The Japanese language is one of the popular languages spoken in our world today. Being ninth of the common languages spoken in the world, it is mostly spoken in its country of origin (Japan) yet there is a slow progression of it spreading throughout other countries. It is even more surprising to find out that less than 1% of those that do speak it reside outside of the country itself.
When looking at the phonology of the language itself, we see that the relationship between one person and another plays a heavy role on how and what is spoken. Depending on the social rank of the speaker to the person they are talking to, speakers may consider using either Teinei, Keigo, or Kudaketa formility forms of speech. First , Teinei (ていねいご) is commonly used among two parties with no formal relationship to another (strangers) and used as a “polite form of speech. Keigo (けいご ) is the “honorable” form of language, as it is used for those in a higher social rank than the speaker (boss, teacher, ect.). Lastly, the informal speech commonly used between close friends, Kudaketa (くだけた), is rarely heard in public due to focus of social rank when speaking. Although a broad look of the types of speeches used in the japanese language, they heavily impact when connotations like verbs and adjectives are changed to fit the context of the speech.
In comparison to the English language, besides words spoken being depicted on the formality of the speaker to the reciprocation, there is a structural difference in sentences spoken. For example the basic English sentence structure follows the “subject-verb-object” pattern, while the Japanese sentence structure is “subject-object-verb”. While we might say “I ran outside” in English, this sentence would be “I outside ran” in Japanese. As stated previously, some words may have added prefixes to create a more “honorable” form of structure when speaking to someone or talking about a subject. The prefixes “o” (お) and “go” (ご) help bring up common words and subjects to a more polite context to fit the speech. For example you might commonly refer to objects or names to how they are in english, but for the japanese language an addition of “o” and “go” will be added to the names of a higher rank individual or object due to its cultural significance (o-”name”, o-sake[rice wine], gohan [cooked rice]). Even though they are small additions, they play a significant role when speaking due to the cultural bases of speaking dependent on social rank.
For distinctions looking at the IPA, vowels in the japanese language have similarities to the ones in english, but it’s complexion is not as much which creates differences in the two as well. We see this when looking at vowels like “i” although similar in areas, the japanese phonology doesn’t differentiate high vowels and instead may end up as “ih” instead. Additionally because the language doesn’t have hard or relaxed differences, “lip separation” doesn’t play a part for these vowels, as similarly seen in “e” and “o”. Furthermore we only see emphasis of the lip for compression for consonants like “w”.
Primarily focusing on vowels in the Japanese language, the length of a vowel (short or long) can change the meaning of words used. Although spelled the same, emphasis on the length pronunciation of these affect how they are interpreted when speaking. We can add on to this distinction by also stating that the Japanese vowels don’t shift into another vowel as with English vowels making them diphthongized. Additionally due to the emphasis of length for these vowels, pitch is also a primary part to the distinction of long vowels. Nasalization of these vowels are common naturally before an addition for lower vowels “a” and “e”. Measured as Mora in phonology, the length and amount of mora play a significant role in understanding these definitionions of words spoken. For some vowels in words may have 2 mora lengths of vowels that differ in meanings to same words with 1 mora length.
Although we see similarities between the English language in the Japanese language, there are many distinctions that make it unique. As brought up previously, these distinctions like vowel length (mora) and formality of speech, make it a hard concept for English speakers to understand. Perhaps one of the reasons this language is also one of the hardest for native speakers to learn as well, it makes sense that we see only native Japanese speakers making up a majority of this language spoken in the world. Yet it shouldn’t be dismissed that learning this language also plays a role in connecting with others, for understanding its distinction from the common English language may make it easier to learn for others.