Japanese Beginner Phrases Podcast 10

Beginning Japanese Conversational Phrases #10: Languages & People

Today's podcast will look at how to say nationalities and languages

In many cases to say the word for a country's language and people is simply to add 'go' and 'jin' respectively after the country's name.

Of course this doesn't always work since not every country is named after its language.

Let's look at the United States or America. In Japanese this is

アメリカ amerika

Can you guess how to say an American person?

アメリカ人 amerika jin

But in America we don't speak American we speak English. I remember many years ago when teaching basic English to Japanese elementary school students, the children would often ask if I spoke amerikago. Well, I don't speak amerikago, I speak eigo.

The word for the English language is

英語 eigo

Here is how you say England, the country:

イギリス igirisu

And an English person is

イギリス人 igirisu jin

We will pick up on asking language related questions in the next podcast.

For more on this, please see our Flash Countries, Languages, and People page with sound.