小名: Syllables

5.8.06

Syllables

I have been trying to learn some Japanese for a couple of weeks now, in a vain attempt to be able to communicate upon arrival in the Land of the Rising Sun. However, I think I will only be able to apologize and say "I don't understand" with a believable accent. Anyway, during my studies I have found that the thing that sets Japanese apart from every other language I have encountered is the freakishly large amount of syllables the language requires. Here are a couple of examples:

English...............Chinese....................Japanese
my friend (2)..... wode pengyou (4)......watashi no tomodachi(8)
thank you (2)......xie xie (2)..................domo arigato (6)
hello (2)..............ni hao (2)..................konichiwa (4)

Knights of Columbus! It even takes four syllables just to say "hi"!! My conclusion is that Japanese people are fast talkers. They probably have to talk very fast so they can get all the syllables into a managable block of time. If they were to talk slow, they'd be standing around all day trying to say a couple of sentences. Nothing would get done.

Labels: Fun Facts

written by Ruthie @ 3:49 PM

1 thoughts:

At 8/06/2006 1:58 AM, Anonymous said…

its true. they ARE very fast talkers. good luck. my family had an exchange student from japan my freshman year of hs, she was very quiet, except when she was together with her other friends from japan (who were also exchange students) they talked amazingly fast. and yeah...all words in japanese seem to have a million syllables apparently. err..actually have a million syllables... crazy deal.