Language learning tips

By Oana Papuc
Dear Japanese 101 beginners from all corners of the map,
I hear you roaring from miles and miles away.

Anyone who’s ever dabbled in the alluring but treacherous waters of the Japanese language
has definitely experienced the motions of riding this mystifying dragon of dark inked
characters and sinuous sounding intonations. What is it that makes this language so unlike
any others and yet so many are eager to try and take it for a spin?

For one, it could very well be the tragicomedy of explaining to students, curricula and policy
makers alike, that learning how to read and write in Japanese is an almost lifelong journey.
It’s as if being both stuck in the first grade and graduating through classes all at the same
time! Practising these two skills on a permanent basis, in addition to constantly adding new
information to create a cozy nest from where one hopes that fluency will spring at some
future reference point is not only a goal, but a means to end as well.

Accommodating one’s ear to what initially sounds like a rapid fire machine gun of barely
recognizable words is not for the faint of heart! I can speak from personal experience of
moments when my brain simply refused to cooperate in any useful way when merely being
aware of Japanese sounds coming from any immediate source (be it human, audio clips,
movies, you name it). It was like my brain decided (on its own) to put on a special shield that
acted and reacted like the most annoying of moody teenagers who would love to throw
tantrums for no apparent reason.

Sometimes that happened during exams, sometimes that happened after revealing my
speaking skills to someone I’d just met and they excitedly switched to Japanese in a
heartbeat, leaving me in a surprised state of ‘oh my god I forgot everything, what’s my
name, why am I here, what is the meaning of life??!!!’. Of course on the outside I was
completely pokerface and might have come across as slightly out of touch with reality.

But this is where the crux of the matter lies, in my opinion - in just taking a deep breath and
maybe a pinch of salt and accepting the fact that getting accustomed to this language is a
learning process. It’s like pushing through those yoga poses even though you’re rusty as a
nail and the most of your physical activities are usually resumed to moving between the bed
and fridge. But what matters is that you still take out that tiny mat, again and again, you
beautiful masochist.

Learning Japanese is very much like flexing those neural pathways constantly, those getting-
out-of-your-comfort muscles, sharpening that auditory labyrinth, and trying to just come to
terms with the image of sometimes risking looking like a bumbling baby, barely able to
coherently articulate precise thoughts. Nevertheless, this just might be the key to making it
to that shiny and bright goal of achieving a personally satisfying level of fluency.
And speaking of flexing muscles, a similarly sweaty process comes into play when
attempting to hone in that kanji writing dexterity, or perhaps mind-hand automatism would
be the better term for it. There is a certain amount of automaticity that is part of the
Japanese scripts learning process (yes, that plural is there intentionally), and a certain level
of getting accustomed to visualizing these kooky looking characters and retrieving their
specific meanings. Repetition and frequency of repetition are key on the path to successfully
mastering the kanji, hiragana and katakana scripts.

It can take the form of writing them down, making sure to create easy-to-retrieve links
between characters similar in meaning or in form. It makes it that much easier to create
individually-outlined logical connections between the semantics, physical form and ability to
contextualize the characters in real-life situations, to be able to transfer these alien looking
lines from short-term memory to the areas in your brain where stored information is
already floating about.

It’s mostly a matter of challenging oneself on a regular basis, with a pencil in one’s hand.
And maybe an app to keep revising. And perhaps a study group to keep practising with,
maybe even a blog post (cough, such as this one, wink, wink) nearby to help you in your
darkest hours and provide a bit of a relief and perhaps even some tried tips and tricks to
help you carve out your personal Japanese experience.

So, dear Japanese 101 beginners, if you are fretting, you are not alone riding these Hokusai-
style waves. Keep getting back up on your heavily personalized surfboard and you’ll see it
becoming easier and easier, right before your eyes, to hop back on your board and keep
your balance.
Word Tree
 Language Overview
Finnish
Introduction
Finnish is a Uralic language spoken by 5 million people in Finland, Sweden, Norway and
Estonia. It is a highly agglutinative language and features 15 cases. It is related to Estonian
and also the Sami languages. About 90% of people in Finland speak Finnish. The rest of the
population speaks either Swedish or a Sami language.

One of the earliest pieces of written Finnish come from 1450. During the Middle Ages
Finland was under Swedish rule and Finnish was just a spoken language. The main languages
of time were Swedish and Middle Low German so Finnish did not have a place in
government or trade.

Finnish started being written down during the 16th century. A Finnish bishop called Mikael
Agricola developed an orthography for Finnish. A modified version of this orthography is still
used by Finnish today. In the 1800s Johan Vilhelm Snellman began to push for Finnish to be
used in more parts of Finnish life. By the end of the century Finnish was being used in
administration as well as literature.

Family
Finnish is part of the Finnic-Ugric branch of Uralic making it related to Estonian, Karelian,
Livonian, the Sami languages such as Northern Sami and Inari Sami, Erzya, Moksha, Mari,
Komi and Hungarian. The Finnic-Ugric branch can be further divided into the Finnic, Sami,
Mordvinic, Mari, Permic and Ugric branches. The Finnic-Ugric branch includes all the Uralic
languages except for the Samoyedic group which split off much earlier than the others.

Grammar
Finnish is an agglutinative language like other Uralic languages like Hungarian, Estonian and
Northern Sami. It has fifteen noun cases that are used to mark subject and object, denote
the location of objects relative to other ones as well as marking relationships between
objects such as “with a spoon”, “without a spoon”.

Many of these cases are very regular and don’t change much between different nouns.
Verbs are inflected for person and number which means that pronouns are not strictly
required because the person and number can be deduced from the the verb but in spoken
Finnish pronouns are still generally used.

Phonology
Finnish has 8 vowel phonemes and 11 consonant phonemes. Due to consonant gradation
and sandhi there are a few allophones to these consonant that produce sounds outside of
these sets such as /ŋ/ or /ʔ/. Glottal stops only appear at word boundaries and are not
indicated in spelling.
Finnish exhibits consonant gradation which is a process by which consonants change to
different grades under different situations. Other Uralic languages like Northern Sami and
Estonian also exhibit consonant gradation. These grades either have the consonants get
longer or change to another consonant entirely.

The shorter consonant is called the weak grade and the other consonant is called the strong
grade. Consonant gradation takes places when a noun gets a case ending but it also takes
place elsewhere. An example is “minä putoan” (I am falling) becoming “pudota” (to fall)
when the verb “fall” goes into the infinitive and the “t” becomes a “d”.

Pronouns
I - minä
you - sinä
he/she/it - hän
we - me
you - te
they - he

Phrases
Hello - Moi
How are you? - Mitä kuuluu?
Fine, thank you - Kiitos, hyvää.
What is your name? - Mikä sinun nimesi on?
My name is ___ - Nimeni on __
Yes - Kyllä
No - Ei
Thank you - Kiitos
Nice to meet you - Hauska tavata
I don’t speak Finnish - En puhu suomea
I don't understand - En ymmärrä
Do you speak English? - Puhutko englantia?
Excuse me - Anteeksi
Goodbye (formal) - Näkemiin
Goodbye (informal) - Hei hei
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