Goals of Bullwinkle

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Goals of Bullwinkles Corner

• 1. Foster Your Inner Renaissance
• Person
• Provide an Indulgent Platform
• 3. Forge New Interests
• 4. Foster Unique Collaborations

Oh good! I hate the artificial kind.
Hokey Smoke Bullwinkle, were in real trouble now!
Gidney Cloyd
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Katakana - A Jump-Start on the Way to Learning
Japanese

• Steven A. Jones

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Linguistics

• Study of languages
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Phonetics
• Not just someone who speaks many languages
• My (noncontiguous) Undergraduate Minor

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My Experience with Japanese

• Term paper in my Introduction to Syntax course.
• Kyoto Conference 1 week (bought book on
  Japanese).
• Research experience 2 weeks at Kawasaki Medical
  Center.
• Studied from Hamako Ito Chapmans books tapes.

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Foreign Travel

• Strategies for travel to foreign countries
• Idealistic Take 2 years to learn a language and
  then go to that country.
• Realistic 2 weeks before departure, try to learn
  how to say good morning.
• Fatalistic Face it. Its hopeless.
• Nihilistic Travel to England

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Unique Elements of Japanese

• Indirect
• Wakatusi, Anata
• No verb conjugations
• Perhaps you like to take train?
• Stress is by tone, not loudness
• Sometimes semantic
• Several levels of tone
• Particles
• Are wa ginkoo no mae ni ooki tatemono desu.
• Sake o nomu
• Sake o nomu ka?

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Unique Elements of Japanese

• Verb tenses
• present future generally the same
• Adjectives can have a past tense (ano ookikatta
  tatemono that used to be big building
• Colors (as modifiers) can be nouns or adjectives

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Unique Elements of Japanese

• Politeness levels
• Kudasai (sake o kudasai)
• Literally give in polite form sake
• Translated as I would like some sake please.
• Desu, imasu, irasiamasu (to be, sort of)
• Your house (otaku), vs. my house (uchi)
• Otaku wa shiroi. (your mansion is white)
• Uchi wa shiroi. (my shack is white)
• Otaku wa doo desu ka? (How are things at your
  beautiful home?)
• Uchi ni ii desu. (Things are fine at my crappy
  little shack)

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Japanese Writing

• Borrowed Kanji from China
• No Kanji characters for particles
• Use phonetic alphabet for particles and other
  uses (Hiragana).
• Also use Katakana
• Same sounds as Hiragana
• Used for brand names and foreign words
• Guess what English is foreign to Japanese
• Sort of like italic is to us

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Katakana Characters
a i u e o vowel ? a ?
i ? u ? e ? o k ? ka ? ki ? ku ? ke ? ko s ?
sa ? shi ? su ? se ? so t ? ta ? chi ? tsu ?
te ? to n ? na ? ni ? nu
? ne ? no ? n h ? ha ? hi ? fu ? he ? ho m ?
ma ? mi ? mu ? me ? mo y ? ya ? yu ? yo r ?
ra ? ri ? ru ? re ? ro w ? wa ? wo
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Katakana Characters
a i u e o vowel ? a ?
i ? u ? e ? o k ? ka ? ki ? ku ? ke ? ko s ?
sa ? shi ? su ? se ? so t ? ta ? chi ? tsu ?
te ? to n ? na ? ni ? nu
? ne ? no ? n h ? ha ? hi ? fu ? he ? ho m ?
ma ? mi ? mu ? me ? mo y ? ya ? yu ? yo r ?
ra ? ri ? ru ? re ? ro w ? wa ? wo
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Katakana Characters
a i u e o vowel ? a ?
i ? u ? e ? o k ? ka ? ki ? ku ? ke ? ko s ?
sa ? shi ? su ? se ? so t ? ta ? chi ? tsu ?
te ? to n ? na ? ni ? nu
? ne ? no ? n h ? ha ? hi ? fu ? he ? ho m ?
ma ? mi ? mu ? me ? mo y ? ya ? yu ? yo r ?
ra ? ri ? ru ? re ? ro w ? wa ? wo
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The Katakana Symbols

• 46 consonnant-vowel combinations
• 5 vowels a, i, u, e, o
• consonants beginning with k, t, s, h,
  n, m, r
• ya, yu, yo, wa, wo
• Also have an explosive h () (? pa), and
  voiced versions () of k (g), t (d), s (z or
  j), and p (? ba)

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The Katakana Symbols (Continued)

• Generally, if you have a consonant you need to
  have a vowel.
• n can stand alone.
• Can have long vowels (literally long, in time)
• E.g. Carter Ka-a-ta (???)
• The r in ra is halfway between r and l.

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Modified Katakana Characters
a i u e o k ? ka ? ki ?
ku ? ke ? ko g ? ga ? gi ? gu ? ge ? go s ?
sa ? shi ? su ? se ? so z ? za ? ji ? zu ? ze ?
zo t ? ta ? chi ? tsu ? te ? to d ? da ? di ?
du ? de ? do h ? ha ? hi ? fu ? he ? ho b ?
ba ? bi ? bu ? be ? bo p ? pa ? pi ? pu ?
pe ? po
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Japanese vs English Sounds

• Roughly 19 letters rather than 26, so we win,
  right?
• But we do not really need c, q or w.
• Selery
• Uimin
• Kuik
• And face it, y is a bit iffy as well.
• Leaves 22 vs 19

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Japanese vs English Sounds

• Whats Missing?
• No distinction between r and l
• h and f are mixed together
• Fa and hu are not natural for Japanese
• Fu and ha are natural for them
• z and j are mixed together
• No v sound (brud bursty)

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Japanese vs English Sounds

• Where we win out is with the vowel sounds, which
  are (lets face it) messed up anyway in English
• Water/otter/daughter
• Dumb/kingdom
• He, tee, tea, ski, mystery
• Woman/Women

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Odd Japanese Syllables

• In standard tables of Hiragana/Katakana
• Ta chi tsu te to (not ti or tu)
• Sa shi su se so (not si)
• Ha hi fu he ho (not hu)
• Possible Explanations
• They knew westerners would try to speak the
  language and wanted to trip us up.
• There is a physiological explanation (yeah,
  right).

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Odd Syllables (continued)

• Clue Hito (man) often sounds more like shi-to
  rather than hi-to.
• Thought Maybe Japanese people do not think of
  syllables as consonant-vowel pairs.
• Experiment Place your mouth in the vowel
  position and then try to pronounce the consonant.

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Syllables as Units

• Try
• aka iki uku eke oko. (control)
• aha ihi uhu ehe oho
• Hi is not exactly shi, but its not exactly
  hi either.
• Hu definitely sounds more like fu.
• asa isi usu ese oso.
• ata iti utu ete oto.

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Katakana Examples

• ???? Ga so ri n
• ??? ??? Ro ta ri ku ra bu
• ????? Ko n ku ri to
• ??? Ra i su (or gohan)
• ????? Tsu pa getsu chi
• ???? Ka wa sa ki
• ???? Nisa n
• ??? ?? co n piyu ta

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Hiragana Characters
a i u e o vowel ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? k ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? s ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? t ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? n
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? h ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? m ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y ? ? ? ? ?
? r ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? w ? ? ? ?
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Why Learn Hiragana?

• In Kyoto can read
• Street Names
• Subway station names
• Particles and other odd words you might pick up
• Karaoke (????)
• Can at least sound out a Japanese word, even if
  you do not know what it means
• May help you if you go to a karaoke bar
• Trust me, it will really impress your Japanese
  host

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Verb Tense

• Japanese does not generally distinguish between
  present and future tense.
• Sake o nomu
• (I, you, somebody) (drinks, is drinking, will
  drink) sake.
• Sake o nomu ka?
• (Are you drinking, will you drink) sake?

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Passive Tense

• Japanese does have a special verb tense, called
  the passive tense.
• This tense loosely translates to such-and-such
  happened, and it annoyed me.
• A better name for this tense might be the
  passive aggressive tense.

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Passive Tense

• Say you are in a restaurant and the waiter spills
  mizu soup on your jacket
• American Response
• You idiot! You spilled mizu soup all over my
  jacket!
• Japanese Response
• Ah. The jacket has become dampend by some mizu
  soup.
• Consider that to a Japanese speaker, the Japanese
  wording is equally as strong.

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Questions?