Intro to the Japanese Language

Japanese...

• Has differentiating politeness levels

• Is SOV (instead of “Bill eats pizza,” “Bill pizza eats.”)

• Has fewer ‘morphemes’ than English in some ways, but more in others:

• Fewer: “velvet” > “beh-roo-betto” ベルべット

• More: [sin/crime] > “tsu-mee” 罪

• Has three writing systems (two syllabaries and a logographic system) incorporated into one:

Hiragana: おめでとう　　Katakana: テーブル　Kanji: 愛

Basically, Japanese and English are two very different languages. These and other differences are quite intriguing and deserve further research.