Japanese Day 10 – 人 (Jin) and 語 (Go)

Today we will keep things a little simpler after a few heavy days of important grammar.

We will look at some kanji that revolves around countries and languages, which as a learner, you will no doubt hear when listening to any sort of immersion aimed at learners.

人 (Jin) and 語 (Go) In Japanese

If you have learned the names of any countries in Japanese (I know! I haven’t shown you any yet) you may notice two endings that continually show up in your listening. These are Jin and Go and basically allow to turn a country into either the nationality or language.

So let’s look at these two simple additions.  

人 (Jin)  – Person

人(Jin) means “person” and you can add it to the end of any country to create the nationality.

However, you will have seen the kanji for this word before -人- it is the same as the kanji for …“person” …so that sounds confusing, right?

This is a classic case of Japanese doesn’t translate perfectly into English, as well as the fact that there are usually a few different ways to read a single kanji, but don’t worry its very simple in this instance.

If you are just talking about a random person across the street, you use人 and pronounce it Hito.

When you want to talk about a person from a certain place (their nationality) you also use人 but pronounce it Jin.

 この人 (ko no hito) –  This person

日本人 (ni hon jin) – Japan person …or Japanese person ….or we would actually just say “Japanese”, in reference to their nationality.  

You are going to know which version to use based on context, if there is a country name before the 人, then you know it’s talking about nationality, and of course if you are listening it’s pretty obvious as they will just say the country and jin (rather than hito) and you will know they are talking about a person from whatever country and referring to their nationality.

The kanji For “Country”

If you are reading you will usually find that a large number of countries actually use the国 kanji, which means “country “

If you see this, followed by人, you know it’s a nationality.

英国 –  England country …or England

英国人 -England country person  …British

中国  China country …or just China

中国人 China country person …Chinese   

This isn’t the case all the time though. Some countries are spelt using katakana like  スペイン (Spain) but the rule about 人 still applies, it will be pronounced Jin if it is found after a country name and still means “nationality” of whatever country.

スペイン – Spain

スペイン人 – Spain person …Spanish

語 (Go) – Language

語(go) is another thing you will commonly hear and see after a country name, and this just means “language” and is represented by this kanji – 語

It works the exact same as the above information with 人. You will see or hear the country name, followed by 語 and when you do, they are referring to that language.

For example:

英国語 this would directly translate as – England country language …or as we call it …English

The English Language Confusion

I think it is important to remember how we often call the language and nationality of place the same thing in the English language, but we understand the difference through context.

If I just say “French” on its own, you are not sure if I am talking about the language spoken in France … or a person from France, as it’s the same word and you need more context.

This is of course much clearer in the Japanese language, as you have two different words for these two things.

It can be a little easier to translate things quite literally until you get use to the small differences.

日本 – Japan

日本人 – Japan person  – Japanese (as in a the nationality)

日本語  Japan language – Japanese (as in  the language)