A Japanese based conlang

[legolasean]

I want to create a conlang based on Japanese.
The problem is I don't know nothing about the
Grammar of Japanese. Can't someone write tips
And facts about the language?

[Aurora Rossa]

If you know nothing about it, then what interests you about it?

[legolasean]

I like the culture and the sounds. I mean I dunno nothing about its grammar

[Click]

I want to create a conlang based on Japanese.
The problem is I don't know nothing about the
Grammar of Japanese. Can't someone write tips
And facts about the language?

why
line
breaks
?
BTW, wrong forum. Moderators, please move to C&C Quickies.

[Aurora Rossa]

Grammar of Japanese. Can't someone write tips
And facts about the language?

Japanese has strongly left branching syntax, meaning it puts modifiers and arguments before the head rather than after it. The subject and object always come before the verb because the verb heads the sentence. Adjectives and relative clauses, possessors and determiners, and so forth all come before the noun they modify because the noun heads the noun phrase. Japanese also uses postpositions rather than prepositions, so instead of saying "at home" one would say the equivalent of "home at". Auxiliary verbs come after the main verb as well, because they constitute the head of a verb phrase, so where we say "is going" Japanese has "going is".

The syntax and pragmatics of Japanese follow the topic-comment structure. The grammar explicitly marks a noun as the topic of discussion and speakers assume that noun as the referent to all following statements until someone sets a new topic. The topic often corresponds to the subject of the sentence, although it may actually be serving any number of other roles. One may say, for instance, "tree-topic the leaves are green" to mean "the tree has green leaves" with the topic "tree" taking the role of possessor of the sentence subject.

Japanese also tends to omit words with understood from context, especially pronouns, leading linguists to describe the language as pro-drop. Unlike sentences in English, sentences in Japanese do not require implicit subjects or objects for grammatical completeness. One can simply say "went" and rely on context or the previously set topic to indicate the implicit subject. If you are describing your own activities, the listener would understand that you were referring to your own travel. Likewise if you were talking about someone else, the listener would understand that they were doing the going.

Another prominent feature, especially to English-speaking Americans, is that Japanese actually grammaticizes politeness and social deference. Verbs have different inflectional forms for formal and informal situations, honorific and humble speech, and so forth. Nouns and pronouns may also differ depending on the level of formality. You would typically use one pronoun for yourself in an informal situation and another, entirely different, pronoun in more formal situations.

[Pole, the]

why
line
breaks
?
BTW, wrong forum. Moderators, please move to C&C Quickies.

Because if you like Japan,
you get used to vertical writing.
And then it descends
automatically.

[cunningham]

-no articles (a, the)

-no gender

-no singular/plural. although they have -tachi if you want to emphasize that it's plural. i think?

-5 vowels and 11 consonants which makes 48 syllables. Very easy to pronounce!

-free word order in a sentence.

-they have two syllabaries called Hiragana and Katakana.
-Katakana


It is used for foreign words. The word for milk is ミルク (miruku)

If a syllable ends in a consonant (besides m or n), or if there are two consonants put together, then they use the u-form of the consonant. in milk, the l is changed to ru and the k is changed to ku.

It is taught first in Japan because it is the easiest to write. In my opinion, I think Hiragana should be taught first but w/e.

Be careful, some look really familiar:
ク　ケ
シ　ツ
ヨ　ヲ
ソ　ン
フ　ワ　ラ

there is something called a "dakuten mark which looks kinda like a quotation mark " which is used to make consonants voiced. this can be used for both Katakana and Hiragana.
here is ka ki ku ke ko
カ　キ　ク　ケ　コ
put that dakuten mark on them and they become
ga gi gu ge go
ガ　ギ　グ　ゲ　ゴ

there is also something called a handakuten. it looks like a degrees symbol. it is used to make the H-group consonants turn into P-group consonants
here is ha hi fu he ho
ハ　ヒ　フ　ヘ　ホ

the dakuten changes H into B
ba bi bu be bo
バ　ビ　ブ　ベ　ボ

the handakuten changes H into P
pa pi pu pe po
パ　ピ　プ　ペ　ポ


-Hiragana


is kinda the more curvier syllabary.

It is used for grammar.

Hiragana is taught before Kanji.

The word for "cat" is ”neko”.
ねこ

That is how it's pronounced. If you were to write neko, you would change it to Kanji.
猫

-Kanji
They are borrowed from Chinese.

When Chinese text was introduced in Japan, the Japanese adopted the Chinese characters and their pronunciations too.
Unfortunately, they left out the four tones in Chinese, which gave Japanese a large number of homophones.
For example:


All 8 of these are pronounced SHIN.
And these aren't even the only ones pronounced like SHIN!

These Chinese characters were used to represent Japanese words, later on.
The Chinese name of the Kanji character is called the ON-reading
The Japanese name of the Kanji character is called the KUN-reading

The KUN-reading for all 8 of these characters in order from left-to-right are:
KAMI
SUSUMU
SHINJIRU
ATARASHII
MAKOTO
NOBASU
KOKORO
OYA

Kanji characters can have several ON and KUN readings to represent the different meanings/nuances of the character.
For example:
明
ON:
mei= light
myou=light, next

KUN:
a(kari)=light,clearness
aka(rui)=bright
aki(raka)= clear
a(keru)= become light
a(ku)= be open
a(kasu)= pass the night, divulge
a(kuru)= next, following

The parentheses mean that you add 明 + the hiragana inside the parentheses.
The syllables inside parantheses are called okurigana.
明るい = bright

That's how you know which meaning it is.

Now to know whether to use ON or KUN you look at these rules:

If there is just one character alone, you use the KUN reading.
人 hito=person
口 kuchi= mouth
火 hi=fire

If a character is incorporated with okurigana, you use the KUN reading.
明かり akari=light

More than one character without okurigana, you use the ON reading
人口　jinkou=population. not hitokuchi. notice how person and mouth together make up the word population. i honestly don't know why it is, but there's always a history behind it.

names are used with KUN readings
田中さん　tanaka-san= Mr. Tanaka

There is something called ateji:
It is used to represent native Japanese words disregarding the meanings of each character.
For example, sushi is native to Japan.
Sushi is normally written like this: 寿司
The first character SU actually means "lifespan", and the second character SHI means "to administer".
Notice how that has nothing to do with sushi?
They used the ON readings of these characters to produce a pronunciation.

But then you have words like the word for tobacco is "tobako" 煙草
the two characters mean "smoke" and "herb".
but the two characters individually are not TOBA or KO or anything like that.

Ateji is usually just used with traditional store signs and menus.
You can just write sushi and tobako as
すし　and　トバコ
Sushi is from japan so you would use hiragana. tobacco is foreign so you would use katakana.

There is also a certain stroke order. But I'm not going to go over that. just look it up lol.

-The verb comes at the end of a sentence.

-Just a single verb can count as a complete sentence. As long as it is in context, people will know what you're talking about.

-They have something called honorifics. You place it at the end of someone's name when you address someone. You have to know which one to use though:

-san. You probably hear this one a lot. It is the most common one. The closest equivalent is probably Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. whatever.
when you want to say "butcher" you have to use the word for butcher shop + san. the word for butcher shop is nikuya (meat=niku; ya=shop).
so butcher is nikuya-san. same with bookseller. honya-san. (hon means book)

You use san for talking about other companies like Google would be Google-san when adressed by another company.
You use san for pets. Fluffy-san
Japanese gamers use 3 to represent san. so if you were online and talking to Taro, you would type Taro3.

-chan is like the equivalent to "cutie". Girls sometimes refer to themselves with -chan. You can use it for younger children, babies, or whatever. It's insulting to use it on a man, so instead you would say -bou specifically for younger boys.

-kun. If you are in a "senior" status and you are talking to someone of a "junior" status you would use -kun. Girls would call their boyfriends or male-friends -kun as well.

-sama is more polite than -san. It is used for customers, higher ranked people, people you admire, etc. If you use it on yourself, it would translate as "my esteemed self" so you would come across as arrogant.

-senpai is used for fellow team members, or people in a higher grade than you in school. If they are in a lower grade than you, then you would use -gakusei.

-sensei for your teacher or other authority figures.

-shi is used to adress someone unfamiliar to you. they use it in news headlines and stuff like that.

There are things called particles. It is sometimes hard to translate to English. They can be used as prepositions or to indicate like the subject or object of the sentence.
There are around 100 of them so you should probably look them up.

I hope I helped!

[Herr Dunkel]

It doesn't have 11 consonants and 5 vowels.
Learn the difference between orthography and phonology.

[Kereb]

I want to create a conlang based on Japanese.
The problem is I don't know nothing about the
Grammar of Japanese. Can't someone write tips
And facts about the language?

ugh
dude, USE THE INTERNET or your local library. Japanese is not exactly an obscure little jungle-language with hard-to-uncover resources stashed away in a couple of university libraries
start with wikipedia, even! go here and then here, and also check the links at the bottom of those pages, and you'll be on a faster start than you will be by having people try and summarize the whole thing for you on this forum

[Imralu]

Cunningham, did you notice you said 11 consonants and then talked about dakuten. Count again.

Kereb, rather than writing all of that out, you could have just done this...

Hey, Legolasean. Here's everything you need to know about Japanese grammar.

[clawgrip]

我も日本語に基持つる人口言語を作りつ。
Pare mo Nibongo ni modomoturu zinkobu-gengo po tukurit.
I also made a conlang based on Japanese.

[Torco]

RAFGA
g is for grammar

[Vardelm]

ugh
dude, USE THE INTERNET or your local library. Japanese is not exactly an obscure little jungle-language with hard-to-uncover resources stashed away in a couple of university libraries
start with wikipedia, even! go here and then here, and also check the links at the bottom of those pages, and you'll be on a faster start than you will be by having people try and summarize the whole thing for you on this forum

Yep.

Kereb, rather than writing all of that out, you could have just done this...

Think this should have been addressed to Cunningham.

Hey, Legolasean. Here's everything you need to know about Japanese grammar.

Excellent response.

RAFGA
g is for grammar

Yep.

[clawgrip]

You've obviously put a lot of effort into this post, but there are a few issues I feel I need to point out:

free word order in a sentence.

It's not entirely free. Certain things can move around, but there are plenty of restrictions.

It is used for foreign words. The word for milk is ミルク (miruku)

True, but it is also used for native and Sino-Japanese vocabulary for a variety of reasons that are too random and complicated to list here.

It is taught first in Japan because it is the easiest to write. In my opinion, I think Hiragana should be taught first but w/e.

Hiragana is taught first.

It is used for grammar.

It is used as the default way of writing native and Sino-Japanese vocabulary, not only "grammar."

But then you have words like the word for tobacco is "tobako" 煙草

Actually it's tabako.

you would say -bou specifically for younger boys.

-kun. If you are in a "senior" status and you are talking to someone of a "junior" status you would use -kun. Girls would call their boyfriends or male-friends -kun as well.

No one uses -bō. Boys are generally called -kun.

[Left]

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[clawgrip]

Yeah. Anyway I think the point of the thread is kind of dubious anyway...I don't quite understand why someone would want to make a conlang based on a language they don't know anything about. But maybe Cunningham will learn a little from my post.

[Zwap]

I might as well hijack the thread then. Does anyone know of any resources for studying classical Japanese, that are available online? I have Grammar of Classical Japanese and An Historical Grammar of Japanese. Japanese material is fine too.
My intention is to at some point in the future, when I feel I'm ready, make an a posteriori conlang based on classical Japanese somehow.

[clawgrip]

Don't really know. The only materials I have are books (in Japanese) that I bought from Japanese book stores. They're not linguistic texts either, they're ones designed for regular Japanese-speaking people who want to learn to read older documents. So basically everything I have written in my post is irrelevant and not helpful at all.

[Zwap]

That reminds me, I have a couple of Japanese high school text books on 国語. One of them has a large section on 古文, and probably every chart I will ever need, so I will check that out too.

[Vardelm]

Yeah. Anyway I think the point of the thread is kind of dubious anyway...I don't quite understand why someone would want to make a conlang based on a language they don't know anything about.

I'm guessing the thought process was something along the lines of "ninjas are super cool, so I'll make a conlang based on Japanese".

[clawgrip]

The language that I created is based on older Japanese as well. (note that the past tense marker -t in my example above does not come from an abbreviation of modern Japanese past tense -ta but from an archaic perfect ending -tu. It also retains the attributive form for verbs (the る -ru in 基持つる motomoduru) which is lost in Modern Japanese.

[The Count]

Yeah. Anyway I think the point of the thread is kind of dubious anyway...I don't quite understand why someone would want to make a conlang based on a language they don't know anything about. But maybe Cunningham will learn a little from my post.

The hobby of conlanging in itself is as dubious as dubious may come. Why make up a language that doesn't exist and have no speakers? Why endulge oneself in something that is bound to be, if not outright frown upon then at least seen with a considerable amount of suspicion?
Fact is we, the people who construct non-existing languages & spend time here discussing them, all do that for our very own- and different reasons. Some might do it because they have learned something or want to learn something. Others just have a hunch about something they want to create and need information/inspiration in order to approach the next step. Therefore I can't see how this question should be considered more dubious than anything else on this board.

[clawgrip]

Fair enough. Personally though, my inspiration usually comes from things I know, whether it be a language I know, specific grammatical or phonological ideas I know about and want to try implementing, or something else. If I don't know anything about a language, I may be interested in learning it, or possibly making a language resembling it in certain ways, but not really in modifying it a posteriori, which generally requires a detailed knowledge of the language. This is why I am a little confused.

[Vuvuzela]

Fair enough. Personally though, my inspiration usually comes from things I know, whether it be a language I know, specific grammatical or phonological ideas I know about and want to try implementing, or something else. If I don't know anything about a language, I may be interested in learning it, or possibly making a language resembling it in certain ways, but not really in modifying it a posteriori, which generally requires a detailed knowledge of the language. This is why I am a little confused.

I'm not sure if legolasean MEANT a posteriori. I think he might have just wanted to copy the aesthetic. Because of Japanese's distinct sound, lot of conlangers enjoy making langs that sound like "Miriwosu onanto raji kumiko monōshi anma" (some Japanese sounding gibberish I just made up). Maybe OP wanted to run with the whole Japanese thing in the syntax and morphology as well. I don't know, he wasn't all that clear about.

[Kezdő]

"Miriwosu onanto raji kumiko monōshi anma"

Ann and radicals Kumiko massage thing to sell to suck millimeter