Japanese Lesson of the Week: Week #2

Though now the Christmas holiday has passed I did just stumble upon how to write / say "Merry Christmas" in Japanese. Unfortunately I can't help with pronunciation on this one since there isn't a sound clip attached to it.

That being said: merī kurisumasu is Merry Christmas. How it is written in characters is included on the website I found it on but I'm unsure which characters it is written in so I don't feel comfortable sharing.

The Japanese language mainly uses three different character systems or scripts, including Kanji (which in Japanese literally means "Han characters", or Chinese characters), hirigana, and katakana. Hirigana is used for words that are native to the Japanese language and katakana is used for words that are "foreign loanwords" and also is sometimes used to replace kanji or hirigana for emphasis.

As of yet this new feature hasn't included any characters, as you have noticed. This is because I have been writing the words in Romanized Japanese, or rōmaji. Rōmaji is using the letters of the Latin alphabet in the Japanese language. It is useful for students learning the language (like you and I) that are not familiar with the script and also for native speakers when typing Japanese into a computer. The majority of JWOTW features will be in rōmaji though I may eventually include kanji, hirigana, or katakana characters. If I do it won't be for a long time, so don't stress. For now we'll learn as we go with rōmaji.

 When I wrote about vowels last week I did not include the fact that the vowels can be either short or long, just like in the English language. Long vowels are represented by horizontal line on top of the vowel, such as rōmaji. It is important to make the distinction between the vowels, both long and short, because the length of the vowel can change the meaning of a word.

 A lady at our Newcomer's Brief in late August or early September had some good examples of how the vowels change the meaning of the word that made the whole audience laugh but I can't remember them at the moment. For now I'll pull examples from our Lonely Planet Japanese phrasebook and dictionary.

• kare, karē - kare means "he", karē means "curry"
• ojisan, ojīsan - ojisan means "uncle", ojīsan means "grandfather"

Next week we'll go over numbers in the Japanese language, both cardinal and ordinal. I may have to make an adjustment to the title and graphic of this feature since I may not limit myself to just one word. What do you think, readers? Should it stay how it is, change to "Japanese Word(s) of the Week", "Japanese Word or Phrase of the Week", or something else? Help me rename the feature!

I meant to have this up on Monday local time but was interrupted mid-blog by a very fussy Little Miss, so it is a day late. I'll be more on top of the game next week. Until then, sayonara!