E-I-E-I-O-M-G
So this is a bit of a strange one. Since coming to Japan, I've obviously noticed a whole bunch of differences between here and old blighty. Some of them were to be expected, such as the food, some of them were a surprise, such as how cheap eating out is, some of them were not a big deal, such as the train/subway system, and some of them were totally random and unimportant and yet somehow completely threw me.
This is a post about one of those things.
Now the majority of the eastern world uses the Roman alphabet (a, b, c...) and whilst the order of these 26 letters is fairly arbitrary, we never really think about it. It also makes sense that the vowels follow the same alphabetical order. Now Japan doesn't use the Roman alphabet. Instead, it uses Kanji (Chinese characters representing words), Hiragana (a set of 46 syllables, or sounds, used to construct words), and Katakana (the same 46 syllables but with different characters, mostly used for foreign words). Hiragana and Katakana are usually referred to collectively as Kana and each of the sounds is a consonant followed by a vowel, with the exception of 6 characters (a, e, i, o, u, n). Unsurprisingly, Kana has it's own 'alphabetical order' so I really don't know why this threw me as much as it did, but get this:
Japan has a different vowel order.
England: A E I O U
Japan: A I U E O
"So? Why does that matter?"
Well here's the thing. In day to day conversation, it doesn't.
But lets say I want to look up a Japanese word in my pocket dictionary. Take めがね (pronounced meh-gah-neh, meaning glasses) for example. Now the Japanese dictionary is ordered by the vowel in the first sound of the word, and then the consonant in that first sound, so I would think that the 'meh' sound, having an E in it, would come near the front of the dictionary, but it actually appears nearer the back.
Ok look, I know this isn't a big deal, but it really confused me because, even though it's fairly obvious, it had never occurred to me that different alphabets would have a different sound order.
Photo from here.
This is a post about one of those things.
Now the majority of the eastern world uses the Roman alphabet (a, b, c...) and whilst the order of these 26 letters is fairly arbitrary, we never really think about it. It also makes sense that the vowels follow the same alphabetical order. Now Japan doesn't use the Roman alphabet. Instead, it uses Kanji (Chinese characters representing words), Hiragana (a set of 46 syllables, or sounds, used to construct words), and Katakana (the same 46 syllables but with different characters, mostly used for foreign words). Hiragana and Katakana are usually referred to collectively as Kana and each of the sounds is a consonant followed by a vowel, with the exception of 6 characters (a, e, i, o, u, n). Unsurprisingly, Kana has it's own 'alphabetical order' so I really don't know why this threw me as much as it did, but get this:
Japan has a different vowel order.
England: A E I O U
Japan: A I U E O
"So? Why does that matter?"
Well here's the thing. In day to day conversation, it doesn't.
But lets say I want to look up a Japanese word in my pocket dictionary. Take めがね (pronounced meh-gah-neh, meaning glasses) for example. Now the Japanese dictionary is ordered by the vowel in the first sound of the word, and then the consonant in that first sound, so I would think that the 'meh' sound, having an E in it, would come near the front of the dictionary, but it actually appears nearer the back.
Ok look, I know this isn't a big deal, but it really confused me because, even though it's fairly obvious, it had never occurred to me that different alphabets would have a different sound order.
Photo from here.
Japanese is really interesting. I would like to learn it one day. I red some time ago, that if you're not learning Asian languages from childhood you'll never speak as good as people living there. I heard also, that speaking Asian languages from early years let vocal cords form differently. I don't know if it's true, but I've never seen a person (not Asian) who speaks Asian language good :D
ReplyDeleteYeah I find it a really interesting language, and I really like how it sounds as well! Well I kind of get where you're coming from there, considering that some languages have sounds that other languages don't (for example, in Japanese, there's no L or R sound, just a sound that is kind of half way between the two which can make English words with L's and R's in them more difficult for a Japanese person to pronounce). Having said that, I think that it just depends on how good at accents you are. I've been obsessed with speaking in different accents since I was little, and that means that I'm pretty good at accents now. I think that if I ever were to become fluent in Japanese one day, I'd be able to sound relatively authentic. I think it just depends on the person. Not only that, but Asian languages have as many different accents and sounds as European languages, so I think it has more to do with the language having a similar base to your own (Spanish and Portuguese have the same base, so the sounds are very similar).
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