Japanese phrasebook

, Tokyo

Japanese (??? nihongo) is spoken in Japan, and essentially nowhere else. The language is distinct from Chinese and Korean, although the written form uses Chinese (kanji) characters, and is not known to be related to any other language.

Grammar

Japanese generally employs a subject-object-verb order, using particles to mark the grammatical functions of the words: ???????????? watashi-ga hamburger-o taberu, "I-subject hamburger-object eat". It is common to omit subjects and even objects if these are clear from previous context.

Verbs and adjectives conjugate by tense and politeness level, but not by person or number. There is no verb "to be" as such, but the polite copula desu can be used in most cases: John desu ("I am John"), Ringo desu ("This is an apple"), Akai desu ("It is red"), etc. Note that the exact meaning will depend on the implied subject!

The good news is that Japanese has none of the following: gender, declensions or plurals. Nouns never conjugate and almost all verbs are regular.

Reading and writing

Reading and writing Japanese are advanced skills which take years of work to gain much real proficiency. Japanese themselves use three different writing systems of various complexity, two of which (hiragana and katakana) are syllabic and relatively easy to learn with 50 characters each, but the clincher is the set of over 2000 Chinese characters known as kanji. The set of hiragana characters is illustrated below.

There are also several competing systems for rendering Japanese in the Latin alphabet, although the Hepburn romanization system is the most common and is used on Wikitravel as well. Do not be surprised if you see these words romanized differently elsewhere.

Pronunciation guide

Japanese is not a tonal language like Chinese or Thai, and is comparatively easy to pronounce.

Vowels

Japanese has both short and long vowels and the distinction is often important. In romanized Japanese, long vowels are marked with a macron, so that ? represents "long O".

a ?/?: like 'a' in "father"
i ?/?: like 'i' in "machine"
u ?/?: like 'oo' in "hoop"
e ?/?: like 'e' in "set"
o ?/?: like 'o' in "rope"

n ?/?: short 'n' at the end of a syllable, pronounced as 'm' before 'b', 'p' or 'm'.

Note that "u" is often weak at the end of syllables. In particular, the common endings -desu and -masu are pronounced as "des'" and "mas'" respectively.

Consonants

k ????? / ?????: like 'k' in "king"
g ????? / ?????: like 'g' in "go"
s ????? / ?????: like 's' in "sit"
z ????? / ?????: like 'z' in "haze"
t ????? / ?????: like 't' in "top"
d ????? / ?????: like 'd' in "dog"
n ????? / ?????: like 'n' in "nice"
h ????? / ?????: like 'h' in "help"
p ????? / ?????: like 'p' in "pig"
b ????? / ?????: like 'b' in "bed"
m ????? / ?????: like 'm' in "mother"
y ????? / ?????: like 'y' in "yard"
r ????? / ?????: like 'r' in "row" (actually a sound between 'l' and 'r', but closer to 'r')
w ????? / ?????: like 'w' in "wall"

sh ? / ?: (s before i) like 'sh' in "sheep"
j ? / ?: (d before i) like 'j' in "jar"
ch ? / ?: (t before i) like 'ch' in "touch"
ts ? / ?: (t before u) like 'ts' in "hot soup"
f ? / ?: (h before u) like 'wh' in "who"

Particles

Japanese uses certain hiragana characters as particles which mark the grammatical function of a word or phrase in a sentence. Some hiragana are pronounced differently when used as a particle:

? (topic marker) is pronounced 'wa', also in ????? (kon'nichiwa)
? (direction marker) is pronounced 'e'
? (possessive marker) is pronounced 'no'

Accent and intonation

Avoid placing too much emphasis on particular words or syllables. Japanese does have stress and intonation, but it is significantly flatter than English. Mastering word stress is a more advanced topic and neglecting it at this point should not interfere with meaning. Just trying to keep your intonation relatively flat will make your attempts to speak Japanese more comprehensible to local listeners. When asking questions, you can raise the tone at the end, as in English.

Phrase list

Basics

Hello.: ???????Konnichiwa. (kon-nee-chee-WAH)
How are you?: ????????O-genki desu ka? (oh-GEN-kee dess-KAH?)
Fine, thank you.: ??????Genki desu. (GEN-kee dess)
What is your name?: ????????? O-namae wa nan desu ka??(oh-NAH-mah-eh wah NAHN dess-KAH?)
My name is _____: __ no mae ni'')
morning: ? (asa)
afternoon: ?? (gogo)
evening: ?? (y?gata)
night: ? (yoru)

Clock time

For clock times, you will be understood if you simply substitute gozen ?? for "AM" and gogo ?? for PM, although other time qualifiers like ? asa for morning and ? yoru for night may be more natural. The 24-hour clock is also commonly used in official contexts such as train schedules.

six o'clock AM: ?6? (asa rokuji)
nine o'clock AM: ??9? (gozen kuji)
noon: ?? (sh?go)
one o'clock PM: ??1? (gogo ichiji.)
two o'clock PM: ??2? (gogo niji)
midnight: ?12? (yoru j?niji)

Duration

; _______________________________________________________ tsuki desuka?'')

...bedsheets?: ???????... (beddo no shiitsu...)
...a bathroom?: ??? (furoba...)
...a telephone?: ?? (denwa...)
...a TV?: ???? (terebi...)
May I see the room first?: ???????????? (heya o mitemo ii desuka?)
Do you have anything quieter?: ???[???]???????? (motto [shizukana] heya arimasuka?)
...bigger?: ?? (hiroi)
...cleaner?: ???? (kirei na)
...cheaper?: ?? (yasui)
OK, I'll take it.: ???????????(hai, kore de ii desu.)

; I will stay for _____________________________??????? (____ taishikan to awasete kudasai.)

I want to meet with a lawyer.: ????????????(Bengoshi to awasete kudasai.)
Can it be settled with a fine?: ????????? (Bakkin de sumimasuka?)
Note: You can say this to a traffic cop, but bribery is highly unlikely to work in Japan.

Offensive Language

It might happen that there is a need to express negative emotions towards others. Or it might happen that others do this to you. In those cases it is useful to understand some Japanese offensive words. Please use these with care.

Fool or idiot

?? (baka)

Fool or idiot, used in Kansai

?? (aho) - writing unsure

Doing something untimely

??? (manuke) - writing unsure

A slow person

??? (noroma)

Being bad at something

?? (heta) - writing unsure

Being very bad at something

???? (hetakuso) - writing unsure

A stingy person

?? (kechi)

An old man

??? (jiji)

An old woman

??? (baba)

Not being cool

??? (dasai)

; Fussy or depressing : ??? (uzai)*

Creepy

??? (kimoi)

; Drop dead! : ???? (kutabare)

Eat shit!

????? (kusokurae)

Get out of the way!

?? (doke)

Shut up!

???? (urusai)

These words are mostly used by young people

Learning more

WWWJDIC — an excellent free English-Japanese-English dictionary including sentence translation, kanji lookup and place/personal name dictionary
Charles Kelly's Online Japanese Language Study Materials — online study aids and quizzes

The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Keith K. Higa, Paul N. Richter, Ted O'Neill, Wikitravel user KagakuyaSan, Wikitravel user Victoria and the following WikiTravel users: %E3%81%A3, Jpatokal, Nickpest, Nzpcmad, PierreAbbat, Rai_koku. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Japanese_phrasebook.