Japanese Lesson 5: Informal Introductions

Happy Friday everyone! 

Today's word of the day is another one that teaches us about kanji: 

Word of the Day:

Romaji	Hiragana	Kanji
tenpura	てんぷら	天ぷら or 天麩羅

You should all know what tenpura means... In English it's often spelled "tempura," since that's what it sounds like when someone says it (though it's phonetically spelled "ten pu ra"). The reason why it can be written with an 'n' or an 'm' in romaji (literally "Roman characters") is because if you make an 'n' sound followed by a 'p' or 'b' sound, the 'n' ends up sounding like an 'm' -- due to the fact that your lips come together. For example, try saying "tenple" instead of "temple." If you say it slowly, you can do it -- but if you speed it up, "tenple" becomes indistinguishable from "temple." 

There are two ways to write tenpura in kanji: 天ぷら and 天麩羅. The first spelling consists of one kanji character (ten -- the character for "heaven" or "sky") and two hiragana (phonetic) characters (pu and ra). The second spelling starts with the same ten ("heaven"), followed by a kanji character for pu ("wheat-gluten bread") and ending with a kanji character for ra ("gauze"; "thin silk"; or "Rome"). What does this tell us about the food which it describes? Not much... although you could say that the fried delicacy is a method of cooking something by giving it a "heavenly gauze-like layer of fried wheat-gluten"... or something like that. 

It turns out that kanji serve a variety of different purposes in Japanese (and in Chinese too, from my understanding). Often, the character will have a specific meaning -- it being a pictographic representation of something (e.g., oya, which was the previous word of the day). Characters with specific meaning can be combined to create more complex words with meaning derived from the characters from which it is comprised (e.g., Tokyo, which literally means "Eastern capital"). Sometimes, however, kanji are simply used for their pronunciations; not their meanings. While the word tenpura can be written in kanji, the kanji do not provide us with any deeper meaning about the word -- which, by the way, is the way that English works. The spelling/pronunciation of a word is all we have to go on when deciphering the meaning of a word in English. In Japanese and Chinese, however, there is often additional information packaged into the way the letters are written. It's quite an amazing system, in my opinion! But I may be a bigger fan of kanji than most...

So back to the kanji spelling of tenpura. While ten by itself means "heaven," here, it is just the sound "ten." The same is true for the latter two characters. 

If you've gotten this far into my explanation, then here's some trivia for you! 

1. Then ten in tenpura (天) is the same character that is used to write Nintendo in Japanese!

2. The pu in tenpura refers to a type of Japanese food (or foods, really, as there are different types) made of wheat gluten. To learn more about fu (it's pronunciation changes from fu to pu because it appears after an 'n' sound... but I'll explain more about that in a later lesson), click here. And here's a beautiful picture of some nama fu.

3. Lastly, for those of you who are familiar with the movies of Kurosawa Akira (I put his last name first, since he's Japanese), the movie Rashomon is written in Japanese using the same ra as is used in the word tenpura. 

Using kanji to represent pronunciation instead of meaning is called ateji. Ateji is common in names of foods (e.g., sushi), people and places (e.g., France -- 仏蘭西).

Japanese Lesson 5: Informal Introductions

The first four lessons introduced some basic sentences and vocabulary in Japanese. These next few lessons will introduce some important, basic conversations that you can start using immediately. First on the list is how to introduce yourself. Here it is (assuming Wan-chan is introducing himself): 

Wan desu. Yoroshiku.

That's it! Wan is Wan-chan's name (chan is a Japanese honorific, which you would drop when you refer to yourself). If you're Japanese, you'll use your last name only. So if Akira Kurosawa introduced himself, he's say: Kurosawa desu. Yoroshiku. 

The word yoroshiku is more or less the equivalent of "nice to meet you." The word is derived from the word yoroshii, which means "good," "OK," or "fine." Yoroshiku basically means "regards" (as used as a closing for a letter or email). In Japanese, after you meet someone, you would say "best regards" to be polite; in English, we say, "Nice to meet you." or "A pleasure." or something like that. 

I mentioned that a Japanese person will generally use their last name when introducing themselves. That being said, younger people may use their first names in informal settings. When you introduce yourself, you should obviously use the name that you want people to call you. 

That's it in terms of the language. An additional important point about introducing yourself, however, is your physical actions. In Japan, people don't usually shake hands (though it happens, especially if a Japanese person is meeting an oubeijin (Westerners)) -- they bow. In an informal setting, the person introducing himself or herself will probably bow slightly when saying "yoroshiku." Or, if you want to combine a bow with a handshake, that's an option too -- especially if you're President Obama.

Your homework? Walk up to someone in a bar (who is Japanese) and introduce yourself! Or, if you prefer, talk to yourself in the mirror.