Fun with Japanese – Advanced

When I started learning Japanese some of the best advice given to me was to forget textbook Japanese and learn what is actually spoken. I really took that advice to heart. Having only limited access to Japanese natives me at that point, I did the next best thing, watched loads of Japanese dramas.

There was this word that kept on appearing that I didn’t quite get.
じゃん jyan. What is it? What does it mean? じゃん is a contraction for じゃない jyanai. じゃない is often used at the end of a sentence looking for confirmation of something or agreement. kind of like ね ne, but not really.

Like most languages, native speakers of Japanese tend to abbreviate when speaking so they can speak faster. Personal Computer is パーソナルコンピュータ in Japanese and I don’t think I’ve heard it said once. The word I hear and see everywhere is パソコン . Similarly, じゃん is simply the first syllable n　from the first な in じゃない preceded by じゃ.

Let’s try it out.

ビールが好きだけど、飲んでちょっとお酒くさいじゃない？だからあまり飲まない。
ビール　が　すき　だけど　のんで　ちょっと　おさけ　くさい　じゃない？　だから　あまり　のまない。
biiru suki dakedo, nonnde chotto osake kusai jyanai? dakara amari nomanai

I like beer but, when you drink it you smell a little bit like alchool, right? So I don’t drink beer so much.

It’s a straight forward sentence. Let’s use our new found abbreviation knowledge and make it sound a bit more native.

ビールが好きだけど、飲んでちょっとお酒くさいじゃん？だからあまり飲まない。

A Note on Accent
While both じゃない and じゃん mean the same thing their native accent is opposite. When saying じゃない and you are looking for agreement of something you would end with a raised intonation of ない i.e. —↑. Similar to when you ask a question in English.

じゃん on the other hand, as an abbreviation of じゃない follows the same accent when saying じゃない but since it is cut short, so is the accent. That is to say the accent of じゃん　should be completely flat in most case.

You’ll notice when trying to say the example sentence with じゃん、keeping the flat accentin じゃん should make it a bit easier to say. Practice saying it a few times until it comes out smoothly.

With that, you are now one step closer to sounding like a native.