Studying Japanese
Keigo
Loan words, Japlish
Japanese on computers
Literature
Poetry

Your contributions
If you made an interesting
or funny experience
during your stay or trip
in Japan, or if you have
helpful advice for our
visitors or anything
else that is somehow
related to Japan, please
send it to us.

Writing: The writing system of the Japanese language is very complicated. There are three different kinds of writings: Kanji (Chinese characters), Hiragana and Katakana.
Texts can be written in two ways: In the same way as it is done with Roman letters, i.e. horizontally from the top to the bottom, or vertically starting in the upper right corner and proceeding to the left. This is the traditional and still more common way in which books are written.

Pronunciation: The pronunciation is not a big difficulty compared to languages like English or Chinese. There are long and short vowels. Accents do exist, however, to a much lower extent than in the Chinese language.
There are many words with different meanings which are pronounced the same.

The person you talk to: The way of talking depends strongly on the person you are talking to. Other words are used when talking with an elderly person or a superior in the company than when talking with a young person or a close friend. You also choose different words when talking about a third party than when talking about yourself or your family. (There are, for example, various words for expressing "you" depending on the situation.)

Women and men: Women speak a different Japanese than men do. There are many words only used either by women or men. Children also speak differently.

Differences to the Chinese language: Chinese is a completely different language. The pronunciation and grammar are completely different, and Japanese people cannot understand or speak Chinese unless they have studied it.
The Japanese language uses Chinese characters as one of its writing systems; therefore, the Japanese can vaguely guess the content of some Chinese texts to a certain grade.

JAPANESE LANGUAGE

• Japanese Language Information
  Much information about the Japanese language.
• The Japanese language (JP Net Home Page)
  Information about grammar, writing, dialects, etc.
• Lerning Japanese Language and Culture (Kazumi Ohira)
  General information.
• Joyo 96 Home Page
  About studying Japanese writing.
• The Japanese Writing System (Living in Tokyo is ...)
  General information.

DICTIONARIES

• E-J J-E Dictionary (Japanese Language Information)
  Japanese-English and English-Japanese.
• Japanese-English Dictionary (Omron Information Technology Research Center)
  Japanese-English.
• English-Japanese Dictionary (Notre Dame Women's College)
  Your computer must be able to display Japanese for this dictionary!
• Kanji Dictionary (Japanese Language Information)
  Find a kanji. Several searching methods.

DIALECTS

• Dialects of Japan (ATR Homepage)
  List of links to dialect pages.
• Dialects of Japan (Japanese version) (ATR Homepage)
  Much longer list of links to dialect pages.