Talk:Japanese/Introduction/About

Old discussion
I may be confusing this with older chinese, but I remember some older japanese being written right to left occasionally.
 * Hi. Wikipedia has an artile on it: Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts, although I know almost nothing about right-to-left writing system... Actually, I was puzzled when I saw it for the first time (on old newspaper article or like). - Marsian / talk

Perhaps you're well aware of this matter and dared to put it, but just in case: 行かせられたくならなかった looks too strange (さすがに やりすぎ かな と). If the subject of the phrase is "he", then either 行きたく(は)ならなかった or 行く気に(は)ならなかった is natural. - Marsian / talk 04:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

"You won't find much rōmaji in this Wikibook as you are expected to master the reading and writing of Japanese. You will see the rewards instantly when you are able to read Japanese."


 * While this may be good for people who want to learn to read Japanese, isn't this a pretty big set-back for those who just want to learn to speak it and to understand spoken Japanese? - Sik0fewl 00:04, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. Also, it's easy to learn to read without learning to write well (you don't need to be able to write to type). - ToothingLummox 12:37, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Multiple pages merged
Several pages were copied to this one and then marked for speedy deletion. As they had long histories, I merged them instead, and left the old pages up as redirects to this one. The current page history is thus a bit asynchronous, but the old versions are all there. -- SB_Johnny | talk 08:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Mixed Usage section
I was reading this section and it says "は wa (topic marker) and です desu (is/am/are) are written in hiragana". Although I am new to the Japanese language I believe that は is ha in hiragana. Now it might be something that I haven't learned yet and am thus wrong, but I was hoping someone that knows the language might know enough to fix it if it's wrong. Phydend 02:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I see that は is pronounced as "wa" when it is a topic marker. Ignore my post above. Phydend 15:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Right! ;-) And you will see the same thing in: dewa (では), the particle e (へ) and the particle o (を). Shinjitsu 12:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Grammar section
"Japanese is typically classified as an SOV (Subject Object Verb) language, whereas English is an SVO (Subject Verb Object) language." It is true that Japanese is typically classified as an SOV language, but that does not make it a true statement. Japanese is in fact a "V" language. The sentence structure for Japanese grammar relies on only one thing: its verb. In written Japanese, a grammatically correct sentence ends with a verb; the order of the rest of the sentence - if it exists at all - is variable and mutable depending on the writer's preference. It may change based on the writer's decision for emphasis. When sentences do not stand alone, as is quite usually the case, the context of the sentence is often known in advance, and left out of the sentence entirely. If we're already talking about cats, we will not say, "Neko wa nezumi wo kuu." We will instead say "Nezumi wo kuu."  "Neko wa" is redundant and dismissed. You could even ask "What do cats do with mice?" In English, the answer might be, "They eat them." In Japanese, the answer would simply be "Eat." Verb only.

The section goes on to say that "[as] long as you remember this grammar structure, Japanese won't be so difficult to learn." It is more important, I think, to teach the new student that the sentence structure is even more simple and more flexible, and that will help students most. They will, inevitably, come across structure that defies SOV, and giving the true sentence structure will avoid confusion in the future. Hekirou 15:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * "[as] long as you remember this grammar structure, Japanese won't be so difficult to learn." Maybe this sentence should be removed. It's not up to us to decide what is difficult and what is not difficult to learn. That is for everybody personal. For a Korean, Japanese should be relatively easy to learn (since the grammatical structure is similar), but for a French it might be very difficult because of the numerous differences in grammatical structure, declinations (present, past, future tense, etc.), pronunciation, etc. Somebody who has been trying to learn it for a while but finds lots of difficulties and then read here that "it's not so difficult to learn" might find it frustrating and demoralizing. Shinjitsu 12:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * As per above, I have removed the "Japanese won't be difficult to learn", and replaced with the more neutral:
 * Japanese grammar is markedly different from English grammar, but is very regular.
 * ...as Japanese does present difficulties for English-speakers, but is regular.
 * As per Hekirou's comment, I've emphasized the topic-prominent of Japanese, and the pro-drop, giving examples.
 * Nbarth (talk) 00:04, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Gojūon table

 * The syllabary charts in Japanese are referred to as the 五十音 gojūon, meaning "fifty sounds" because they are written in a five by ten chart. However, three of the fifty original sounds are duplicates, two are obsolete, and an extra one has been added, so that presently there are forty-six in common use.

I'm pretty sure this explanation is incorrect or at least extremely unclear. I'm guessing it was originally worded unclearly by one editor and another editor incorrectly changed it to what they thought it meant. First off, in my understanding, the original gojūon table had 47 sounds. Kana for "ye", "yi", and "wu" never existed (although "we" and "wi" are sometimes romanized as "ye" and "yi"). The only two kana removed from the table were ゑ (we) and ゐ (wi). When you add ん (n'), you do end up with the 46 kana of modern Japanese. Both ゑ and ゐ were indeed "duplicate" sounds as they were actually pronounced "e" and "i", so they were both duplicates and obsolete. を (wo) is also duplicate in sound (pronounced "o"), but not in function, so it was not removed and is still used in modern Japanese. So there were were indeed three duplicate sounds (we, wi, wo) and two obsolete kana (we, wi), but two of these duplicate sounds were the same as the obsolete kana and the remaining one was not removed. So the text appears to be claiming that there were originally 50 kana - 3 duplicates - 2 obsolete + 1 new = 46 kana, but in fact there were originally 47 kana - 2 obsolete + 1 new = 46 kana. So the above text is correct in saying that there are 46 kana in modern Japanese, but it is right for the wrong reason. :) I'm going to change the text myself to say there are a few gaps and leave it at that; why there are only 46 kana in a 5x10 table isn't that important anyway. - Furrykef (talk) 19:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Japanese/Introduction/About
I'm in favour of removing this section. There isn't much content here and I doubt it's much use to people who've already taken the step to find this book. --Swift (talk) 06:21, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree in its removal--Balloonguy (talk) 22:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree on its removal. We should move most of these to the main talk page, so we all know where to see removal suggestions instead of finding them by accident. --Retropunk (talk) 06:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, certainly! --Swift (talk) 13:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)