Japanese (from English)

1. About Japanese

Japanese (日本語, nihongo) is spoken by about 125 million people, almost all in Japan, and is the principal member of the small Japonic family (alongside the Ryukyuan languages). For an English speaker it is unrelated to English in grammar and vocabulary — but its sound system is gentle, and the pay-off for early effort is high.

Three pieces of good news on day one. First, the sounds are simple: just five vowels and mostly open consonant–vowel syllables, with no tones to master.³ Second, the grammar drops several things English speakers find fiddly — there is no grammatical gender, no articles (a/the), and verbs do not change for person or number. Third, spelling in the kana scripts is almost perfectly phonetic. The genuinely new work is: a Subject–Object–Verb word order, small grammatical particles that mark each noun's role, politeness built into the verb, and three writing systems used together.

Key features to know from day one

• Word order is Subject–Object–Verb: the verb always comes last. 'I drink water' is literally 'I water drink' (わたしは みずを のみます).²
• Particles do the work English does with word order and prepositions. A short marker after a noun shows whether it is the topic, subject, object, destination, and so on — so order is flexible except that the verb stays final.²
• Japanese is topic-prominent: the particle は (wa) often frames the sentence ('as for X…'), which is subtly different from the subject marker が (ga).²
• No grammatical gender and no articles. 本 (hon) is 'book', 'a book' or 'the book' depending only on context; plural is usually left unmarked.
• Politeness is grammatical. Verbs have a polite form (-ます / です) and a plain form; beginners learn the polite -masu/desu style first.
• Three scripts work together: hiragana for native words and grammar, katakana for loanwords, and kanji for content-word roots.¹

2. The three Japanese scripts

Written Japanese mixes three systems in one sentence. Hiragana (ひらがな) is a phonetic syllabary for native words and all grammatical endings and particles; katakana (カタカナ) is a second syllabary, with the same sounds, used for loanwords, foreign names and onomatopoeia (コーヒー kōhī, 'coffee'); and kanji (漢字) are characters borrowed from Chinese that carry meaning and are used for the roots of nouns, verbs and adjectives. A typical sentence such as 私はコーヒーを飲みます uses all three.¹

Sounds: five vowels, open syllables

Japanese has just five vowel sounds, and most syllables are a consonant plus a vowel, which makes pronunciation approachable. Rhythm is mora-timed — each kana beat takes roughly equal time, and a long vowel counts as two beats.³ This guide adds Hepburn romanization in parentheses as a learning aid; read the kana.⁵

A first row of hiragana

A small mark called dakuten voices a consonant: か ka → が ga, さ sa → ざ za, た ta → だ da, は ha → ば ba; a small circle (handakuten) turns は ha → ぱ pa. The single consonant ん (n) is the only sound that can close a syllable.

3. Greetings & essential words

Numbers: two series

Japanese has two number series. The Sino-Japanese series (一 ichi, 二 ni, 三 san …) is the everyday one, used for most numbers, money, dates and with counter words. A separate native series (一つ hitotsu, 二つ futatsu …) is used to count general objects up to ten.⁴

4. Particles, the copula & politeness

The essential particles

Particles are the heart of Japanese grammar. は (wa) marks the topic ('as for…'); が (ga) marks the grammatical subject, often new information; を (o) marks the direct object; に (ni) marks a destination or a point in time; で (de) marks the place where an action happens; の (no) links nouns and shows possession; も (mo) means 'also'; と (to) means 'and/with'; and か (ka) at the end of a sentence makes it a question.²

The copula です and the polite style

To say 'A is B', end the sentence with です (desu): 私は学生です (watashi wa gakusei desu) = 'I am a student.' Verbs in the polite style end in -ます (-masu): 飲みます (nomimasu, 'drink'), 行きます (ikimasu, 'go'). です and -ます are the friendly-polite forms a beginner should use almost everywhere; the plain (dictionary) forms 飲む / 行く come later.

5. Beyond the basics

Now we build real sentences: conjugating verbs politely across time and polarity, and making adjectives positive and negative. Everything here stays in the polite style you met in A2.

The polite verb paradigm (-ます)

Japanese verbs do not change for person, so one set of polite endings covers 'I', 'you', 'they' alike. From the polite stem you get four core forms: -ます (present/future), -ました (past), -ません (negative), and -ませんでした (past negative).⁶

する ('do') and 来る ('come') are the two irregular verbs — note 来る is read き in 来ます. To ask a question, simply add か: 飲みますか = 'Do you drink?'

Two kinds of adjective

Japanese has two adjective classes. い-adjectives end in い and inflect themselves: 高い ('expensive/tall') → negative 高くない, past 高かった. な-adjectives behave more like nouns, linking with な before a noun and taking です / じゃない: きれい ('pretty') → きれいな花 ('a pretty flower'), きれいじゃない ('not pretty').⁶

🚧 In development. A strategy for learning kanji by radicals and by on'yomi / kun'yomi readings, plus the most useful loanword (katakana) vocabulary, will be added here.

🚧 In development. This section will treat keigo (honorific 尊敬語, humble 謙譲語 and polite 丁寧語 speech), casual vs formal register, and major regional differences (e.g. Kansai). Not yet complete.

🚧 In development. Planned: indirectness and aizuchi (back-channelling), uchi/soto (in-group vs out-group) and how it shapes verb choice, and idiom. Not yet complete.

🚧 In development. Planned: pitch accent and natural prosody, advanced written registers, and a media-immersion plan (news, drama, novels). Not yet complete.

• Japanese writing system — overview — the three scripts, with charts
• Japanese particles — reference — comprehensive particle list and functions
• NHK World — Easy Japanese — free public-broadcaster beginner lessons