The Joys of Japanese: Part III

In an effort to keep it short, I will attempt to finish the rest of my discussion in this post.

I know nothing of the Chinese counterparts, but in both Chinese and Japanese, there are counting particles. These are used to count particular items based on their physical properties. There are hundreds of them, but the good news is that you don't have to know all of them. You can simple use the native Japanese counting system until you learn the more commonly used ones. The only catch is that they go up to ten. The native system goes 一つ hitotsu, 二つ futatsu, 三つ mittsu, 四つ yottsu, 五つ itsutsu, 六つ muttsu, 七つ nanatsu, 八つ yattsu, 九つ kokonotsu, and 十 too. Otherwise, you would use the correct counting particle. If you wish, for example, to count CDs, you would use the particle 枚 mai, which is used for objects of a thin and flat consistency, and would 'count' as such from one to ten...

一枚 ichimai
二枚 nimai
三枚 sanmai
四枚 yomai or yonmai
五枚 gomai
六枚 rokumai
七枚 shichimai or nanamai
八枚 hachimai
九枚 kumai or kyuumai
十枚 jumai

...All the way into infinity. The only hitch is that these counting particles (or the native numbers, if you chose those) must be prefixed to the CDs that are being counted with the particle の no, as in 十五枚のCD juugomai no CD, fifteen CDs, or they must follow the particle that modifies the word CDs and marks its grammatical function in the sentence, as in CDが十五枚あります CD ga juugomai arimasu, I have fifteen CDs. In the latter sentence, "ga" is a particle that marks CD as the subject of the sentence and is roughly equivalent to "Fifteen CDs exist" (if you translate it literally, you get "CDs--fifteen--exist) but is used to express the idea of having or owning the particular inanimate item. This particular counter may also be used to count things such as paper, plates, computer disks, boards, plywoods, mats, etc.

Before we move on to writing, I would like to quickly cover onomatopoeia in Japanese. If you do not remember from your English classes, onomatopoeia are words that represent sounds, such as BOOM! or woof. These are so widespread in Japanese that entire dictionaries are compiled explaining their usage. If you can think it, Japanese probably has onomatpoeia for it. Some examples of which I can think off of the top of my head are pyon pyon (the sound of jumping or hopping), wan wan (a dog bark, like "woof woof"), nyaa nyaa (a cat's meow, like "meow meow"), boro boro (the sound of a large object rolling; may also be used as an adverb to describe something as old and worn), doshin doshin (the sound of footsteps, heavier in particular), paku paku (eating in big bites or mouthfuls; the "pac" of "pacman" comes from this one), pika pika (the sound of something glittering; "pikachu" [Japanese, "pikachuu"] comes from this onomatopoeia plus the word for mouse, chuu), etc.

The sole reason that Japanese and Chinese have something in common would be due to the use of 漢字 kanji (or in modern Chinese, hànzì). It is for this reason, too, that Japanese has a seemingly infinite vocabulary of Chinese words. When the Japanese first began using these characters, they attempted to use the original Chinese pronunciation. However, there were a few problems. For one, Chinese used (as it still does) tones, which were lacking in Japanese. Many of the scholars sent to China to learn these characters ran into another problem because of the diverse dialects and differentiation in not only words but also tones. Secondly, hànzì were not designed for Japanese, and thus could not reflect the inflections on Japanese words and verbs. Finally, many sounds existed in Chinese that do not exist in Japanese (i.e., L, which is often transliterated as an R in Japanese, in accordance with the American English transliteration of the sound as it is often described as being a sound somewhere between the American English L and R sounds).

To compensate, the Japanese preserved the more common original Chinese readings used at the time. These are called 音読み on-yomi (literally, "Sound-readings"). Japanese readings were also assigned, which are called 訓読み kun-yomi (literally, "instructional-readings"). The general rule is that the on-yomi are used for compound nouns, such as 春夏秋冬 shunkashuutou, the four seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), while the kun-yomi are used for individual native Japanese words, such as 人 hito, person. Many kanji have at least one on-yomi and one kun-yomi, but there are those that may have just an on-yomi but no kun-yomi, or vice-versa.

The general rule for the usage of Chinese words in Japanese is like the use of Latin in English: for formality. Compare:

Native Japanese: 読む yomu, to read
Sino-Japanese (Chinese): 読書する dokusho suru, to read

Native Japanese: 買う kau, to buy
Sino-Japanese (Chinese): 売買する baibai suru to buy, trade

It would be more common to hear the Native Japanese verbs above in colloquial (every day) Japanese, but you may hear the Sino-Japanese ones in more formal spoken Japanese. The Sino-Japanese verbs may be reserved more for literary use, particularly in a formal fashion, but it would not be unheard of to see the Native Japanese equivalents used in writing, albeit in less formal styles.

In some cases, they may also have a second meaning when the alternative Sino-Japanese reading is used, as seen with 売買する baibai suru. If you have ever heard the expression 今日は！konnichi wa!, Hello! or Good Day!, the konnichi (which is often mispronounced by non-native Japanese as if it were three syllables [ko-ni-chi] when it is actually four [ko-n-ni-chi]) is the alternative Sino-Japanese reading of kyou (today), but may also mean "modern" or "now-a-days." If you were to see it written in the context 今日はいいお天気ですね ("Nice weather today, isn't it?"), you would know that it is read kyou because, for one, the sentence-final particle ne is generally used in spoken Japanese, and in colloquial speech kyou is often preferred. If, however, you saw it written as 今日の日本 ("Japan Today") on a newspaper cover, you would know that the more formal konnichi would be required.

Finally, to solve the problem of a writing system that could not accurately show inflections to native words, kanji were arbitrarily used for their phonetic (vs. semantic) meaning. This became strenuous because many kanji are more than just a couple of strokes, and, to make a long story short, they developed 平仮名 hiragana and 片仮名 katakana, which are collectively called 仮名 kana. Originally the use of hiragana was limited to men, while women were only allowed, if even, to use katakana (thus the reason they were once called 女手 onna te, or "women's hand"). In modern times, hiragana are generally used for writing (1) 振り仮名 furigana, small characters that indicate the pronunciation of kanji with which one may not be familiar in a specific writing; (2) 送り仮名 okurigana ("send-out characters"), which are used to write verbal/adjectival suffixes; and (3) Japanese particles as well as native Japanese words that do not have kanji equivalents. Katakana are used to write words and names of foreign origin, and sometimes may be used as a stylistic choice to give emphasis to a word.

So those are some of the notable differences of Japanese. If you wish to know more about something specific, just ask and I'll write more on it.