best way to do it just yet, but it’s something I’m thinking about a lot right now.

New Languages = Intelligence

Photo by mxmstryo

Whatever happens, learning a new language means a lot of other non-language learning as well. They say that the more languages kids know the more intelligent they become. I want to believe that this is because you have to learn new concepts that are unlearnable in certain languages, meaning you expand your mind to concepts that the people around you just can’t comprehend, making you a more “complete” person. I also feel like more things in your brain just gives your brain a lot more items you can associate new things with. The more that’s recallable in your brain the easier it will become to add even more into it.

Whether it’s Japanese or another language, I hope you think about language learning. It’s one of the most rewarding things you can do. You get smarter, you can travel to new places, you can meet new people, and you just become a better person overall. Hopefully the things I learned these three weeks and shared just now will allow me to help you to achieve your goals with learning Japanese more in the future. Or, perhaps they will help you to learn Spanish, Mandarin, or even Gaelic. I look forward to applying this new knowledge soon on my end, but feel free to get started yourself right now!

Just like most other languages (except maybe Klingon), Japanese is constantly in flux, slowly becoming a bigger and bigger amalgamation of several outside languages over time. Think Katamari Damacy: bits and pieces from other languages stick to the base language forming a giant mass of mis-matched BLAH (and yet, humans manage to communicate with each other).

la laaaaa la la la la la la la la Katamari Damacy

But patterns of borrowing are not random. A language’s vocabulary is the reflection of the culture and history of its speakers, and Japanese is no exception. The distribution of foreign vocabulary is often concentrated in different fields, pointing to the significance of the relationship between the two nations (just as the borrowing of チーズバーガー shows the cultural significance of cheeseburgers in the relationship between the US and Japan). We can also observe changes in borrowing that have occurred through history.

Languages in Japanese

The Japanese language has come from many different sources in the past, and we can categorize Japanese words into three groups according to their origin: wago 和語, kango 漢語, and gairaigo 外来語. Wago are native Japanese words, while kango refers to Chinese loanwords and gairaigo to words borrowed from foreign countries other than China.

As stated above, the distribution of foreign vocabulary is often concentrated in different fields of interest. Looking at the relationships between Japan other countries through history can help us understand said focuses. But first, let’s take a closer look at the Japanese language before it became inundated with foreign vocabulary.

Wago 和語

Japanese: weather, fish, feelings, rice (lacking: body parts, domesticated animals, actions)

The term wago 和語, or Yamato-kotoba, refers to native Japanese words passed on from Old Japanese. Although wago did not come from abroad, it too reflects the cultural interests of its speakers, the Japanese.

Traditional Japanese society focused a lot of energy on farming and fishing, and the native vocabulary shows evidence of this fact. Have you ever wondered why there are so many words for weather in Japanese when all are you want to say is “there is water falling from the sky”? The native vocabulary is teeming with words related to weather, especially rain and water (this comes in handy in the Northwest), because it was important for rice farmers to know this stuff if they wanted to have successful crops and eat buckets of rice! There are also many expressions related to nature, crops, fish, rice, bodies of water, and senses/feelings. Take a look:

Wago Words for Rice

Wago Words for Rain

Wago Words for Yellowtail (Fish)

And this is just the start… There are many, many, MANY more words in Old Japanese related to these topics; I haven’t even scratched the surface here. This just emphasizes how important agriculture was in traditional Japanese society. If you want to know more about Yamato-kotoba, I recommend reading Koichi’s article on the topic. Or, if you just really love rain, this article on Japanese rain words is really fun.

Although Japanese is overflowing with words on these topics, the language also had some pretty major holes in it before all of this globalization mishy-mashy cultural mixing started happening. This included body parts (ashi means foot and leg?), names for domesticated animals, and action words. But sooner or later, (dun dun DUN!) the foreigners arrived, and those gaps were slowly filled.

Kango 漢語

Chinese: abstract concepts and academia

“And then I said to that turtle, I’ll defeat you next time!”

Chinese has been such a huge influence on the Japanese language in past that it deserves its own classification. It’s believed that Japan was first introduced to Chinese words around the first century A.D. when Korean scholars brought Chinese books to Japan. That’s a long time ago! At first, Chinese was used mainly as a means of documentation and for academic writing, but eventually it became part of everyday Japanese lingo.

Kango makes up as much as 60% of the Japanese language. Because the source of some words isn’t so clear, even words that didn’t originate in China but are written with Chinese characters or use the Chinese reading are referred to as kango. In many ways, kango can be seen as a parallel to Latinate words in English. To this day, kango is mainly used for academic words and abstract concepts. So, these are the words you’ll be seeing a lot of in textbooks and scientific readings, and of course they are mostly written in kanji (Chinese characters)! Everyone’s favorite! Though, of course, there are many casually used kango as well. The differences between kango and and wago can be seen when compared side-by-side:

Kango are a lot more literary and academic, so you won’t be learning a whole lot of them in your Japanese 101 class or using them in conversation (unless you really want to sound sophisticated, or perhaps just snobbish?). However, this is a really interesting point that I feel many classes  fail to point out. The status of wago and kango in Japanese is very similar to Latin and German in English. Check it out:

These days, words borrowed from Chinese (and Korean) mainly fall under the categories of culturally specific items such as food. The majority of loanwords, however, come from English. What a change!

Gairaigo 外来語

Loan words coming from countries other than China are classified as gairaigo. More often than not, these words are written in katakana. These days, gairaigo are seen as stylish and cool, so you’re more likely to see them in something like Seventeen Magazine, rather than Popular Science.

Although foreign vocabulary is now dominated by English, there were times when this was not the case. Other countries, namely France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Russia, Portugal, and Spain, have claimed greater shares than English in the past, but I’ll only cover some of them here.

Note: Translations below are English translations of the Japanese terms, not of the native language in question.

Portuguese: Christianity, “modern” technology, and Portuguese products

Can I get off this boat yet, guys?

In 1542 the Portuguese became the first people to establish direct trade between Japan and Europe. Most Portuguese words entered Japanese through Jesuit priests who introduced the Japanese people to Christianity, Western science, and new products (like konpeito) throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Therefore, most of the Portuguese words in Japanese have to do with the products and customs of the Portuguese people. Here are some words you might already know or might want to remember:

ブランコ / baloiço / swing

イエス / Jesus / Jesus

イギリス / inglês /  England

かるた / cartas / cards

コップ / copo / cup

パン / pão / bread

天麩羅 / tempero / tempura

タバコ / tabaco / tabaco

ボタン / botão / button

アルコール / álcool / alcohol

オランダ / Holanda / The Netherlands

Dutch: medicine, sailing, and astronomy (oh my!)

“shmoke and a pancake?” 

Although the Dutch were not the first to make contact with Japan, they too had a huge impact on the Japanese language. In 1609, the Dutch East India Trading Company started trading with Japan, remaining the only Western country allowed to do so throughout Japan’s seclusion period (those lucky Dutch!). At one point, 3,000 Dutch words were commonly used in Japan (that’s more words than I know… in English), but that number has dwindled to 160 words used in the present day. Most Dutch loanwords are technical in nature, having to do with medical science and diseases (sharing is caring? I mean, oops.), astronomy, sailing, and beer! Yay, beer.

ビール / bier / beer

ドイツ / Duits / Germany

ドロンケン / dronken / drunk (not really used, but cute)

ゴム / gom / rubber

ハム / ham / ham

ハトロン / patroon / pattern

カミツレ / kamille / camomile

コーヒー / koffie / coffee

メス / mes / scalpel

モルモット / marmot / Guinea pig

お転婆 / ontembaar / tomboy

ペスト / pest black / death

オルゴール / orgel / music box

ピストル / pistool / pistol

ピント / punt / focus point

ピンセット / pincet / tweezers

アロエ / aloë / aloe

French: culture, diplomacy, and art

Yup, the first car in Japan was French.

In the late 1800’s, English replaced Dutch as the language of foreign relations. French was also studied heavily during this time due to its status as an international language in the fields of diplomacy and culture during Japan’s Meiji Restoration period. A lot of French words have to do with art and fashion, as you might expect (ooh la la!):

アベック / avec / romantic couple

アンケート / enquête / questionnaire; survey

アンニュイ / ennui / boredom

バイク / bike / motorcycle

バリカン / Bariquand & Marre / barber’s clippers

デッサン / dessin drawing / rough sketch

エスカレーター / escalator / escalator

コンクール / concours / a contest

コント / conte / a funny story

マロン / marron chestnut / brown eyes

マゾ / masochiste / masochist

ズボン / jupon / pants, trousers

ゼロ / zéro / zero

サボる / sabo(tage) + -ru (Japanese verb ending) / to skip class, to goof off

ルポ / repo(rtage) / reportage

ロマン / roman / novel, romance

レストラン / restaurant / restaurant

ピーマン / pīman / bell pepper

ピエロ / pierrot / clown

ペンション / pension / a resort hotel, cottage

German: medical science and sports

“Don’t look down zere, mister!”

French wasn’t the only language studied in Japan during the Meiji period. After Japan opened its doors to the West in 1868, many Germans moved to Japan in order to work in the new government as foreign advisers. During this time, the Germans contributed many terms to the fields of medical and military science. Japanese also absorbed many sports related words from German, many of them involving mountain climbing.

アイゼン / eisen / crampons, metal pins of climbing shoes

ピッケル / (eis)pickel / ice axe

ザイル / seil / climbing rope

アルバイト / arbeit / part-time job

エネルギッシュ / energisch / energetic

ガーゼ / gaze / gauze

ゲレンデ / gelände / ski slope

ギプス / gips / cast

ヒステリー / hysterie / loss of self control; hysteria

ホルモン / hormon / hormone

カルテ / karte / medical record

オペ / operation / surgical operation

レントゲン / röntgen / X-ray

リュックサック / rucksack / backpack

テーマ / thema / theme

Of course, loanwords have been taken from many other languages, too; these are some of the major ones. Other languages that have contributed substantially to Japanese include Ainu, Russian, Spanish, Korean, and Italian. Below I’ve listed a few more miscellaneous gairaigo, just for the fun of it.

イクラ / ikura / salmon roe (Russian)

ノルマ / norma / quota (Russian)

ラッコ / rakko / sea otter (Ainu)

トナカイ / tunakkay / reindeer (Ainu)

パンツ / pants / underwear (British English)

ロマンスグレー / romance grey / silver-grey hair (British English)

ウィンカー / winker / turning signal (British English)

アメリカンドッグ / American dog / corn dog (British English)

ライフライン / lifeline / infrastructure (British English)

パパ / papa / dad (Italian)

As you can see, the vocabulary of a given language is determined by the cultural interests of its speakers, and the loanwords a language absorbs depends strongly on the nature of the connections between the two communities involved. As globalization continues to happen, more and more words are being adopted and traded. Who knows what language we’ll be speaking tomorrow. I hope it’s Klingon.

Learning Japanese by source is not only fascinating, it can be a good way to form connections in your mind so you can remember words better! At least, that’s worked for me. If you know a word from a language that wasn’t mentioned here, or if you know any other cool gairaigo/kango/wago, let me know is the comments section below!

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Sources:
The Languages of Japan
Gairaigo

Read All the Posts in This Series:
Japanese, The Borrower Language Part 1: Where the Japanese Language Came From
Japanese, The Borrower Language Part 2: Twisting Words
Japanese, The Borrower Language Part 3: Why They Do It

What Is “Character Amnesia” (Kanji Amnesia)?

Basically, people in Japan (and China) are using computers, phones, and other electronic devices so much that they’re forgetting how to write their kanji. Thanks to these things, there’s almost no reason to write something using your hands. Think about it, when’s the last time you hand wrote anything? For a lot of you, I’m guessing it was either to sign a receipt (or you just can’t remember). The world is revolving around our phones and computers, which means we’re typing… a lot.

It’s the exact same thing with Japanese, but with Japanese, you’re taking something really a lot more complicated to write (kanji) and making it a lot simpler. All you have to do nowadays is write the sounds that make up a word in Japanese, and *poof!* automagically your electronic device shows you the most likely kanji match to the thing you wrote out. If it’s not the first match, there’s usually quite a few others which you can choose from. This means the emphasis of being able to write kanji is nearly nonexistent in real life. All you have to do is be able to recognize a kanji and be able to read it. Literally half the work of written communication has vanished, and I think it’s awesome.

For those of you who don’t have much experience with kanji (if you want to learn, check out the kanji section of TextFugu for a way to learn kanji that actually makes sense), here’s a good parallel. With English (I know this from experience), spell check has made it so I don’t have to know how to spell things. Misspelled something? Red underline tells me to change it (thanks!). Once I start writing by hand, I definitely notice all the things I don’t know how to spell (anymore) that I probably learned in middle school. Take this example and multiply it by a billion, and you have the Kanji/Japanese issue. They can recognize the kanji. They can read the kanji. They can type the kanji… but, when it comes to writing a lot of kanji by hand, expect there to be a lot of mistakes and omissions.

To Be Honest, This Is Awesome

A lot of old school Japanese teachers will probably tell you otherwise. I was one of them not too long ago, until I started writing TextFugu, and started seeing what I could remove to make the lessons simpler. When I asked “what is pretty unnecessary 90% of the time?” I realized that the ability to write kanji by hand was one of them. So, I cut that requirement so that people can focus on much more important things (like being able to read… and type the kanji).

Even Japan is admitting to this. They’re going to add nearly 200 kanji to the required kanji learning list for kids because so many kanji have become a lot more common through use of typing the characters (i.e. a lot of characters that were tough to write by hand, but became common because they’re really easy to type out). On top of that, Japan is totally a cell-phone culture. Everyone seems to have a cell phone, and everyone seems to be typing away at it. It’s just so much easier to communicate in this way, and handwriting is becoming a thing of the past.

So, in summary, I don’t think this is a bad thing, especially for language learners out there. It just (once again) supports that the ability to hand write kanji is becoming increasingly unimportant. That means you can start focusing your limited efforts (everyone has limits, so you need to make the most of them!) on doing much more important things, whatever that may be. I think that’s amazing news. You have permission to spend your time learning things that you’ll be able to use a lot more commonly :)

So what do you think? Any of you experienced this? I’ve definitely become terrible at hand writing kanji (embarrassingly terrible, actually), but on the other hand, it’s so easy to type kanji out that I have almost no reason to hand write anything. The cool thing? When I do have to hand write something, I just type it up first so I can use that as a reference… I hope any impending apocalypses don’t take away my cell phone, or I’ll be screwed.

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We’ve had a lot of “fun” with DragonBall as of late, and after this tip I couldn’t help but post this as well. I’ve seen little bits of this live action Chinese Dragonball knockoff, but not more than a couple of minutes. You know, actually, the fact that this is a Chinese movie kind of makes sense, since Dragonball really came from the Chinese Monkey King anyways, and at least it’s better than the American version. So, if you want to watch the entire movie (full of English dubbed goodness), go below the fold. This is good stuff, I, uh, promise?

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX38JOO1lTY']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNpfuV0DnAU']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIie28JKyu8']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUvKi2stqCE']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLWXtHL-fc']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMJ1Y55Iw08']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcPxAfmt6xA']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv5PotoLcXs']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpqNMY274c']

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0']

Now wasn’t that the best hour and a half you’ve ever spent in your life? Never seen anything so campy and classic in my entire life. What did you think of it? Wish you could have that time back to do something productive with it, like learning Japanese from Yoda?

Anyways, I promise for sure this time – no more Dragonballing for a while now.