Depending on the law of a country, the week either starts on Monday and ends on Sunday, or starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. In most countries, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is a religious day for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, respectively.
Suffix
A suffix is a few letters put at the end of a word to change its meaning. It is a type of affix mostly used to show Inflection
Verb examples:
Adjective examples:
Compare to prefix. Prefixes are letters put at the beginning of a word to change its meaning.
Japanese language
The Japanese language () is the official language of Japan, in East Asia. Japanese belongs to the Japonic language family, which also includes the endangered Ryukyuan languages. One theory says Japanese and Korean are related, but most linguists no longer think so. Other theories about the origin of Japanese are that it is related to the Austronesian languages, the Dravidian languages, or the controversial Altaic language family. The term used for Japanese as a course of study by citizens is "kokugo" (国語), which means national language. Nonetheless, Japanese is still referred to as Nihon-go by the Japanese.
Japanese uses three separate writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic systems and show the pronunciation of Japanese words. Kanji is the Japanese variation of Chinese characters and shows the meaning of Japanese words. The three systems are used interchangeably, and all three systems can often be found in the same sentence. The three systems are each reserved for different purposes.
In English, the order of the words is very important. For example, the sentences "Is it?" and "It is." mean different things. In Japanese, differences are often made by adding or changing the ending of words (using the previous example, one would say them as そうですか "sou desu ka" and そうです "sou desu", respectively). A Japanese word has a stem called a "body", and additional parts (called suffixes). Changing the suffix can change the meaning or the grammar of the word.
After World War II, many English words entered the Japanese language. An example of one would be “アイスクリーム, aisukurīmu”, meaning “ice cream”.
Japanese has five vowel sounds that can have two different lengths. They are "a, i, u, e, o". In IPA they are transliterated as /a/, /i/, /ɯ/, /e/, /o/; and they are pronounced in English as "ah, ee, oo, eh, oh". Lengthening a vowel can change the meaning of the word: "ojisan" (おじさん, uncle) and "ojiisan" (おじいさん, grandfather). Japanese has a sound that is like the English "l", but it is also like the English "r". (That is why it can be difficult for many Japanese when to learn to make both sounds when they speak English.) Japanese has a sound that is not uncommon in English and is usually written "Tsu" (つ). This sound appears in "tsunami" (つなみ), the Japanese word for large ocean waves caused by earthquakes or extreme weather.
When foreigners speak Japanese, it is important they know how formal they must be when they speak to people you may or may not know. In Japan, it could be considered quite impolite (rude) if you are not formal enough.
In Japanese, sentences use subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, so the verb is at the end of the sentence and the subject is at the beginning. Many sentences have no subject, and the listener can infer the subject based context and the form of a verb.
In Japanese, Japan is called "Nihon" (日本), and the language is called "Nihongo" (日本語) (-go means "language"). Sometimes, the words "Nippon" and "Nippongo" are also used, but both words are now thought of as more nationalist, and "Nihon" is a more neutral word. The kanji of the word mean "sun-origin." Since Japan is at the eastern edge of Asia, to observers in China, the sun rose from the direction of Japan. That is why Japan is called "The Land of Rising Sun."
Japanese is an agglutinative language, especially in its verbs. Its words has a short "body," and prefixes or suffixes are easily added to change or to redefine the meaning.
Japanese words come from three main sources. The first is "wago" (和語), which are native Japanese words and can also be called "yamato kotoba" (大和言葉). The second is "kango" (漢語), which are Chinese loanwords. The third is "gairaigo" (外来語), which are loanwords borrowed from languages other than Chinese (usually English since the Second World War).
Japanese has three main writing systems:
Hiragana is a Syllabary, meaning each character represents a syllable or vowel. Hiragana is the standard, phonetic writing system in Japanese and is used for grammatical words or particles (eg. は、を (wa - Subject particle, o - Object Particle)); words that don't have Kanji characters (eg. こんにちは (kon'nichiwa - hello)); or for beginners to write Kanji. The symbols were originally adopted from Kanji characters and have changed overtime into their distinct, rounded shapes (e.g 以 →い).
Katakana is also a Syllabary, with each Hiragana character having a character in Katakana (eg. あ = ア こ = コ). Katakana is used for impact (similar to italics in English) as well as gairaigo words and direct transliterations from English (e.g メニュー - Menyuu (Menu)). Katakana was originally made by Buddhist Monks to teach Japanese people how to read Chinese.
Kanji is an adaptation of the Chinese logographic writing system, meaning each symbol was originally meant to look like the word it was describing. Each symbol can represent a syllable (eg. 大 - dai) or a word (eg. 音 - oto (sound)). There are multiple pronunciations for each Kanji character, categorised into On'yomi (音読み) or Kun'yomi (訓読み), depending on the word's origin.
Spice
Spice is an ingredient that adds flavor to food. It is usually used to enrich or alter the quality of something. Spices can be used to give food an interesting and exciting taste.
Examples of a spice would be cinnamon, fenugreek and nutmeg.
Spices can also be used to hide or cover up bad tastes in the food, because it is rotten or affected by fungi, e.g. marzipan.
Indians and Pakistanis use a lot of spices like turmeric
Flavor
Flavour or flavor (US English) is the main quality of anything which affects the taste. When someone remarks on the "flavor" of something they are trying to describe the specific way something tastes.
Flavor can also be used to describe the act of adding a taste alteration (to change the taste) to something. This is usually done by adding spices or sugars, though in "processed food" there are oftentimes artificial (fake) flavors.
Bank
A bank is a financial institution where customers can save or borrow money. Banks also invest money to build up their reserve of money. What they do is regulated by laws. Those laws differ in different countries. The people who work at a bank are called bank employees. Certain banks deal directly with the public and they are the only ones which an ordinary person will deal with. Other banks deal with investments and international currency trading.
Customer's money may be placed in the bank for safe keeping. Banks may give loans to customers under an agreement to pay the money back to the bank at a later time, with interest. An example is getting a mortgage to buy a house or apartment. Banks also can use the money they have from deposit accounts to invest in businesses in order to make more money.
In most countries the rules for banks are made by the government acting through laws. A central bank (such as the Bank of England) adjusts how much money is issued at a particular time. This is a factor in the economy of a country, and the government takes the big decisions. These "banks of issue" take in, and issue out, coins and banknotes.
The word "bank" comes from an Italian word "banco", meaning "a bench", since Italian merchants in the Renaissance made deals to borrow and lend money beside a bench. They placed the money on that bench.