A beginner's guide to learn Japanese, from a Ruby programmer's perspective.

1. How to talk like a Ge1sha
A guide to Japanese as a programmer's
language
Andrew Grimm
Railscamp X

2. Hello World
● Minasan konnichiwa (Hello everyone)

3. Vocabulary
● Puroguramaa: Programmer
● Waaurufu: werewolf
● Bagu: bug
● Burogu: blog
● Paatii: party
● Biiru: Beer

4. Plz halp
● Good morning: Ohayou gozaimasu
● G'day: Konnichiwa
● Good evening: Konbanwa
● How you going, mate? Genki desu ka?
● Please (halp): Kudasai
● Please (go ahead): Douzo
● Thanx: Arigatou
● Goodbye: Ja mata

5. How to copulate
● Noun, subject marker, noun, desu
● Bigg-san wa puroguramaa desu
● Mr Bigg is a programmer

6. !
● Japanese uses different verb forms for
negative versus positive
● Bigg-san wa waaurufu dewa arimasen
● Mr Bigg is not a werewolf

7. From future import present tense
● Japanese does not have a future tense
● Just use the present tense

8. Particles
● Those pesky small words go after the noun
● No: of
● Wa: used to indicate subject
● O: used to indicate object
● Kara: From (some meanings)
● Made: To (some meanings)

9. Nouns
● No singular or plural
● Different objects have different counters
● Five: go
● Five beers: go-hon no biru
● Five programmers: go-nin no puroguramaa
● Five am: go-ji

10. Metaprogramming
● Kore: This (near speaker)
● Sore: That (near listener)
● Are: That over there (far from listener)
● Kore o kudasai (this please) served in
every restaurant I went to – even
McDonald's!

11. Linguistic prolog
● To ask a question, just replace a known
with a who/what/where word, and add ka at
the end
● Nan-ji desu ka? (What o'clock is it?)
● Biru-ji desu. (Beer o'clock it is)

12. Japanese writing
● Three writing systems:
● Kanji
● Hiragana
● Katakana

13. Kanji: the evils of copy & paste
● The Japanese copied Chinese characters
to represent Japanese words
● One character per word
● 2000+ characters

14. Hiragana and katakana: shortcuts
● More like alphabets
● Derived from simplifications of kanji used
for sound alone
● Each letter represents a syllable
● Each has ~ 46 letters
● In general, hiragana used in native words,
katakana in European loanwords

15. Legacy encodings
● Japanese used to have many letters with
the same pronounciation.
● The Japanese government declared these
letters obsolete (hentaigana) and not to be
taught at school

16. Politeness: -san
● -san is put after names
● -san obeys what's called ingroup/outgroup
rules
● Don't use -san when talking about yourself
● Don't use -san for someone in your family
when talking to someone outside your
family

17. Politeness: verb forms
● Different verb forms are used for different
levels of politeness.
● The form you initially learn is called teinei-
go.
● Originated with language used by ge1sha
to address their guests (hence the title of
this talk)

18. Politeness: o- / go- words
● Used for important things
● O-cha: Tea
● Go-han: Rice
● O-kane: Money
● O-sake: Booze / sake
● Used to soften “dirty” words
● O-tearai: bathroom

19. Politeness: family
● When talking about someone else's family,
politeness goes up to 11 and you use
o-/go- and -san
● Father (someone else's): o-tou-san
● When talking about your own family to
someone else, you use a humble form
● Father (your own, when talking to someone
else): chichi

20. Learning Japanese
● 16 lessons at a community college was
enough for me to speak Japanese, even if
not understand the response
● “Japanese for Busy People” is slightly
boring but good – you can use it if you miss
lessons
● Searching the internet to answer your
curiosities about the language can be a
time sink

21. Learning in romaji or kana
● Learning in romaji (Roman letters) is
technical debt
● I was able to visit Japan without learning
kana (hiragana and katakana)

22. Hints for handling Japan – Japan
specific

23. Train stations
● Station names, exit names, and ticketing is
in both Japanese and English

24. Loanwords
● The more modern the word, the more likely
it is an English loanword (gairai-go)
● Tend to have vowels added in to sound
more Japanese-like

25. American English
● Bad news: you have to learn two
languages
● Good news: one of them is similar to
English

26. English heading, Japanese body

27. Toilets
● Blue for boys, pink for girls, green for
disabled

28. Communication – common sense

29. Pronunciation
● 50% of language variations are the same
words pronounced in a different way
● Writing things down can help
● Gives people more time to understand
● Japanese learn written English more than
spoken

30. Likelihood to speak English
● Tourist information desk? Pretty likely
● Love hotel receptionist? Maybe not

31. Questions?