Studying Common Japanese Words to Gain Fluency

Whether you are planning to work and live in Japan and are studying the Japanese language to gain fluency or just want to learn a few Japanese words to help you get around when you visit on vacation, the best place to start is learning the most common Japanese words and phrases.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of Japanese words that make up the Japanese language. However, it is only a very small percentage of these words that are used in everyday speech. In fact, it is an even smaller percentage that makes up the most commonly used Japanese words.

As Words

The 20/80 rules states that only 20% of your actions will make up 80% of your results. This also works with languages. Only 20% of Japanese words will make up about 80% of the Japanese speech. This rule or concept makes learning a language seem much more obtainable. It may sound odd, but it really does work. If you think about your native language you will be surprised to find out that the majority of speech comes from reusing and remixing a small number of common words and phrases. Just as an example, imagine that there are a thousand words used in everyday speech. Using the 20/80 rule would mean that if you learned the most common 200 words (20%) then you would understand about 80% of everyday speech. Now this estimate of the number of words is a little low. However, if you learned a few hundred of the most common words in any language, it will give you a great head start and even allow you to communicate in basic conversation.

So how do you decide what are the right Japanese words to study? Probably the most important aspect of studying any language is to choose the right materials. This is especially true for the Japanese language because there are a lot of books and programs which contain outdated phrases and rare and unused words. Before joining a class, choosing an audio program, or purchasing books, it is very important to properly evaluate them.

Since your goal is more than likely to speak Japanese, you should focus on materials that cover the most common Japanese words and phrases used in everyday speech. If you are choosing a book then look through it and make sure that the words phrases sound similar to words and phrases that you would use in your own language. The phrase "I am a girl" (a common sentence to used for Japanese people learning English) helps to teach a sentence structure and words, but it is very unlikely you will ever use it to communicate. Stay away from materials containing these types of unuseful phrases. The best method is to get someone who is a native speaker to evaluate the materials. They will be able to tell right away if the words and phrases are outdated. The same thing goes for audio programs and computer programs. If at all possible try to get a demo version to evaluate before purchasing the full program.

Learning a language does take some time and requires some work, but offers some great rewards. Using the above methods will help save you a lot of wasted study time and learn the Japanese language much quicker. Ganbare!

Studying Common Japanese Words to Gain Fluency

Japanese Words

Most people know that geisha, kimono and haiku are Japanese words, but did you know that typhoon, tsunami and tofu are also Japanese words? Here are a few other Japanese words we hear in our everyday lives: shiitake, karate, karaoke and Pokemon. Let's have a look at the meanings of these words.

Japanese is called an agglutinating language because new expressions can be made by connecting existing language elements together. Japanese is written using kanji and each kanji represents one or more ideas. Thus Japanese nouns are often created by putting two or more kanji together and the new word's meaning is related to the combination of these meanings.

As Words

Tsunami for example is written with the kanji for harbor and waves, tsu and nami since in the past the waves arrived without warning and did most damage in harbors.

Another natural force, the typhoon, is also made with two kanji. This is pronounced taifuu in Japanese and is written with kanji for tai and fuu. The first kanji means standing and the second means wind. Despite having high wind speeds, typhoons travel quite slowly so the meaning can be imagined from the combined elements - a typhoon is a wind that seems to stands in one place for a long time.

Typhoons can be very destructive and every year thousands of trees are toppled by them. It's not all bad news though because typhoons can lead to fresh, wild shiitake mushrooms! In the wild, shiitake mushrooms are generally found on the decaying trunks of fallen Japanese oaks. Shii-take literally means oak-mushroom. Take means mushroom and shi is a type of Japanese tree related to oak trees.

Here's another food from decay - tofu. Tofu breaks down into tou-fu meaning beans-rot. It might not sound appetising but tofu is actually soured soy-bean milk so "bean rot" is a pretty accurate description.

Tofu can be part of a healthy lifestyle and doing karate can really improve your fitness too. As a pure martial art, karate has the meaning of empty-hand. "Kara" means empty and "te" means hand.

The kara in karaoke also means empty but "oke" is a Japanese abbreviation of "orchestra". So karaoke means empty-orchestra. It might seem a strange name to English speakers but the idea seems to fit - an orchestra without humans.

Pokemon is our last example. Foreign words are often absorbed into the Japanese language and reused in strange and unfamiliar ways, like the word orchestra in karaoke. Pokemon comes from POcKEt-MONster.

I hope this article has helped you make a little more sense of Japanese words and made learning Japanese seem a little less monstrous!

Japanese Words