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Language Comparison

My background with multiple languages is a little varied. I stayed in Mexico for a few

years with some friends and had a great time discovering a passion for language learning.

When I came home I ended up wanting more than just Spanish and English under my belt, so I

enrolled in American sign language at Salt Lake Community College for a semester and ended

up taking a year of Japanese as well. With that year of taking Japanese I soon found out how

much fun learning how other languages worked. From there I dabbled In korean and Mandarin

to see how they stacked up in comparison to Japanese. Through what I learned from Japanese

kanji I found that I was able to read certain parts of written chinese and get a rough

understanding of what chinese billboards were advertising, and what ingredients and directions

are on chinese food packaging. For this Language comparison I am going to focus on the

differences between Japanese and English. After taking that year of japanese, I studied

everything I could get my hands on, Kanji work books, comic books called manga written

entirely in Japanese, dictionaries and animated tv shows in Japanese with the Japanese

subtitles on. After studying on my own quite a bit I feel very confident I have a good grasp on

the Japanese language and its rules.

The most noticeable difference between Japanese and English is the difference between

the writing systems. Written English uses 26 letters taken from the Latin alphabet. The English

alphabet if comprised of 21 consonant letters, but there are a total of 24 consonant sounds, if

you include ​θ(th), ð(voiced th), ʃ​ (sh), t​ ʃ(ch). There are also​ a total of 5 vowel letters but

depending on which linguistic authority you choose to believe there are as many as 15 to 20

distinct vowel sounds found in the English language. This is because English uses not only the

pure vowel sounds but also uses diphthong vowel sounds as well. Japanese on the other hand

is a tad more complicated. Japanese has 3 distinct writing systems; kanji, hiragana and
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katakana. Kanji are ideographic characters originating from written chinese, the Japanese

incorporated kanji into their language around the 5th century of this era. Hiragana and katakana

are structured syllabaries that the Japanese came up with after coming into contact with the

chinese kanji. You may notice that they are called syllabaries instead of alphabets. The

difference between an alphabet and a syllabary is sound, an alphabet is comprised of letters

that are individual sounds, where as a syllabary is comprised of syllables. For example the letter

and sound M does not exist separately by itself in Japanese, but it does exist in the syllables

Ma(ま), Mi(み), Mu(む), Me(め), Mo(も). You can see that each of these syllables are

represented by one character in the script Hiragana. Japanese has a total of 70 syllables, but

there are 71 characters found in

hiragana and katakana. The

extra symbol ​を(o) in hiragana

and​ヲ(o) in katakana​ are

characters that repeat the sound

made by the vowel お/オ(o).

There are five pure

vowels(a,i,u,e,o) found in

Japanese. They are pronounced

like so: ​a ​as in f​a​ther, ​i ​as in b​ee​​,

u ​as in r​u​de, ​e​ as in s​a​y, and ​o

as in g​o​. There are consonants

found in Japanese, but all of them, with one exception are combined with any of the 5 vowels.

They are as follows: k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, p. It is helpful to note that ​ʃ(sh) does exist, 

but only when combined with the vowel i. As well there is also a f consonant, but it is only found 
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combined with the vowel u. S

​ trangely enough, ん(n) is only one and only consonant found by

itself in Japanese. It is interesting to note that Hiragana and Katakana all have the same

sounds and Syllables within them, the difference is that each script contains different characters

and each serves a unique purpose within the Japanese language. Hiragana is mainly used in

combination with kanji to form different words within a written sentence. Hiragana is also used to

show verb fffff and adjective endings, it’s also used to show particles and spell words that have

no kanji symbol. Hiragana is also used in small print above kanji for children that are still

learning how to pronounce and read kanji, when hiriana is used in this manner it is called

furigana. Katakana is specifically used to represent sounds in a sentence, like someone

laughing or paper rustling. The main use for katakana is spelling things that are found outside of

Japan, like foreign names, objects and places. For example if you went to japan and your name

was mary, you wouldn’t spell your name with the english alphabet or use kanji or Hiragana, you

would spell your name using the script katakana. For mary she would spell her name like so, ​メ

アリー, If you translate it directly back into english it would be Me A Ri I. This happens because

japanese is built out of syllables, so therefore spelling and reading aloud foreign names in

Japanese becomes a little difficult. The rule to converting a foreigners name in Japanese

spelling is to pick the closest sounding syllables in katakana that match the original sounds of

the persons name in their native language. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to sound

close.

Another big difference between English and Japanese is Syntax. Sentence order is

similar in both English and Japanese, but in Japanese sentences end with verbs. The Sentence

structure in English is S.V.O. Subject, verb, object. For example: Tom eats fish. In Japanese the

sentence structure is arranged S.O.V. Subject, object, verb. For example: Tom a fish eats　(ト

ムは魚を食べます/tomu wa sakana o tabemasu). As seen in the example sentence the first two
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characters are the subject, Tom(トム/tomu). The 3rd character は(wa) is the subject particle, it

tells the listener that the subject of the sentence was just given, since it only appears after the

subject of the sentence. The 4th character is the kanji symbol for fish, 魚(sakana). The 5th

character is the particle を(o), it is used to mark the direct object which receives the action of the

verb. The 6th character is the kanji character for the verb to eat, 食(ta). The 7th and 8th

characters are hiragana characters, they change the meaning of the verb to which they are

attached. If you took 食べます(tabemas), which is in the present form, and wanted to turn it into

the past form you would swap out す(su) for した(​ʃta) resulting in the past tense, ate. ​(トムは魚

を食べました). This process is a lot like English, taking the root word ​destroy​ and turning into its

past tense form ​destroyed​. You just take the verb and change the ending to get whatever tense

you want.

Japanese morphology. Most Japanese sentences follow the simple pattern of X は(wa) Y

です(desu) construction, which means translates to English as X is Y. For example X could be

Tom​ and Y could be ​eats​. So, Tom eats. To turn this same statement into a question in

japanese, all that needs to be added is a か(ka) at the end of the sentence, so therefore if we

apply XはYですか, we are now forming a question sentence: Is X, Y? For example X could be

Tom​ and Y could be ​eats​, and using か(ka) we have now asked the question, トムは食べますか

(tomu wa tabemasu ka, does Tom eat?

In japanese there are a few phrases that don’t quite make sense in English. しょうがな

い(​ʃjoganai), this word literally means “It cannot be helped”. The closest approximation to the 

exact meaning would be the phrase “Don’t cry over spilled milk”. ​しょうがない(​ʃjoganai) comes 

from the idea that fate is incontrol of everything and that we should accept those things which 

are out of our control. Another commonly used saying that is a little difficult to translate is the 

phrase よろしくお願いします (joroʃiku onegaiʃimasu). When translated into English the phrase 
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can mean a variety of things, mainly it means “pleased to meet you, please accept me”. It is 

used when meeting someone for the first time. The phrase also carries the meaning of the two 

of you are connected in some way, and hopefully it is for the better and leads to a happy and 

good relationship. The phrase also implies the words “please take care of me” and or “Please be 

good to me”. The phrase itself is very abstract, but it follows the thinking processes of those in 

Japan. They try to be hopeful for the future and wish for good luck and a good fate. Another 

phrase that is a little strange  

Language acquisition. Learning Japanese can be quite difficult for a beginner, the 3

different writing systems can be daunting. In fact the spoken language of Japanese is reality

very easy. It likes to follow basic patterns and once you’ve studied the rules for how sentences

are formed and how verbs are conjugated to form past, future, negative and positive meanings

Japanese begins to feel like a very easy language to speak. It’s not until you try to write and

read it that it becomes a difficult one. Another great thing about Japanese is that there are much

fewer words for everything. What I mean by this is that for example in English there are multiple

words for any number of things. You can say cow and beef and they mean the same thing. You

can also say hypertension and high blood pressure and your still saying the same thing, even

though you're using completely different words. In Japanese it’s a lot less complicated. Most of

the time there is only one word for one thing. That’s why when Japanese people go to the

doctor they understand what the doctor is saying, Instead of the Doctor saying Hypertension he

would just say you have high blood pressure. Why is this a great thing for you as a language

learner of Japanese? Well, with fewer duplicate synonymous words that means means there is

less vocabulary you need to memorize to speak Japanese fluently. Another fun fact for anyone

who speaks English, it is now easier than ever to learn Japanese. The reason being that a total

of 8 percent of the Japanese language is comprised of English loan words. In other words, if
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you know English, you can already speak 8% of the Japanese language. Japanese like English,

is a language that takes words from other languages and incorporates them into its own

vocabulary. It’s believed that 60% of japanese are borrowed words from chinese and the rest

are from, Korean, Portuguese, French and German. Sadly, out of the entire Japanese language,

only 30% of it is original Japanese Vocab.

In all reality this paper does not do Japanese justice. There are many differences

between English and Japanese, it would take me typing up a 300 page textbook to show most

of the differences between the 2 languages, but it would be more of a japanese language study

tool instead of a comparison of the 2 languages. But through the use of linguistics and

linguistics terminology and the IPA, both English and Japanese feel more connected, bridgeable

and comparable. I hope you had a great time looking at how both of these languages compare.
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Sources

Hiragana Katakana Image

Hankasawat. “Japanese: Lesson a Day.” ​Japanese Lesson 1: Hiragana and Katakana

Chart,​ 1 Jan. 1970,

japanese-lesson-a-day.blogspot.com/2011/01/lesson-1-hiragana-and-katakana-chart.html.