JAPANESE LANGUAGE
Japanese Language: Japanese (日本語 nihongo) is spoken in Japan, and essentially nowhere else. The
Japanese language is distinct from Chinese and Korean, although the written form uses
Chinese (kanji) characters, and is not known to be related to any other
language.
Grammar
Japanese generally employs a subject-object-verb order, using particles to mark
the grammatical functions of the words: 私がハンバーガーを食べる watashi-ga hamburger-o
taberu, "I-subject hamburger-object eat". It is common to omit subjects and even
objects if these are clear from previous context.
Verbs and adjectives conjugate by tense and politeness level, but not by person
or number. There is no verb "to be" as such, but the polite copula desu can be
used in most cases: John desu ("I am John"), Ringo desu ("This is an apple"),
Akai desu ("It is red"), etc. Note that the exact meaning will depend on the
implied subject!
The good news is that Japanese has none of the following: gender, declensions or
plurals. Nouns never conjugate and almost all verbs are regular.
Reading and writing
Reading and writing Japanese are advanced skills which take years of work to
gain much real proficiency. Japanese themselves use three different writing
systems of various complexity, two of which (hiragana' and katakana) are
syllabic and relatively easy to learn with 50 characters each, but the clincher
is the set of over 2000 Chinese characters known as kanji. The set of hiragana
characters is illustrated in the Japanese
Pronunciation Guide. See also Japanese Writing
System.
IMPROVE YOUR JAPANESE
 The
best way to improve your Japanese is to use it regularly. The best
way to use your Japanese regularly is to talk to native Japanese who
are interested in developing their English skills. This way you
improve your language skills, help them with their English and make
new friends at the same time.
GoJapanGo Friends is the ideal way to find language
partners, both male and female. It is great to have friends in Japan
so when you travel there, you can meet them and they can show you
around. This way you can experience the real Japan that you would
normally miss as a tourist.
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