Japanese Language

October 30, 1994 Learning English is difficult for foreigners. All of the people in the world can speak their first language. However, when they learn a second language, sometimes their own language may perplex them. I am also confused between my first language, Japanese and English. I would like to explain the contrasts between Japanese and English from three points of view, the language order, the pronunciation, and the language use. Japanese has a different order form than English. The order is a subject, an object, and a predicate. The predicate always comes the last part of the sentence. And a denial comes after the predicate. Also, the name of a "preposition" should change to a "postposition." The Japanese order changes from English in every part. In addition, it is easy to omit the subject. We can omit it in the first sentence of the topic in Japanese. These cause confusions when I use English thinking in Japanese. By using a denial in the last part of the sentence and omitting a subject, Japanese is said to be a vague language. It is difficult to express a strong will to use a denial unlike in English because the denial needs some reasons in one sentence. For example, I want to say in Japanese, " I don't want to go to the mountain because I need to walk a lot and I will be tired in this good weather today." My friends can think, "Because she wants to walk for her health and sleep well after being tired, she must want to go to the mountain," while I am telling them. They can understand the whole meaning at the last part of the sentence. In other word, they are not sure if I want to go or not, until I finish the sentence. It means I can not stress my will from the first. Also, as for omitting a subject, sometimes I can not explain someone's Japanese opinion clearly in English. I am not sure if it is he/she own opinion or a general opinion. For example, there is "(the topic was) boring, so the discussion was no meaning." When I omit the part of ( ), you should guess what is boring. It could be the topic, but it could be the people who attended the discussion, or it could be the discussion. In this way, sometimes Japanese words are unclear. About the pronunciation, Japanese has just 5 vowels. Also, some consonants don't exist, such as "r," "l," "v," "f" an "th." Therefore, it is difficult for us to pronounce. The greatest difference about pronunciation is that each consonant has one vowel except "n." For example, we pronounce "Makudonarudo," the Japanese form for "McDonald's." It cauI love the changes in all seasons. I think they are a good qualities of my country. The reason I decided to come here was the seasons of New York State. I am very glad to have seasons here. I remember my friends in Japan in each season. In the spring, school starts in our country with cherry blossoms. After a hard, dry winter, we can enjoy ourselves outside. In Japan, we call it "Hanami," a flower viewing, to watch and enjoy the cherry blossoms with friends or coworkers. The lives of the flowers are short, usually one week or ten days, so the places are crowded at this time. In the summer, it is very humid in Japan. The crowds of the swimming pools and sea are terrible. When I went to sea, I used to leave my house at 3:00 in the morning to park the car and get a good place for my belongings. Also, it was very hard to find a good place where there were no people when we went camping. But in spite of the difficulty in finding the place, we enjoyed every time we went camping. For the Japanese, we are used to being crowded. Leaves turning red and yellow in the fall are very beautiful here. Though we can see any place around our house, I used to go to find more good places with my friends or family. Fall is my favorite season. Actually, it is a good time to do everything, such as reading, eating excising, talking and staying up late at night. After unbearably humid summer, we are comfortable in the fall. In the winter, I used to go skiing. I love to ski. It is not easy to go to the ski resort because it is far from our town; usually, it takes more than 8 hours by car. However, after enjoying music and conversation in the car, the places are very beautiful and we enjoy skiing every time. The winter is not so cold, but very dry. It causes many colds, unfortunately. Through all the seasons, we have some events. I like them. They are a good chance to make sure our own culture is nice. But nowadays, people easily forget celebrating the events because of our busy schedules. I regret it. ses the difficulty to pronounce a grouping of consonants, like "makdanldz" in English. Next, I talk about the language use in Japanese. Though it is difficult to choose the correct words in another language for every people in the world, one of our difficulties is too many false cognates that give Japanese borrowed words. For example, "cooler" in Japanese means an air conditioner in English. "Nighter" is a night game in a base ball, " pocket bell" is a beeper, "salary man" and "office lady(OL)" are office workers, "base up" means an across-the-board raise in base pay. It may seem to be funny, but it is serious problems for Japanese who study English. It is said that Japanese people are shy to speak English. I think the problems come from the pronunciation and the language use. The other day, a native speaker asked me to repeat my word. But I didn't know if I missed the pronunciation or the misusing words. So I just repeated the word unconfidently with smiling. As for language order, however, I think it is a difference of the culture and the society. It is interesting to explain the difference between a foreign language and my language though it doesn't change the difficulty to use the foreign language.

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