It doesn't take long to figure out that Japanese and English are two very different languages.
Different writing systems, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary can make learning Japanese a significant challenge.
When it comes to the direct translation of English to Japanese words or Japanese to English, often times the process can seem impossible.
However, once the basic process is learned, translation can be relatively easy when it comes to certain categories of words.
The impossible part of the translation is that there are many English words that just do not exist in Japanese and vice-versa.
This is primarily due to cultural and societal differences between Japan and other English-speaking countries.
For example, the 'samurai' were a Japanese warrior class that lived by the code of 'bushido'.
Both of those words have no equivalent in other languages, and therefore have no translation from Japanese.
An example in English could be that a 'midwesterner' could go out to lunch and have a 'coney dog'.
You couldn't translate that sentence into Japanese as those words just don't exist in the Japanese language.
Japanese has a basic syllabary, or set of sounds that consist of about 50 sounds, each of which is a combination of a consonant and vowel.
It is on these 50 or so sounds that the Japanese language is built.
The Japanese language has, over time, adopted many foreign words and these are written out and translated through a character set called Katakana.
The written Japanese language has three character sets - Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
It is this third set of characters, the Katakana, that is used to write out the non-native words as well as non-Japanese proper names.
There are 46 symbols that each represent a single syllable and with them a word can be roughly "translated" into Japanese.
Two examples: rocket would sound out as 'ro-ket-to' and hamburger would be 'han-ba-ga'.
These are non-Japanese words that can be sounded out in Japanese and then written out in Katakana.
It takes some time to learn the vowel pronunciation and all of the sounds within the Japanese language, as it differs from English pronunciation in numerous ways.
Once the basic Japanese language sounds are mastered, then it does become possible in some cases to convert English to Japanese words by simply sounding them out.
That process doesn't make you fluent in Japanese by any means, but it is a necessary step to rounding out your conversational ability.
Different writing systems, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary can make learning Japanese a significant challenge.
When it comes to the direct translation of English to Japanese words or Japanese to English, often times the process can seem impossible.
However, once the basic process is learned, translation can be relatively easy when it comes to certain categories of words.
The impossible part of the translation is that there are many English words that just do not exist in Japanese and vice-versa.
This is primarily due to cultural and societal differences between Japan and other English-speaking countries.
For example, the 'samurai' were a Japanese warrior class that lived by the code of 'bushido'.
Both of those words have no equivalent in other languages, and therefore have no translation from Japanese.
An example in English could be that a 'midwesterner' could go out to lunch and have a 'coney dog'.
You couldn't translate that sentence into Japanese as those words just don't exist in the Japanese language.
Japanese has a basic syllabary, or set of sounds that consist of about 50 sounds, each of which is a combination of a consonant and vowel.
It is on these 50 or so sounds that the Japanese language is built.
The Japanese language has, over time, adopted many foreign words and these are written out and translated through a character set called Katakana.
The written Japanese language has three character sets - Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
It is this third set of characters, the Katakana, that is used to write out the non-native words as well as non-Japanese proper names.
There are 46 symbols that each represent a single syllable and with them a word can be roughly "translated" into Japanese.
Two examples: rocket would sound out as 'ro-ket-to' and hamburger would be 'han-ba-ga'.
These are non-Japanese words that can be sounded out in Japanese and then written out in Katakana.
It takes some time to learn the vowel pronunciation and all of the sounds within the Japanese language, as it differs from English pronunciation in numerous ways.
Once the basic Japanese language sounds are mastered, then it does become possible in some cases to convert English to Japanese words by simply sounding them out.
That process doesn't make you fluent in Japanese by any means, but it is a necessary step to rounding out your conversational ability.
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