[Music] [Music] hello everyone and a very warm welcome to all of you in this first lecture in the sware MOOCs series of lectures on Japanese language and culture I am Vatsa la maestra and I have been with the foreign language program of IIT Kanpur for the past 25 years I learnt my Japanese in Japan long back and I will share some of my experiences with you during the lectures we will do a lot of details regarding language regarding the script regarding expressions but let me tell you one thing that this language is very closely related to culture to the mannerisms to the lifestyle of the people to expressions to phrases and sometimes it becomes very difficult to give an equivalent of a certain phrase in Japanese or a certain situation in Japanese in English and you will see some of it in during the course also we will try to get a glimpse of some of these facets during the 12 weeks that we are going to be together I will be uploading assignments and lectures for you every week and will of course interact with you through the forum as well so now let us make the most of this opportunity that we have and learn this wonderful language this very very interesting language Japanese one of the few in the world which uses an idea graphic script in other words I would say that it uses idea grams and pictograms or pictures which have meanings to represent objects and thoughts which is quite a different and a difficult concept for a lot of people and especially for us Indians as you can see it is perhaps the use of these idea grams that make it necessary for the language to use other scripts to supplement the kanji or the idea grams or the pictograms whereas the pictogram and idea grams or kanjis as they are called can have multiple readings and also there can be many con G's with the same readings of course we are going to do all of this later in our class the two scripts the phonetic scripts the hiragana and the katakana scripts are quite similar to Dave Nagri as they are phonetic in nature it is because of this complexity in the writing and the reading of the Japanese language that I personally have chosen this Roman script in this course and we'll be using the Roman script more than the hiragana and the katakana of course we will do hiragana and katakana as well see for example if I want to write say Japan in kanji then I would write like this knee horn okay if I want to write the same thing in hiragana I would write knee horn and now again if I want to write the same thing in Roman it would be me horn which makes it very easy for us to read in the beginning and we can concentrate on the spoken language more of course a lot of you would want to appear for jlpt I understand that but for that you will have to do the script on your own it is not that I will not do the script here of course we will do the script as we go along but you have to practice the script at home as I told you earlier we will cover all the three scripts in the course and all the countries that are there for jlpt n5 so as a script is after all an integral part of the language let us start our first class today with an introduction to the scripts and the numbers so well there are three scripts in the language we have as you can see over here we have hiragana katakana and kanji so these are the three scripts the hiragana and the katakana are called the kana scripts in Japanese and kanji is the idea grams and the pictograms we will discuss kanji of course in detail later as well but first we should talk about hiragana and katakana now it's interesting that till the 4th century AD the Japanese did not have a script and they had a language they had a language they could talk freely but there was no script so now if you do not have a script well you cannot document anything you cannot write anything so as traveling increased and as people started coming to Japan trade was happening so through trade and through people coming into Japan from China and Korea lot of pictograms from China entered Japan they realized that this was some kind of a script which they could use for documenting and slowly over period of time with the help of these pictograms which entered Japan at that time via trade hiragana came into being they developed this new script which was called hiragana hiragana is a script which is used for Japanese words words of Japanese origin belonging to Japan and then we trade with people coming in with Japanese people going out probably to Korea or to China foreign words also entered into Japan foreign words slowly came and they were being used in the language so now there was a problem as to how to write those foreign words from this from these pictograms from these pictograms and idea grams which were already there katakana was developed for foreign words so the difference between hiragana and katakana the basic difference is that hiragana is for words Japanese origin and katakana is for words Chinese or foreign that time Chinese and now of course foreign origin also because kanji came first the pictograms came first to Japan the ladies were not allowed or could not get access to these kanji characters and they were not allowed to write slowly over period of time when hiragana was developed the ladies got the script of hiragana and they started writing in hiragana and thus this you will notice that this script when I show you the script you will see that it is very cursive it is round it is circular whereas katakana is very angular we will discuss of course these Chinese characters later also for the time being these are just pictograms and idea grams meaning pictures and ideas shown depicted in line form for example son when when someone says make Sun what do you do this is exactly what you draw and automatically anybody would say that this is Sun now what is the Sun do the Sun divides day and night into a day into two parts that which is day and night so well if you want to show this in lines this is how it is going to come it's going to divide like this so it is to be a square and it will be divided in this form in this manner like this so when you look at when a Chinese or a Japanese would look at this character immediately the picture that comes to their mind is of Sun now after the course when you look at this picture all the time you will think oh the Sun or something to do with light something to do with brightness something to do with day or date so these are the things that will come to your mind this is how these pictograms and idea grams have come into being a certain idea a certain picture that forms in your mind when you look at something is shown or depicted like this in form of straight horizontal and vertical lines so well we will go ahead now and see what hiragana and katakana are well the kana scripts are phonetic scripts they are symbols phonetic symbols whatever you say you write so hiragana has 46 basic symbols and so has katakana also 46 basic symbols now there is a second set also of both the scripts for both the scripts the second set has 25 characters each and the interesting part is that the second set is made from the first set by using just two symbols like this and this these two symbols are used in the first set and another second set of 25 symbols is made so this is the kana script of course when you see you will know you can see the stroke order stroke order means how the character is made what is to be drawn first and what comes after that and what fall was later well you have this set the first set of 46 symbols of hiragana right in front of you over here and you can see the first line is the Wobble line the wobbles are here I will read them out to you once then we have the K sound or the curse ound s or so sound T or the sound n or no sound H or her sound M or MA sound Y or Y sound R or raw sound and then we have this w over here n over here and Oh over here these two are given of course in the olden script but now these are not in use anymore first let us do the wobbles well the wobbles are you can repeat after me ah II ooh eh Oh once again ah e ooh eh Oh then we have the K series and you have to join this K with the wobble here which makes it car key KU k & co and in a similar manner for the S series saw she su SE and then so you will notice over here that this is a little different the sound is not see but it is she this is an exception please keep that in mind then we have the third series and again in a similar manner da Jie so they tow G and soup again are a little different these are also exceptions so you need to remember these three exceptions she G and Su then we have the N series and again in a similar manner na nee new name and no and then the h-series ha hee hoo hey and hope and then the MA series or the M series ma me move me more now you will notice something over here that all these consonants all these KS T and H M so far are joining with wobbles here and then the sound is there then the syllable is made so in Japanese please remember all syllables will always have a wobble in the end no syllable is complete without a wobble except for one and we are going to do this very soon well then we come to the vice series yeah you yo the our series rah ree ruh ray ro then we have wow you can leave these two out oh and hmm now as I told you just now this is the only one which does not end in a wobble you will say how will we use this well I'll give you a word very simple how would you say orange in Japanese well it is orange II so the own sound in orange is this alphabet over here then if you take the word in Japanese it is makan for orange so well me car mmm again you see this in sound that's how it is going to be used and you will notice for all of them that they all end in wobbles the stroke order is given very clearly over here and of course you can go on the net and see hiragana and katakana and different ways of writing hiragana and katakana well this is very clearly given in different colors for you to remember the exceptions are also given over here and you can revise it and do it at home now you will see that katakana though the pronunciation is the same writing system is given over here but you will notice that it is very very angular unlike hiragana I'll show you the slide once again you can see how cursive and round it is and then katakana over here extremely masculine very very angular so well it's the same are e o a Oh cocky ku ke ko Sachi sucesso tah Chi su teto na nee no name no ha hee-hoo hey ho ma me mu me more yeah you and yo well the these two are missing in both hiragana and katakana because it is very similar to this sound so thus it has been left out then you have rah ree ruh ray ro wah oh and now this oh and this oh for both hiragana and katakana have a different meaning this is a wobble and this is used as a particle in the language now we will talk about particles also but a little later for the time being you could just keep it in mind that Oh over here is used as a particle and not this Oh but the Oh in hiragana please remember that hiragana are used for words of Japanese origin and also to change tenses of verbs and to show different verb forms hiragana is used and katakana of course is for foreign words well this is katakana for you you can see very clearly again in different colors easy to memorize so you can do this now as I was telling you countries are idea grams and pictograms each character has a meaning each symbol as you can see over here this symbol has a meaning and each character has minimum two readings one a Chinese reading and another one a Japanese reading so please as can be seen each character has a meaning and a reading of its own there are specific ways of writing and one has to memorize the stroke order which is how the strokes are to be made in kanji it is extremely extremely important to memorize and learn the stroke order because the stroke order for a character is fixed that does not change and there is a reason because you need to go to the next character or word so it has to end over here 1 and it has to start from here like this you cannot start a character from here and maybe go here and do something like this no there is a specific set order to write kanji characters pictograms well now what are kanji characters what are pictograms as I just told you about Nietzsche so when you look at this now I think you will think of the Sun how would you show a man in line man in lines well this is how a man looks when you want to talk about someone you say ok this person over here but you cannot make this picture all the time and write about man and say this is what is men ok so what will you do well just remove the head from here just make it like this when you look at this picture now what does it look like doesn't it remind you of a man well you can see now see when you make this you know it's a man so in Japanese or in Chinese and pictograms when you write this character it tells you that it's a man you're talking about someone well if you if you if you look at this what do you think it is it is water isn't it it looks like a river flowing so well it is going to be made like this if you look at fire how will you show fire in in a character how will you show it in lines well this is how fire looks like you have the logs over here you have wood over here and when it burns well this is what it looks like now how will you show it in picture form or in line form simple like this this I'll make it like this it's a simple like this this and this so when you look at this you will know we are talking about fire this is what pictograms are all about of course these are very simple pictograms these are not difficult pictograms you can relate to them you can you can understand this very clearly it only gets complicated when it becomes a little abstract we will do all of that later as I told you this is heat oh this is heat oh now what does this look like this looks like a mouth an opening isn't it so if you join these two characters it means population so many mouths so many people so many mouths to feed and what is that that is so well that's how you would think of kanji characters there's one more very simple you have done this one over here this means fire and what is a volcano volcano throws fire a mountain is like this you can see with the bass over here this looks like a mountain so well if you have this and this automatically even if you do not know the word you know that this is a mountain which throws fire so it's so so that's how these kanji characters have come into being and that's how you write them that's how you show them and you understand now Japanese is written horizontally and vertically as well you can see horizontally you can see it's written over here and vertically you can see how it's written you can also write like this but it starts from the right side please remember not from left side that is very very important but when you write horizontally it starts from the left side also you will notice something else over here there are no spaces at all and kanji characters hiragana characters are all used simultaneously together and of course you can see there is this katakana also used over here so in the language all three scripts are used simultaneously which was not happening earlier earlier for a long long time the Japanese continued to write in either kanji katakana or hiragana but now as you can see very clearly in this slide all three are used together now as I told you there are no spaces something is written over here in Japanese and something is written over here we are used to space in between words but the Japanese have no problem at all in reading this why because you have kanji it program you have the hiragana in blue and then in orange you have katakana so without even spacing it is very very clear now we will do the wobbles very quickly and give you some vocabulary you can repeat after me the meanings are given over here in black I will not read out the meanings I will just read out what is written in hiragana and of course in Roman it's given over here you can read this as well this is the Wobble series ar e o a and O as I told you a for Apple B for bat is what we are going to do here so well our hero re e su in Oh Oh Shi kuchi a B Italy origami oh so you can repeat all these again and again and I'm sure you'll feel comfortable very soon there is more you can repeat after me ah she sa is she it Oh Oh saggy way hooter a key Edda Oni Oh Kashi or Tara so all the meanings are given very clearly you can learn these then we have the car series you can see the sound Kerr series Connie Casa Kiran kimono cosa good kakie now this is a foreign word thus it is written in katakana cake and also Kohi long sound co and he Kohi coffee and Quora Cola bear Cora Cora Cola bear and you will notice that we do not have L in Japanese all elves are supposed to be pronounced as R Us out so all the meanings are given very clearly you can learn these then vocabulary for the k-series Caban congee keep Kitson it kuchi kudamon Oh Khushi k ki k ty k she go Kodomo kocha so well the meanings are again given its given in Roman as well so you can read all of it and learn it now we have the saw series and in the saw series you already know the she is an exception so well Sakana sorrow chica she mama Suzu me Suika semi Sabido surah soba so this is thus a series for you the she of course is different please try to pronounce the she it is she as in the English sh e she but over here the syllable is as H I some words again sake Sarah some shitty Shingo sumo sushi sanaka SATA is a sweater and the sound is a little long and in the end we have Sora so why I have given this vocabulary like this to you is for you to make sentences for you to speak loudly and one thing very important over here is that you should speak loudly so that it is heard by you and you can understand where you are fumbling or going wrong now for your first lesson there are a lot of things but well we should do the numbers so well very very quickly ichi me son yon go Roku nana hachi kyu joo it's a long sound so please practice this so that you are comfortable when we do something new in our next class there is a small expression in fact there are two there is ohayo-gozaimasu with a rising intonation here meaning good morning so anytime you meet someone from 6:00 in the morning till 10 o clock well you can say ohayo-gozaimasu very freely and also if you're very very informal with the person Ohio will suffice and then you have konichiwa which means good day and you can use it from 10 o'clock onwards till 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening just before dark konnichiwa and ohayo-gozaimasu so it is ohayo gozaimasu and konnichiwa well practice these expressions we'll be doing more of these in our classes later today has been a little long for you well with this I would like to end thank you very much and mother i'ma show and this phrase that I'm using I will explain to you tomorrow so minna-san mata ashita i'ma show arigato gozaimasu thank you [Music] [Music] [Music]