by Achae
Even though some of the vocabulary was borrowed from the Chinese, the alphabet was not. Around the 7th century, Chinese characters were being inserted into the Japanese system. Buddhist monks simplified the writing system, and it evolved into the katakana alphabet that is known today. This was the transition from "Old Japanese" to "Modern Japanese." The katakana system is shown in the chart below.
Underneath each character is the pronunciation of it. Japanese has most syllables ending in a vowel. Like English, there are five vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/ ). It is argued that Old Japanese used eight vowels, but Modern Japanese uses five.
For those wanting to learn a new language, you will be happy to know that Japanese pronunciation stays the same. Unlike English with its many exceptions, the vowels in Japanese do not change word by word. So the "ah" "eee" "ooo" "aye" "oh" vowels carry over into "kah" "kee" "koo" "kay" "koh," and so forth. "Katakana" is "kah-tah-kah-nah" and "hirigana" is "hee-ree-gah-nah." Seems simple compared to English, right? Now you can read Japanese when it uses the English alphabet!
Japanese does, however, use a pitch accent, whereas English uses a stress accent. For example, with the word "hashi," if the first syllable is accented, it means chopsticks. Without it, it can mean bridge (second syllable is accented) or edge (no accent).
The word order of Japanese also differs from that of English. English follows the Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure. Japanese follows the Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. These two sentence structures comprise how the majority of languages create sentences. Japanese also had case endings, so that a sentence may be shifted around, but still have the same meaning. English does not have this, so word order is extremely important. In Japanese, word order can be switched around, as long as the verb is at the end.
Japanese verbs do not indicate number or gender. Verbs do change for tense (present/past/future), negation, aspect, and mood (Do this! If you do this...). This makes it so speakers may even drop the subject out of the sentence! This is because the context makes it understood, so the subject becomes superfluous. In some instances, other aspects like the object can be dropped, as long as the context allows for it to be understood.