[JLP]

Originally Posted by nongporz

A Comparison among Spanish, English, and Japanese

The purpose of this short essay is to provide a brief comparison among the most important aspects of three languages: Spanish, English and Japanese.

This is a bit awkward. I would most likely revise to, "The purpose of this short essay is to provide a brief comparison of Spanish, English, and Japanese."

Spanish is a Romance language, like Italian and French, and it is spoken by over 300 million people natively in 21 countries, parts of the

United States and Africa, whereas English is a Germanic language and it is the most widely spoken language in the world either as a native tongue or an official second language.

Stop. This is a run-on sentence, and should be split into at least two, if not more sentences. For example, "Spanish is a Romance language, like Italian and French. There are over three hundred million native speakers of Spanish in twenty-one countries, including parts of the United States and Africa. English is a Germanic language, and it is the most widely spoken language in the world, either as a native tongue or as an official second language."

Japanese is different from Spanish and English; there are several competing theories: in that it might be a member of Altaic language family, and is said to be an agglutinative language such as

Mongolia and Turkish. Some linguists mention that Japanese is related to other Asian languages which could be Sino Tibetan. Some people, however, argue that Japanese is a Southern Asia Language, although others regard these languages as isolates. Japanese is spoken by over 125 million people most exclusively in Japan; it has been sometimes spoken in countries besides Japan.

Some of these sentences also feel like run-ons to me. I might try "Japanese is different from either Spanish or English in that its origins are unknown. There are several competing theories. One is that it might be a member of the Altaic language family, and it is said to be an agglutinative language such as Mongolian and Turkish. However, other linguists mention that Japanese is related to the other Sino-Tibetan Asian languages. Finally, some people argue that Japanese is a Southern Asia Language, although others regard these languages as isolates. Japanese is spoken by over 125 million people almost exclusively in Japan."

All three languages differ from each other in their writing system. Both Spanish and English are of the SVO type, based on the Roman alphabet. The Spanish writing system is very close to actual pronunciation which means every speaker can guess the pronunciation from the written form.

“…and are based on the Roman alphabet. The Spanish writing system is very phonetic, which means that it is possible to easily guess the correct pronunciation of a word based on the way it is spelled.”

The English writing system, however, is originally reflected the pronunciation of the language, but it doesn’t any longer.

I would remove “however” and “is” from this sentence; other than that, it is fine.

Hence, the sound “f” can be expressed by the letter “f” or the combination “gh” as in ‘safe’ and ‘enough’. On the other hand, the Japanese writing system is of the SOV type, [and is] based on three main alphabets: hiragana, katana and kanji. Hiragana is similar to katana in terms of phonetic characters. Hiragana is used for Japanese words and grammar, while katana is mainly used for onomatopoeia[c] foreign words. [Finally, the kanji system is based on] complicated characters mostly from Chinese, [which] represent an idea. [Each character has] two different pronunciation[s]: Japanese, which was formed by matching an already-existing Japanese word to an imported kanji, and Chinese, which was formed by Japanese-izing an already-existing Chinese pronunciation of that character.

The phonetic system in Spanish is made up of about 19 consonant sounds with varieties based on phonetic context, whereas Japanese has 16 basic consonant sounds. Both Spanish and Japanese [have] 5 vowel sound[s], which are a, e, i, o, and u. A long vowel sound instead of a short one or vice versa in the Spanish language will not change the meaning of the word, [but] in Japanese [it] does; a case in point is “ojisan” mean[ing] “uncle” and “ojiisan” mean[ing] “grandfather.” English differs from [both] Spanish and Japanese not only [in its] number of consonant sounds but also in [its] vowel sounds. It is composed of approximately 24 consonant sounds and the same 5 vowel letters in Spanish and Japanese, but these can be pronounced in 20 [different] ways. [Examples include] a, e, i, o, u, ea, oo, ee, ie, etc., and vowel length often distinguishes words.

Spanish is a syllable-based language, stressed and unstressed vowels share the same quality. Every syllable has the same time duration, and the languages have no reduced vowels [as in] English. In contrast, [English] is a stress-based language. Stress means the relative emphasis given to some syllables over others. The stressed syllable usually has a higher pitch, longer duration, and typically fuller vowels than the unstressed syllable. All English words of more than one syllable have a primary stressed accompanied by secondary or unstressed syllables. Japanese is unlike Spanish and English in this sense. [Rather,] it is a mora-based language[,] in which [a] mora is a rhythmical unit that dictates the length of syllables and one syllable could have one or two moras[.] [For example,] te means ‘hand’ and has 1 syllable and 1 mora, [while] hon means ‘book’ [and] has 1 syllable, but 2 moras. Each mora has a pitch accent of either high(H) or low(L), and thus pitch becomes crucial for distinguishing words. These tone rules vary across dialects[;] for instance, in the Tokyo dialect, the word hashi pronounced with a high-low(HL) tone demotes ‘chopstick’, but with a low-high(LH) tone it de[n]otes ‘bridge’.

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