Japanese is literally a unique language. There is no accent in Japanese, meaning there is no emphasis on a particular part of a word. English and Spanish have accents, Japanese does not. Japanese does have pitch inflections, and this is their substitute for accents. For example, in English, we put stress on a certain part of a word to make it sound right and this is marked by an apostrophe-like symbol in the dictionary. In Japanese, they do not put stress on their words but raise the pitch of their voices instead. In Chinese, there are patterns to move between five different pitches to distinguish a word’s meaning. In Japanese, there are only two pitches, but the only real way to grasp where to raise the pitch of your voice is from listening to Japanese speech and repeating it.

An interesting characteristic of Japanese is that it is spoken differently if the speaker is a man, woman or child. There are, for example, many different words for “I”, and which version you use depends under which category you fall. An even more confusing aspect is that the speaker must choose the appropriate words depending on the relationship between oneself and the conversant. Another aspect of Japanese that may be hard for foreigners is that there are quite a few Japanese words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. It may now seem that Japanese is a difficult language, but as is evident from the many foreigners that go to Japan, that spoken Japanese is not that difficult to learn. One will find that after a year in Japan a good mastery of the language can be achieved.Do you think Japanese is a difficult language to learn? I would say “No!”. Of course, it is a little hard to master all Japanese writing, but for speaking it is not as hard as you think.

Here are some facts.

(1) Japanese is easy to pronounce. It has only five vowels.

(2) Japanese nouns do not have gender, and rarely, number aspects. With most Japanese nouns, number is not an issue. The same word is used for one or more than one.

hon = a book or books
kuruma = a car or cars

(3) Verb conjugation is not affected by the gender or number. The same verb is used no matter what the subject is.

(4) Japanese verbs have only two tenses; the present tense and the past tense. The present tense refers to habitual action or the future. The past tense is used for actions completed in the past. It is also equivalent to the English present perfect or past perfect.

Learning a foreign language can reconceptualize your view of your own native language. This is a specific example of the general principle that true understanding of anything requires viewing it from an outside perspective. You don’t understand America until you have traveled in other parts of the world. You don’t understand science until you have studied art, religion, and literature (and vice versa). Once you begin studying Japanese, you will see quirks of English (or whatever your native language is) that were hidden from you before. That in itself is an end, whether you end up mastering Japanese or not. So read on, download rosetta stone japanese and learn a bit more on Japanese language or you can you visit this link yahoo learn japanese directory for more information.

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