Happy Birthday in Japanese Characters

There are actually a number of ways Happy Birthday can be said in Japanese. The easiest way would be to use the Japanese phonetic alphabet which is called Katakana (カタカナ) these angular characters are used to represent foreign words in Japanese or phonetic sounds. There character actually have no meaning.

The result would sound like "Happii Baasudee" 　ハッピーバースデー.

Although most Japanese do not speak conversational English, there are a lot of English words in the language pronounced with a heavy Japanese accent. Words like "Happy Birthday, Merry Xmas, Happy New Year" all understood by Japanese.

The correct way to say Happy Birthday in Japanese is to say:

"Otanjoubi omedatou" or お誕生日おめでとう

The Japanese charcter 誕　(tan) means born, or to become alive. 生(jou) means life or to live, so when you place them together you get 誕生　(tanjou) which means birth. 日(bi) means day, it is normally pronounced "hi" but in Japanese "the h,b and p sounds are interchangeable depending on the preceding sound.

おめでとう　- Omedetou - simply means congratulations. The お(o) at the beginning is a honorific polite speech. Many Japanese words have the お(o) sound at the beginning of words to make them polite.

Learning to Japanese is actually easier than most people think. If you concentrate on the spoken language rather than the written language, you will find that the grammar structure of Japanese is much simpler than English. Within 6 months it's possible to speak at a basic conversational level. Below are some recommended books which I have used myself.