"IMPOSSIBLE," you say? Not necessarily. Why, if you think about it you may already know some words in Japanese, such as kimono and sake (rice wine)! Did you know that if you say the English pronoun "I," it sounds as if you are saying "love" in Japanese (ai)? Or that if you say "cow" in English, the same pronunciation means "to buy" in Japanese (kau)?

Some claim that a person can learn Japanese overnight merely by poring over a 'How-to-Learn' book. Though it is not quite that easy, one can quickly master enough Japanese to have an enjoyable time visiting Japan as a tourist.

From Where?

Even more complicated than the Japanese language itself are various ideas regarding its origin. Two decades ago, Leptcha, a language spoken in a valley of the Himalaya mountains, was found to be closely related to Japanese. Others claim that Japanese bears greater affinity to Korean than to any other language.

What is the relationship between Japanese and Chinese? Due to the use of Chinese ideographic script, which we call "Kanji," Japanese is often thought to have close connections with Chinese. But the differences are considerable. Chinese is a "monosyllabic" language, containing words of only one syllable. Japanese, however, is "polysyllabic," having numerous words of two or more syllables. In Chinese, word meaning is conveyed by pitch and word order, while in Japanese the meaning is conveyed by the words themselves and by the word endings.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Japanese language had, basically, the same grammar as that used today. But by the end of the ninth and tenth centuries, changes began taking place. This made it necessary to know one set of words for reading and another set for speaking. The result was that until the end of World War II, one had to know 3,000 to 5,000 Chinese characters and two sets of syllabaries of 50 characters each in order to read any weighty material.

Since 1945, however, the essential Kanji have been somewhat simplified and reduced to a little less than 2,000. The language also has adopted many English words. Nowadays, besides these Kanji characters, schoolchildren are taught two sets of romanization. This requires hours of work at memorizing as well as writing practice until, by the end of grammar school, children have learned 881 Kanji, and, by the end of high school, 1,850. Reading college textbooks, however, requires knowledge of about 3,000 Kanji.

Let's Say Something in Japanese

Perhaps you are anxious to test your ability at speaking Japanese. The pronunciation is easy enough, as there are, basically, only 50 different sounds possible. What presents the biggest problem is grammar. But for now, we'll stick to simpler matters.

To begin with, there are five vowel sounds, all pronounced as in Italian: A as in far, I as e in me, E as in nest, O as in old, U as in push, when the U is a short vowel; when long, the U is as oo in soon. It is very important to learn the short and the long vowel sounds. A rather frequent mistake made by missionaries is confusing so shi ki (organization) with sM shi ki (funeral). Not a few audiences have been shocked at hearing about God's great heavenly funeral, rather than God's great heavenly organization. Another easy mistake is that of calling a young girl shM jM (orangutan) rather than shM jo (young girl). Clearly, both the learner of Japanese and the listener are benefited by having a sense of humor.

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