Grammatical Differences between Japanese and English
Word order:
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Japanese is a SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB language.
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However, the subject is not often included in the sentence itself (when the subject is clear and in conversation)
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- English is a SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT language.
Topicalisation:
- It is common for the topic of a sentence in Japanese to be announced separately at the beginning, much like this in English: “That car - we’ve been having so much trouble with it!”
- This can lead to mistakes:
- The learner might say, “Those people do not understand” when they really mean, “I do not understand those people.”
- Sometimes Japanese learners try to topicalise verbs, which can lead to an inappropriate use of the introductory “it”:
- “It should be opened more places at the university.”
Pronouns (or lack thereof):
- English pronouns have various equivalents in Japanese. You = anata, kimi, omae, kisama. However, pronouns are very rarely used compared to English. They are understood through context and considered very direct.
- Eg: Did you go to the park?"
- = 公園に行きましたか？
- = kouen ni - ikimasitaka
- = park (to) - go (question form)
- Each pronoun carries precise implications of age, relationship, status and attitude and the lack of choice in English often embarrasses the Japanese.
Honorific speech:
- Japanese has an extensive system of honorific speech called keigo which includes both special vocabulary and special grammatical forms. The use is mandatory in many social situations. Honorifics in Japanese may be used to emphasize social distance or disparity in rank, or to emphasize social intimacy or similarity in rank.
- Some Japanese people say their age when they introduce themselves because it’s sometimes necessary to know age when choosing to use keigo or not.
- The rules for what keigo is and when to use it are strict, leading many Japanese people to question which phrase is more polite, and over-using polite language.
- On that, some students find that English can be more direct and they take it way too far. Being polite is important in English.
Vocabulary:
- There is a large number of expressions that have no neat English equivalent, which is the source of much embarrassment and perplexity. Many are subtle variants of “I’m sorry to...” and “Thank you.”
- Japanese speakers may find it perplexing that they cannot be suitably respectful in English as much as we English speakers probably find it perplexing that in Japanese speakers omit the subject of many if not most sentences.
- Abstraction is respected in Japan. There is a huge stock of abstract nouns, which can cause confusion and lack of clarity for English readers.
- There are a lot of ways to say “and so on...”, and the word “various” is used a lot.
- The word “various” in Japanese, if you translate the characters directly, means “color color”. That seems lovely. The English word “various” does not conjure such positivity.
- Some abstract nouns have come into being during the last hundred years as equivalents to words current in Western European languages. Some of them were born of civilization utterly remote from that of the West.
- You may plead with your students when teaching STS or preparing for GBC to please get specific. This is a big ask for Japanese speakers.
Writing:
- Japanese learners don’t usually have difficulty with English handwriting because of the training involved in mastering the Japanese writing system.
- Japanese had three alphabets: two are totally phonetic, one is totally not. This can cause confusion in reading aloud, but in general English with its meager 26 letters is a very easy ask.
- Western script is also familiar to most Japanese, even those who have learnt no English, from its frequent use in rōmaji transliterations, which are common in ads, product packaging and shop signs.
- For teachers, even if the student is very low level, if you write into the chat box they should be able to read it.
Specific speech parts:
Nouns:
- A lot of Japanese nouns can also function as adjectives and adverbs. This can lead to mistakes in English, like:
- “Tokyo is very safety city.”
- It is fine to repeat nouns in Japanese, while this is stylistic taboo in English.
Verbs:
- Except for da, which means be, every verb can stand as a sentence on its own without a subject or object:
- Wasureta. (= “I’ve forgotten it.”)
- This leads students to leave out pronoun subjects and objects.
- Japanese find verb phrases difficult to construct, because verbs in Japanese they have one-word forms with no auxiliary verbs. Confusion in this regard may lead learners to use auxiliary be inappropriately:
- “We are write to each other in English.”
- “I was opened the door.”
- Japanese verbs don’t change for person or number, so students often forget the English third-person singular s.
- Prepositional verbs are found to be complicated and the preposition is often dropped:
- “I can communicate many people.”
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Regarding verb tenses, Japanese only has two tenses (present and past) and the continuous aspect of both. That means mistakes encouraged by native language interference includes the use of the present for the future:
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“I see him tomorrow.”
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- Indirect speech maintains the tense of the original in Japanese, which leads to mistakes such as:
- “She said she cannot write it.”
- Unreal conditionals (i.e. “If I had known...”) are not formally distinct from real conditionals in Japanese. Furthermore, ”If” and “when” are the same word (i.e. “if I find out” vs. “when I find out.”) Therefore, these require very clear explanations of the meanings involved.
- Japanese distinguishes differently from English between state and action verbs:
- okiru = get up and be up
- kiru = put on and wear
- The equivalent of can co-occurs with some verbs, which doesn’t work in English:
- “If you come to Japan, I think you can enjoy.”
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Even though there are equivalents for walk, fly, and drive in Japanese, go (by) walking, go by plane and go by car when reaching one’s destination is preferred.
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Come and go are always seen from the speaker’s point of view.
Passives:
- Japanese has a suffixed passive but its range of use differs from English, which results in mistakes like:
- “I speak badly because I have never taught pronunciation.”
- Inanimate objects don’t take a passive verb as much as in English. Therefore, students may find it difficult to construct sentences like:
- “Our house was built 50 years ago.”
- On the other hand, a Japanese passive can be used in cases that are not possible in English:
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“He was stolen his money.” (For: “He had his money stolen.”)
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“She was died her husband.” (For “Her husband died.”)
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- A difference in the way underlying voice is expressed in English and Japanese leads to mistakes:
- “I’m easy to catch cold.”
- “This pen is difficult to write.”
- The passive is also used in a wholly active sense to show respect and reserve:
- “When were you come to Japan?”
Asking questions:
- Japanese questions of all types are marked by clause-final ka, with no change in word order. Negation is shown by a change in the verb form. Therefore, the use of do in questions and negatives is problematic.
- Question tags are often difficult as well, and they may settle for one form:
- “You’re tired, isn’t it?”
- Students may also have special difficulty with embedded questions, like “It’s a question of how far...”
Relatives:
- Relative pronouns do not exist in Japanese. Nouns and pronouns may be modified by complex phrases which come before the noun or pronoun, something like this:
- “there in visible house living people” (= “the people who live in the house you can see over there”)
- “Tokyo in born I” (= “I, who was born in Tokyo,...”)
- Misunderstanding of relatives leads to which being used across the board:
- “This story reminds me of my memory which I was in the elementary school.”
Number and the use of articles:
- Many nouns referring to people make take a plural suffix depending on the degree of respect. That said, if the context makes plurality clear, the noun goes unmarked.
- The distinction between countable and uncountable nouns is not recognized.
- Many Japanese learners achieve really creditable proficiency in all aspects of written English except for articles and the number-countability problem:
- “In Japan, industrial product is cheap.”
Adjectives and adverbs:
- Japanese has a class of “adjectives” which behave like verbs. They can show tense and condition:
- yokatta (= was good)
- yokattara (=if it’s good; if you like)
- Many of these Japanese adjectives are subjective; referring to the speaker’s or hearer’s feelings. So, a Japanese learner may ask “Is Japanese food delicious?” meaning “Do you find Japanese food delicious?”
- Another example: the Japanese adjective kowai tends to mean "I/you/we are afraid" or "You are frightening." With a third-person subject, it will mean not "he/she is afraid," but "I/you/we are afraid of him/her."
- Japanese does not distinguish between gradable and non-gradable adjectives.
- Example: “It was very enormous.”
- Comparative and superlative inflections do not exist in Japanese. They are achieved grammatically through other constructions.
Conjunctions and complex sentences:
- And corresponds to at least 11 different Japanese forms, depending on whether they connect nouns, adjectives, verbs or clauses.
- Japanese learners may not understand the clause-combining role or English conjunctions, and there is a strong tendency to use them with one-clause sentences.
- “I am working very hard. Because I want to succeed an exam. But I am afraid I can’t succeed it. So I must be more diligence.”
Sources:
Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems (Cambridge University Press) by Michael Swan and Richard Smith
Compendium of the world’s languages (Routledge) by George L. Cambell and Gareth King