Merry Christmas in the Land of the Rising Sun

InJapan,Christmasis known as more of a time to spread happiness rather than a religious celebration. Christmas became popular through American influence and many of the phrases associated with Christmas are words and phrases from English.

Japanese uses a special script, Katakana, to write words it has borrowed from other languages. Here are some rules about Katakana:

  • Each symbol is a syllable instead of just one letter;
  • A syllable starts with a consonant followed by a vowel;
  • Only the “n” has its own symbol / letter;
  • Japanese does not have certain sounds that we have in English, for example there is no “w” – so this sound is not written in Japanese;
  • There are no special characters for capital letters – there’s no difference between capitals and lower case letters in Katakana;
  • As the Japanese sound for “r” sounds a bit between our “r” and “l” sounds, Japanese speakers translate every “l” sound in English with their “r”
  • ッis a special symbol that is a little pause before the next syllable is said. It is used when the English word has two consonants for example, “Hello” in Japanese would be ヘッロ, which is literally: “he –ro”.
  • “ta”, “te”, “to” etc. can be turned into “da”, “de” , “do” very easily by adding a little accent-like symbol that looks like a double apostrophe: ta = タ and da = ダ

Question 1: Can you fill in the blanks with the English translation? (there are some hints on the next page to help you if you get stuck)

Japanese word /phrase: / English word / phrase:
(a) / プレセント / Present (literally in Japanese: “puresento”)
(b) / クリスマス リース / Christmas wreath (literally in Japanese: “kurisumasuri-su”)
(c) / サンタ / Santa
(d) / マルシュメッロ / marsh mellow (literally in Japanese “marushuju” for “marsh”)
(e) / クリスマス ライト / Christmas light (literally in Japanese “raito” for “light”)
(f) / メッリ クリスマス
(g) / クリスマス クラクル
(h) / サンタ クロス

Question 2: Using all the Katakana characters you have seen in this activity so far, write the following in Japanese: (again hints on the next page)

(a)Prancer (one of Santa’s reindeer): ______

(b)Christmas stollen: ______

______

(c)Lapland: ______

Hints:

Question 1:

(f) A nice thing to say to people in the holiday season!

(g) British traditional object that is pulled apart with a loud bang during Christmas dinner.

(h) Santa’s full name.

Question 2:

(a)Prancer would be pronounced in Japanese as “Puransa”

(b)Don’t forget that Japanese doesn’t have a “l” sound so the pronunciation of stollen would be “suto-ren” (with a little pause where in English there are two letters l).

(c)Lapland would be pronounced as “rapurando”.