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I am a native Japanese speaker with a casual interest in languages. I sometimes have trouble explaining the Japanese grammar in English because I do not know the established English translation of some technical terms in the Japanese grammar such as joshi (助詞). (In this particular case, it seems that joshi is usually translated as “particle.”)

I can look up a Japanese-English dictionary for this purpose, but is there any more easily accessible list of technical terms, preferably freely available online?

Added: I know several general Japanese-English dictionaries and translation services freely available online, which can be used to satisfy my need but not in the most convenient way. I am looking for a simple table of technical terms in the Japanese grammar written both in Japanese and in English, which may look like:

  • 文: sentence
  • 段落: paragraph
  • 名詞: noun
  • 動詞: verb
  • 助詞: particle
  • …
Kaji
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Tsuyoshi Ito
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  • Hi. Thanks for your question but like a lot of the initial ones it is off topic. Please stick to questions about the language itself (which admitedly, may not be particularly useful for you!) Thanks. – Ali May 31 '11 at 19:45
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    @Ali: I posted a [question on meta](http://meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6/on-topic-or-off-topic-is-there-an-easily-accessible-list-of-terms-in-the-japanes). – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '11 at 19:54
  • What, japanese.se.com doesnot have community wiki yet? – syockit Jun 02 '11 at 01:45

4 Answers4

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I found three fairly comprehensive lists online; each covers slightly different areas.

Amanda S
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  • Thanks, these lists are useful! I will accept your answer after waiting for a day to see if there is any better answer. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jun 01 '11 at 16:29
5

Section 5 of the ipadic user manual (warning: 271KB PDF) has a list of Japanese parts of speech which seems quite exhaustive. Each entry includes the name for the part of speech in both Japanese and English, an explanation in English and several Japanese examples.

aoeuueoa
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    Thanks. This manual is interesting. Just to add, some of the terminology used in the manual (such as “verb-main”) is nonstandard, so caution is needed to use it. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 27 '12 at 11:15
3

Sounds like you are looking for a technical dictionary (i.e. Japanese - English Dictionary of Technical Terms) which is more or less the Japanese term followed by the English term and the reading. These tend to be very specialized and domain specific (e.g. Computers/IT, medical, etc) so a standard dictionary may or may not have all of the terms you are looking for.

In regards to finding such a resource, you might be better off looking for one what was written for native Japanese speakers trying to learn English as most of the resources I've been able to find (i.e Japanese Grammatical Terms) appear quite limited.

  • Somewhat sadly, they don't appear to offer a Japanese - English Dictionary of Technical Terms - Linguistics. – jkerian May 31 '11 at 20:43
3

I found a list of English grammar terms in Japanese, and a very exhaustive list of English grammatical terms which you could use with a dictionary to compile your own list. The Japanese-English list isn't authoritative, but has a good enough translation for many terms.

nevan king
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  • Well, I know there are many lists of _English_ grammar terms both in Japanese and in English. I am looking for lists of _Japanese_ grammar terms both in Japanese and in English. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '11 at 20:49
  • I don't quite get the difference. That list gives Japanese grammar terms and their English translations, similar to what you gave above. – nevan king May 31 '11 at 20:55
  • For example, how do you look up the English translation for _joshi_ (助詞) in that list, if you do not know that the answer is “particle”? The list only contains grammatical terms used in the English grammar, and understandably this word is not on the list. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '11 at 20:58
  • Do you mean that the list isn't exhaustive? Here's another list with more terms: http://www.learn-japanese.info/language.html – nevan king May 31 '11 at 21:07
  • (1) “Do you mean that the list isn't exhaustive?” No. Please understand that the Japanese grammar discussed in Japanese and the English grammar discussed in Japanese require different vocabularies. The two lists you stated in the answer consist of the terms for the English grammar. The word _joshi_ (助詞) does _not_ appear in the English grammar as far as I know, which is why the two lists you mentioned in this answer do not contain this word. It has nothing to do with exhaustiveness. (more) – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '11 at 21:19
  • (cont’d) (2) The link in your latest comment is interesting. It shows mostly the terms used in the _English_ grammar: for example, I do not think that it is correct to translate _komoji_ (小文字) used in the Japanese grammar to “lowercase letter,” although “lowercase letter” in the English grammar is also called _komoji_ in Japanese. However, it also lists some of the terms used in the Japanese grammar such as _joshi_. It would have been great if it did not mix up the terms used for the Japanese grammar and the terms used for the English grammar. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '11 at 21:23