Here you can learn some vocabulary and numbers in Japanese, and how to pronounce them correctly. This is intended as a very basic guide: if you watch anime you've probably heard a lot of the words listed here. If you are interested in actually learning Japanese, there are many sites better dedicated to the language and all its finer points
Japanese actually uses three writing systems; composed of kanji and two syllable based systems, or syllabaries. Kanji represent whole words or concepts and is not an alphabet. The two syllabaries are called hiragana and katakana, or collectively as the kana. Hiragana and katakana are alphabets: they both have the same sounds but use different characters to represent them. Hiragana is used for native words and katakana is used for foreign or 'loan' words.
See a chart of the hiragana and katakanaThe basic rules of pronounciation are relatively easy in Japanese because it is a phonetic language: there are no changes in pronounciation.
The 'vowels' are pronounced:
a= ah i= ee u= oo e= eh o= oh
The other letters are pronounced by adding a consonant sound to a vowel sound. The one exception is the English letter 'n' has it's own equivalent in Japanese. There are more sublte nuances to pronounciation but those are more advanced.
For example, the word 'gomen' would be pronounced 'goh-meh-n'
ai: love
anata: you (not used for superiors, since it sounds coarse that way)
baka: fool
bishounen: a young good looking guy
bishoujo: a young good looking girl
chibi: small
chotto: just a little
daijoubu: I'm okay, I'm fine
dare: who
doko: where
gaijin: foreigner
genki: full of energy
gomen: sorry
hai: yes, I understand
iie: no, that is incorrect
ittekimasu: I'm off (literally 'I go and return')
ittarashai: please return (the response to "ittekimasu")
ittadakimasu: (there is no direct translation, closest would be "bon appetit"
ja: see ya
kawaii: cute, adorable
konban wa: good evening
konnichi wa: good afternoon
kowai: scary
nani: what
naze: why
ohayo: good morning
okaeri: welcome back (the response to "tadaima")
oyasumi: good night
sensei: teacher
sumimasen: Excuse me
tadaima: I've returned (said when arriving home)
yappari: I knew it, I thought so
back to topIn Japanese, there are two sets of words to use to count. The one most people are familiar with is borrowed from Chinese and starts with "ichi, ni..." The other system is indigenous Japanese. There is no single rule to decide when one system is used over the other. However, the Chinese system is generally the one used and the Japanese system is only used for numbers up to 10. It is also common to write numbers in the Arabic system.
English | Japanese* | Japanese |
one (1) | ichi | hi(to) |
two (2) | ni | fu(ta) |
three (3) | san* | mi |
four (4) | shi | yo/(yon) |
five (5) | go | itsu |
six (6) | roku | mu |
seven (7) | shichi | nana |
eight (8) | hachi | ya |
nine (9) | kyuu | kokono |
ten (10) | jyuu | tou |
*shi can also mean "death" so people often use "yon" instead, even though it is from the Japanese system. |
Numbers higher than ten are easy to "assemble"
To create a multiple of ten, just take a number (2-9) and put it before jyuu. So twenty would be nijyuu, thirty would be sanjyuu etc.
To create 11-19 take a number (1-9) and put it after jyuu. So eleven would be jyuuichi, twelve would be jyuuni etc.
To create a number in between a multiple of ten, take a single number (1-9) and put it after the multiple (20,30,etc). So twenty-one would be nijyuuichi, twenty-two would be nijyuuni etc.