Giles's Rough and Ready Guide to Holiday Japanese

DISCLAIMER! In writing this my only consideration has been the minimum knowledge you will need to make yourself understood while visiting Japan. If you're trying to learn Japanese "properly" or are concerned about speaking japanese "correctly" then this guide is not for you. In particular no attention is given to grammar, levels of politeness, word order, verb endings and the like (since learning these is rather tedious and pointless anyway.) Enjoy your holiday!

A. The Japanese you already know.

The Japanese rather cheekily have poached a lot of words from English which means that you probably already know alot more Japanese than you realise. Take a quick look at the following list, paying particular attention to the strange pronounciation.

(A hyphen in the Japanese words indicates a long vowel sound.)

B. Making it up as you go along

So now you've got a bit of an idea about how Japanese words are formed from English words its time to learn how to make up new Japanese words. Yes thats right - you can make up a new Japanese word from any English word and provided you get the right pronounciation you'll be understood. Check out this list of pseudo-Japanese words all of which have proper Japanese equivalents (shown in parenthesis) but all of which are prefectly understandable to your average Japanese.

Here are some simple rules for constructing Japanese words from English words.

1. No groups of consonants. No lone consonants at the ends of words

Consonants in Japanese are always followed by a vowel sound except for N. To separate constants put a U between them, except after T and D which add an O. Constants that are not pronounced strongly in English can be dropped (e.g. Rs are frequently dropped)

2. tu -> tsu, si -> shi, ti -> chi

Japanese has no real sounds for TU, SI or TI

3. v->b, w->u, l->r

Japanese has no sound for V. It has a sound for W but in Japanese W can only be followed by an A. And of course the Japanese famously are not able to distinguish between l and r.

4. th -> s, wh -> h

5. Discussing sports

When discussing sports the same rules apply but can be used for entire phrases or sentences. All of the following can be frequently heard listening to sports commentary.

C. Essential phrases

Unfortunately having mastered the art of vocabulary creation you will still need a tiny amount of real Japanese in order to make yourself understood. Here are a few simple words and phrases to sort you out.

1. Pointing at what you want. (This and that and that one over there)

As with speaking any foreign language, if you don't know the name of something the easiest thing to do is to point at it. While pointing feel free to sprinkle the following vocabulary into the conversation.

2. The verb "to be"

3. Determining if something is allowed.

4. Asking where something is.

5. Do you have?

6. Asking the Price

7. I want to go to ...

8. Please and Thank-you and No Thank-you

9. Eating out

10. Greetings

11. When it all goes wrong

12. Making conversation

13. Dogs and babies

You will inevitably see lots of very cute children and pets on your travels round Japan so there will be plenty of opportunity to use the following essential piece of vocabulary.

14. Numbers

15. Days

16. Weather

17. Miscellaneous