Forget it. It's not happening.
First off, anything anyone ever tells you about Japanese being easy is a LIE. It's a hugely complicated language that will take years and years of memorization and practice to become even remotely literate in. I am pretty far from an expert in the language, and can barely speak it at all. But when I started taking Japanese classes or reading books, they were all aimed towards businessmen. I didn't want that crap - I wanted to play my RPGs (and continue my delusions of hitting on Japanese chicks - trust me, don't bother.) While it provided good basics, there were many things lacking. And my searches on the Internet were not much more helpful. There were occasional sites, but most of them also lacked kanji - one of the most important aspects in written Japanese. So, I figured, what better way to introduce people to the language than through video games - more specifically, Castlevania. First off, there are no lessons in grammar here. The first and foremost reason is that my grasp on Japanese sentence structure is shaky at best, so I'm the last person that should be writing about it. But that's not the aim of this little article anyway - it's to get aquainted with the language and pick up some vocabulary. Most of it is meant to be Castlevania-oriented (this being a Castlevania site) though there are some of the usual words that pop up in RPGs and whatnot. And before you begin, I highly recommend you read the So You Want to Learn Japanese... article here - it's quite amusing. Although it makes Japanese sound impossible, it's great for a laugh. And thanks to Hatakeyama for various corrections! Phase 1: Phrases Okay, maybe you don't want to learn all of this Japanese silliness, but you do want to know those funny words that come out everyone's mouth (especially in Aria of Sorrow, which has lots of speech.) Well, here's a bunch of it. Soma
Maji!: No way!
Hammer
Mina
Succubus
Persephone
Headhunter
Graham
Julius
Alucard
Maria
Dracula Phase 2: Hiragana and Katakana Onto the real stuff. Listed below are the hiragana and katakana. Each symbol stands for a spoken syllable. You'll notice that Japanese is a very vowel-heavy language - the only consonant that ever stands alone is the 'n'.
Hiragana is the primary way to write Japanese. You can write Japanese fully in hiragana - in fact, this is how many earlier video games were done. However, most of the time it is interspersed with kanji - that is, Chinese characters (we'll get to those later.) While it sounds like it'd make it more complicated, it actually helps give sentences some structure. This is particularly useful because, many times, Japanese is written without putting spaces inbetween words (games that are written fully in hiragana usually space things out, however, so it's actually readable.) As a side note, "romaji" is simply the term for writing Japanese characters with the Western alphabet. Here are the two most important words you'll need to know:
Katakana is symmetric to hiragana, in that it has all of the same sounds. However, it serves a different purpose. Primarily it's used for foreign words. However, they can also be used as emphasis - similar to italics in English. Many times they are used for sound effects. Since all of the sounds are the same, theorhetically you can write Japanese fully in katakana, though this is rarely done. For some reason, the Japanese version of Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest is entirely in katakana. Another concept you need to become familiar with are the long vowels. Basically, this just means that hold the vowel longer. Take for example, "bu" and "buu". The latter would be pronounced closer to "boo". It's very hard to discern for English speakers, but it's there. Normally you'd just add another vowel sound in these cases. However, it changes with "E" and O". With "E", you add another "I" (i.e. "GEI", not "GEE"), and with "O", you add a "U" (i.e. "JOU", not "JOO"). There's a long vowel sound at the end of "akumajou". In katakana, long vowels are simply denoted by a straight line. You'll notice on the charts that "sometimes" the "ha", "he" and "wo" sounds are pronounced differently. These three symbols also serve special grammatical functions. For instance, "ha" is also used to denote the subject of a sentence - except it's pronounced "wa" in these cases. For the purpose of this guide, there's no need to worry about this. Every once in awhile, you'll see a small "tsu". When written, this means to double the consonant of the next symbol. However, when pronounced, the small "tsu" stands for a small pause in speech. The best example of this in English is the word "bookkeeper". Notice how you pronounce "book", pause for a split second, then finish the "keeper" part? That's how the small "tsu" works. Here's an example:
In any case, memorization of these is imperative. Do whatever it takes, as you won't get anywhere unless you know these by heart.
|
