A survey carried out among Japanese men and women in December 2012 showed that the most popular word most Japanese people use on a day to day basis is, “Thank You.” This makes sense considering that most Japanese people do not like to be rude. This results in a lot of Japanese being hesitant to put their opinions forward, as they do not want to offend other people. This survey was carried out by a beauty clinic, where 1,400 people were surveyed. The other words that made it to the top 5 list includes “love,” “consideration” and “looking forward”. Most Japanese find it hard to say, “I love you,” to their loved ones. There are a few affectionate or endearment words in the language. It takes about 2 times as long to say something in Japanese as it would take to say it in English.
Japanese is the official language spoken in Japan. Approximately 2.5 million people in other parts of the world speak Japanese. Some of them speak it as a first language. Japanese speakers can be also found in the US, Paris and London. There are different dialects of Japanese with Osaka and Tsugaru being the main dialects. It is not necessary to learn the local dialects if you don’t want to. Japanese can be a bit challenging to master as there are several homonyms that sound the same but have different meanings. If you want to learn the language well, it is important that you learn to read Kanji, Chinese characters which are used to write Japanese. This is the only way you will gain a good understanding of the meaning of different words. Japanese is also written using Hiragana and Katakana. Due to the 3 writing systems, Japanese is considered to have the most complex written language in the whole world.
By learning Japanese you will have an easier time learning Korean. By mastering Kanji, Japanese characters, you will be able to read words in other languages that use the same characters, such as Chinese and Cantonese. It is possible to write Japanese using the Roman alphabet, Romaji, however, is not practical. Romaji is mainly used to teach beginners who want to learn Japanese as a foreign language.
