Lesson 11 · じこしょうかい — introducing yourself
Two ways to say every person
Almost every word on this page comes with a polite twin, and the rule for choosing between them is one sentence long: the polite one is never about you. Learn the pairs and you have learned forty-two words as twenty-one decisions.
Ten lessons taught the two scripts and the words that could be built inside them. This one is the first that is simply a list of words — no chart to derive, no spelling rule to obey, nothing that generates the list from anything else. That is why it is taught as a walk rather than a table: forty-two unrelated words have no logic between them, and a sequence is the only thing that can supply one.
About the kanji on this page
Thirty-eight characters appear here, and thirty-seven of them are new — only 日 has been seen before. They are for recognition only, exactly as in lesson 10: enough to read a name badge or a form. There is no stroke order, no writing practice and no general kanji system in this lesson, and the kana is still the form to learn. Section 3 shows the twelve characters that repeat, because those are the ones that pay you back.
1.The brackets are the lesson
Three entries on this page are printed with a second word in brackets after them. They are not alternatives. They are the same meaning at a different altitude, and Japanese makes you choose an altitude before you can open your mouth.
| Plain | Polite | Meaning | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| あのひと | あのかた | that person | 人 becomes 方 |
| だれ | どなた | who | a different word, one beat longer |
| なんさい | おいくつ | how old | いくつ plus a polite お |
Trick 1 · Politeness costs beats, in both languages
Every polite form on this page is longer than its plain twin. だれ is two moras and どなた is three; いくつ gains a character to become おいくつ. This is the same observation lesson 6 made about どちら against どこ — indirectness costs a mora — and it is not a Japanese quirk. Arabic does it too: أَنْتَ becomes حَضْرَتُكَ, and مَنْ becomes مَنْ حَضْرَتُكَ. Both languages buy respect with syllables.
The fourth pair is not marked with brackets anywhere, and is the more useful one, because it works the other way round.
| Word | Meaning | Who may use it |
|---|---|---|
| せんせい sensei |
teacher | Never about yourself. It is a title other people give you. |
| きょうし kyōshi |
teacher | Only about yourself, or as a neutral description. A job, not an honour. |
Trick 2 · Never point the polite form at yourself
One rule covers four separate facts on this page:
- Say きょうし about your own job, never せんせい.
- Never put さん on your own name.
- あのかた and どなた are for other people; there is no polite word for yourself.
- わたし is the same in every register, because it does not need to flatter anyone.
Japanese politeness is directional — it points away from the speaker. English has a faint version of this (you would not call yourself Doctor in the third person), and Arabic a stronger one, but Japanese makes it grammatical.
2.Six endings do most of the work
Four of them go on a person's name, and they occupy the same slot — you pick exactly one, and it replaces the others rather than stacking with them.
| Ending | Goes on | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 〜さん | anyone | No gender, no age, no marital status. One ending where English needs four titles. |
| 〜ちゃん | a child, a close friend | Warm rather than respectful. |
| 〜くん | a boy, or a junior at work | Written 君. |
| 〜じん | a country, not a person | Makes a nationality: アメリカじん, にほんじん. |
Trick 3 · 〜じん is the Arabic nisba, exactly
Japanese takes a country and appends じん. Arabic takes a country and appends the nisba ending ـِيّ — أَمْرِيكا → أَمْرِيكِيّ, الْيابان → يابانِيّ. Same operation, same position, same result. So section 6's eleven countries are really twenty-two words, and you get the second eleven without learning anything.
The other two endings go on jobs, and between them they build five of the nine occupations on this page out of parts you can see.
| Ending | Means | Built from it here |
|---|---|---|
| 〜いん 員 |
a member of | かいしゃいん 会社員 · しゃいん 社員 · ぎんこういん 銀行員 |
| 〜しゃ 者 |
one who does | いしゃ 医者 · けんきゅうしゃ 研究者 |
Trick 4 · かいしゃいん against しゃいん is about whether you name the company
会社員 is company + member — the general answer to what you do. 社員 drops the first character and takes a company in front of it instead: IMCの しゃいん. So the shorter word needs more context, not less. If you are not naming the employer, use the long one.
3.Twelve characters, twenty-nine words
Recognition only, as the note at the top says. These are the characters that appear more than once on this page — the rest are worth meeting but not worth hunting.
| Kanji | Sense | Where it turns up here |
|---|---|---|
| 私 | I | 私 · 私たち · 私の |
| 人 | person | あの人 hito · 〜人 jin |
| 生 | life, birth | 先生 · 学生 |
| 学 | study | 学生 · 大学 |
| 員 | member | 会社員 · 社員 · 銀行員 |
| 社 | company | 会社員 · 社員 |
| 者 | one who | 医者 · 研究者 |
| 国 | country | 韓国 · 中国 |
| 歳 | years of age | 〜歳 · 何歳 |
| 大 | big | 大学 |
| 中 | middle | 中国 |
| 日 | sun, day | 日本 the one you already had |
The single most satisfying line there is 生: 先生 is before + life, someone born earlier, and 学生 is study + life. The teacher and the student share a character, and it is the one that means living.
Trick 5 · The kanji is what tells two words apart
Written in kana alone, かんこく is ambiguous. Look it up and the first entry is not South Korea at all — it is 勧告, advice, counsel. Only 韓国 settles it.
That is the honest argument for a kanji column, and it is stronger than “because Japanese is written that way”: kana records the sound, and the sound is not always enough.
4.The walk
Every one of the forty-two words, in four scenes, each word in exactly one of them. Read it straight through once. Then press Hide on a scene and say the Japanese yourself from the English — the gaps keep the width of the word they are hiding, which is a fair clue and not the answer.
The walk is rendered from assets/story11-data.js and needs
JavaScript. Every word it contains is also on a card in section 5 below.
5.Forty-two words
The same words as cards, grouped the way the walk moves through them. Wrong answers in the drill are drawn from inside a group, so the hard calls are the genuinely hard ones: せんせい against きょうし, かいしゃいん against しゃいん, インド against インドネシア.
The word cards need JavaScript. Every word on them appears in the walk above.
Drill them for meaning
The drill needs JavaScript. Every word it asks about is in the list above.
6.Two frames, and the one character that lies
Everything above is nouns. Two sentence frames turn them into speech, and both come straight off this page rather than running ahead of it.
〜は 〜です。
です is is / am / are, and it is the same word for all of them. It does not change for person, for number or for gender. Add lesson 6's か to the end and the statement becomes a question, which is the frame you already know.
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| わたしは がくせいです。 | I am a student. |
| あのかたは どなたですか。 | Who is that person? |
| あのひとは にほんじんです。 | That person is Japanese. |
| おいくつですか。 | How old are you? |
Trick 6 · は is read wa, and only here
The chart says は is ha, and everywhere inside a word it is. As the topic particle — the は standing between the subject and the rest of the sentence — it is pronounced wa. Spelling and sound part company at exactly one character, and it is the most common character in Japanese grammar.
It is a fossil: this was how the sound was pronounced a thousand years ago, and the spelling never caught up. Its only sibling is へ, read e when it marks a direction.
〜から きました。
から is from, and it comes after the country rather than before it, which is the reverse of English and of Arabic. インドから きました is literally India-from came.
Trick 7 · Japanese adds a word here; Arabic removes one
To say I am a student, Japanese requires です at the end. Modern Standard Arabic requires nothing at all in the present tense — أَنَا طالِب is literally I student, and adding a verb would be wrong.
So the same sentence gains a word going into Japanese and loses one going into Arabic. If you find yourself hunting for the Arabic word for です, that is why you cannot find it.
7.Introducing yourself
Six set phrases, in the order they are actually said. Taken together they are a complete self-introduction, and the two frames above are the only grammar inside them.
-
1.Excuse me, but…
Japaneseしつれいですが
shitsurei desu ga
Arabicعَفْوًا، لَوْ سَمَحْتَ
ʿafwan, law samaḥta
-
2.May I have your name?
Japaneseおなまえは？
onamae wa
Arabicمَا اسْمُ حَضْرَتِكَ؟
mā ismu ḥaḍratika
-
3.How do you do — said only at a first meeting.
Japaneseはじめまして。
hajimemashite
Arabicتَشَرَّفْنا
tasharrafnā
-
4.I come from India.
Japaneseインドから きました。
indo kara kimashita
Arabicجِئْتُ مِنَ الْهِنْدِ.
jiʾtu mina al-hind
-
5.Pleased to meet you — said to close a self-introduction.
Japaneseどうぞ よろしく おねがいします。
dōzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu
Arabicسُرِرْتُ بِمَعْرِفَتِكَ
surirtu bi-maʿrifatika
-
6.This is Mr. Tanaka.
Japaneseこちらは たなかさんです。
kochira wa tanaka-san desu
Arabicهٰذَا السَّيِّدُ تَانَاكَا.
hādhā as-sayyidu Tānākā
こちらは in phrase 6 is こそあど again — the こ series from lesson 6, the near member of the same set as どちら. Introducing someone standing beside you uses the polite word for this way, never このひと.
8.Sources
- Jisho.org, serving JMdict/EDICT — every reading, gloss and commonness tag on this page, and the source of the two catches in section 3 and section 6: a bare かんこく lookup returns 勧告 before 韓国, and タイ returns the sea bream 鯛 before Thailand. Read this one if you read only one — looking a word up yourself is the habit this whole course is trying to build.
- Minna no Nihongo I, 3A Corporation. This chapter's word list is that textbook's lesson 1, word for word and in the same order, including the bracketed polite twins that section 1 is built on. Useful as a cross-check when a gloss is ambiguous.
- Tofugu — Japanese honorifics for the four name endings, and Tofugu — the は particle for why it is read wa: the historical spelling that the pronunciation moved away from and the orthography never followed.
- en.wiktionary, 人 and its neighbours 員, 者, 生 — the readings and senses behind section 3, and the check that 先生 and 学生 genuinely share their second character rather than merely looking as though they do.
- Nisba for the Arabic ـِيّ ending in Trick 3, and Almaany for the Arabic glosses and their harakat.
- Question-word sheet — where だれ, どなた and いくつ came from, and the こそあど grid that こちら belongs to. One day, every word is the course-wide version of section 4's walk.