Japanese prefecture launches language guide to help foreigners navigate everyday life

If you live in Singapore, you would probably remember a TV advertisement for a Japanese hand soap saying “kirei kirei” means “clean clean”.

Now, a Japanese prefecture wants to help foreigners learn other commonly used onomatopoeic words.

Mie prefecture has launched a guidebook called E Kara Oto Ga Wakaru Hon, or Understanding Sounds Using Pictures, to help foreigners working there, reported Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

An onomatopoeic word has a sound that represents what the word means, such as buzz, bang, moan and ka-boom.

The book contains a list of 100 such words compiled from a Japanese dictionary.

They are divided into categories, ranging from actions and emotions to the description of inanimate objects.

These words come with illustrations and descriptions in Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese and Nepali.

The book is the brainchild of Mr Masao Hara, the deputy head of a non-profit in Mie prefecture on the main island of Honshu.

He said his interactions with non-Japanese people convinced him that the guide would be useful, according to the report.

Mr Hara said the onomatopoeic words in his guidebook can help someone explain physical pain, such as “zuki zuki” (throbbing) and “gan gan” (pounding), and say “shito shito” when it quietly rains.

His team took five years to complete the book, and one thousand copies have been printed.

It has already won at least one fan – Ms Wan Fang, a Chinese resident who has lived in Japan for two years.

She said the guidebook has made her job at a supermarket a little easier.

“When I was told that the floor was ‘tsuru tsuru’ in Japanese, I didn’t know what it meant, but when I saw the illustration in the book, I instantly understood that tsuru tsuru means the floor is clean or slippery,” Ms Wan told Mainichi Shimbun.

Japan’s population of foreigners is growing due to

the arrival of people filling a gap in the labour market

.

A Mie Labour Bureau report in January 2023 said some 31,000 foreign nationals worked in the prefecture.

Countrywide, the non-Japanese population reached a record 3.2 million in 2022, according to a report in The Guardian.

The foreigners will, however, still have their work cut out for them.

The guide has only 100 words, while the Japanese language is said to contain more than 1,000 onomatopoeic words.

It appears they need to be prepared to be “kura kura” (dizzy), before becoming “pera pera” (fluent in a language).