英文法

Differences between Japanese and English Grammar - Part III

Use of determiners – Determiners are words that come before nouns in English, whose function is to specify the noun in question. Consider the difference between saying “apple” or “person” or “pencil case”, and saying “the apple”, “a person”, “her pencil case”. Japanese has some determiners as well, or at least some words that function as determiners, so in Japanese you can literally say “her pencil case” (彼女の筆箱), or “this car” (この車), but Japanese has no “the” or “a”. So for instance, if you wanted to say "the apple" or "an apple" in Japanese, these would both translate most accurately to りんごだ or the more polite りんごです, which also just means "apple". This is a fairly significant difference between the two languages, because many of the nouns we use in English require at least a “the” or “a” before them. So it is fair to say that it is important for Japanese people to practice using “the” and “a” in a number of different contexts, if they are attempting to learn to speak English like a native speaker.

Head initial vs. head final – In linguistics, the most important part of any phrase is known as the head. So in the phrase “the beautiful flower that blooms every spring”, “the beautiful flower”, as the noun, is the head. English is a head-initial language, which means that the head of a phrase comes before something like a relative clause, which is used to describe the head. Another example of this exists in the verb phrase “running like you have stolen something”, where “running” is the head of the verb phrase, and “like you have stolen something” is the prepositional phrase being used to describe the verb.
Japanese, however, is a head-final language. Because of this, sometimes Japanese is referred to as a “suspenseful” language, because you have to wait for the whole phrase to be uttered before you know what exactly is being talked about. For example, the noun phrase “the beautiful flower that blooms every spring” in Japanese, 毎年春になると咲く美しい花, more literally translates to “every year at spring blooming beautiful flower”. “Beautiful flower”, as the head of the phrase, appears at the end. This is a difference that takes some getting used to, but as one of the fundamental syntax rules in both languages, I would say that it is a pretty important difference and one well-worth mentioning.

These are a few of the basic differences between the grammars of English and Japanese. In my next article I will look into some of the more advanced grammatical differences between the two languages. I hope that this article has been of some use to those of you who are currently teaching or are hoping to teach Japanese students English whilst in Japan. To those that are not planning on doing any such thing, I hope you have at least found this article interesting from an academic perspective.
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Many students study English at school, learning the rules of grammar and memorising vocabulary, doing exercises etc. They may do well for a written test but when it comes to talking, communicating and interacting with others, it is a whole different ballgame.
…….

Not surprisingly, most Japanese hesitate to answer telephone calls where they have to communicate in English. In other words, despite learning the rules and doing test exercises, they are unable to express themselves fluently.

My method of bringing about fluency to ESL learners is :
1. Stop the mental translation
2. Practise directly identifying objects, verbs, ideas in English
3. Develop phrases using words you already know
4. Keep a journal

Online one-to-one lessons
By an English tutor with many years’ experience
References available
Contact:
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Speak English Fluently
Many students study English at school, learning the rules of grammar and memorising vocabulary, doing exercises etc. They may do well for a written test but when it comes to talking, communicating and interacting with others, it is a whole different ballgame.

Not surprisingly, most Japanese hesitate to answer telephone calls where they have to communicate in English. In other words, despite learning the rules and doing test exercises, they are unable to express themselves fluently.

My method of bringing about fluency to ESL learners is :
1. Stop the mental translation
2. Practise directly identifying objects, verbs, ideas in English
3. Develop phrases using words you already know
4. Keep a journal

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