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Vocab Prep

Before I delve into the Vocab Prep section, I'd like to take a short detour so that we can talk about the Japanese Writing System and its proper pronunciation.

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I had a hard time deciding which section of this book I would use to introduce the Japanese writing system. After a lot of thought, though, I think that it is most appropriate to familiarize absolute beginners with it as soon as possible.

I'm not sure if you remember, but in the Mindset Prep section I talked about how Japanese has a shallow orthographic depth (i.e. is written similarly to how it's pronounced). This is awesome, because it means that reading skills boost listening skills.

Well, there is even more awesome news: If you're a native speaker of English, then Japanese is ridiculously easy to pronounce. It is one of the easiest foreign languages to pronounce for monolingual native English speakers. Allow me to explain:

English & Japanese Phonology
English	Japanese
Has many sounds.	Has few sounds.
Has around 19 vowel sounds (depending where you're from).	Has 5 vowel sounds (all of which exist in English)
Has many diphthongs (phonemes with multiple sounds; e.g., “oi" in “foil").	Has no diphthongs. 1 syllable = 1 phoneme. Yay!
Has a deep orthography.	Has a shallow orthography.

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So (1) You should feel bad for Japanese people studying English, and (2) You should feel grateful that we have it so easy.

The easiest way to sum up the sounds of Japanese is this:

• All consonants are hard consonants.
  • Note: The term “hard consonant" is technically inaccurate, but I thought that talking about “stops" and “fricatives" and all that fun stuff would be boring. What I mean by “hard consonant" is the following. If we have “g," then the sound we want is the “g" in “game" or “garden" or “go." It is not the “g" sound in “gem," “gene," or “gym." Likewise, the “c" in “cat" or “cake" is a “hard C'" whereas the “c" in “race" or “spice" is a “soft c." Have I confused you enough? If so, please wipe this from your brain and move on.
• All vowels are like Spanish vowels.
  • If you don't know what vowels sound like in Spanish, no sweat. I'll explain.

Here is a complete list of the sounds that make up Japanese:

Vowel Sounds

• a (Like the “ah" in father.")
• i (Like the “ee" in “feet.")
• u (Like the “oo" in “soon." Note that there is no forward movement of the lips.)
• e (Like the “eh" in “get.")
• o (Like the “oh" in “old.")

Consonant Sounds

• k, g
• s, sh, j, z
• t, ch, ts, d
• n
• h/f, b, p
• y
• r
• w

These sounds will always appear as a syllable, and usually that syllable will usually have a vowel at the end. For you fancy students of Japanese, technically these are called "mora," which are a little different than "syllables." You can read about mora here on Wikipedia.

Also, sometimes a consonant can snap onto a syllable with “y." The syllables with “y" are や “ya," ゆ “yu," and よ “yo." So, for example we could snap a “k" onto the front and get きゃ “kya," きゅ “kyu," and きょ “kyo." But this is still only one syllable (in the English sense of the word).

Using this information, you can basically make every sound in Japanese. For example, here is every single sound that you can make in Japanese with the “k" consonant:

• “k" syllables
  • ka (“kah")
  • ki (“kee")
  • ku (“koo")
  • ke (“keh")
  • ko (“koh")
  • kya (“kyah")
  • kyu (“kyoo")
  • kyo (“kyoh")

Now, here is every single sound that you can make with the “b" consonant:

• “b" syllables
  • ba (“bah")
  • bi (“bee")
  • bu (“boo")
  • be (“beh")
  • bo (“boh")
  • bya (“byah")
  • byu (“byoo")
  • byo (“byoh")

Catching the pattern here?

Anyways, my explanation might be slightly confusing, but just trust me when I say that it will be very easy for you. Later on in Phase #2, we can talk about some of the finer points of Japanese phonology. Really, though, a technical explanation of the sounds of the Japanese language can only take you so far.

Suffice it to say that Japanese pronunciation is easy enough that you should be able to learn it naturally as you learn Hiragana and Katakana. That is, as you learn your first Japanese characters, which we'll look at right now!