Hayaku In Japanese – The Life Saving Adverb

Please learn the Japanese adverb called hayaku. It’s not just important to know it, but in fact it can literally save your life to know this adverb and its practical use here in Japan!

Failure to understand the meaning of hayaku can in worst case lead to your own death.

What Does The Adverb Hayaku In Japanese Mean?

It depends on the situation, but the form you should immediately be aware of is its life saving meaning of fast. As in running fast for your life. When someone yells to run fast!

What if you hate running? Well, if you live in Japan like I do then running is not an option when big tsunami waves from the Pacific Ocean roll in 800 km/h (500 mph) towards you.

You got about maximum ten minutes of warning before the waves hit you and possibly kill you. If you in a such situation don’t know hayaku then you’ll wish you had practiced!

But hey, I know how to run?! Yeah – but do you know how to save other people’s lives in Japan? Do you know what to say to them in Japanese to encourage them to run faster?

Or are you that quiet gaijin (foreigner in Japanese) who focused learning all the wrong words instead of the ones that actually save lives in a Japanese natural catastrophe?

Hiragana Spelling Of Japanese Hayaku

To be able to write hayaku in complete Hiragana you need 3 syllables (ha + ya + ku).

You can find those in the Hiragana chart of the first basic 46 syllables (which are sound based characters in the Japanese language here in Japan).

ha = は

ya = や

ku = く

Therefore to write hayaku it’s simply to put those three small Hiragana syllables together.

hayaku = ha + ya + ku = は + や + く = はやく= はやく

As you can see the free Hiragana lessons on my website pays off! Yes, you can do it!

Shorter Kanji Spelling of Hayaku In Japanese

Now you know how to write hayaku in Hiragana. But how do you write the same thing using inclusion of Japanese Kanji? Here is how:

早くis read as hayaku, where the haya part is 早 in Kanji – while the ending of ku is still く in Hiragana as earlier.

So, now it can be read with only two Japanese symbols (one little Kanji symbol and one ending in easy to learn Hiragana) instead of 3 syllables completely written in Hiragana.

About The Tsunami Video – Pronunciation Of Hayaku

Except for hearing hayaku in the recording you also hear motto – which means more.

You can hear the Japanese man say motto when he encourages the tsunami survivors to hurry up running and keep pushing more – no matter how much it hurts to run when you are already exhausted tired. I recognize that feeling when I ran from the tsunami myself.

His mother is running in the video. You can see her by the red circle as she is running for her life. Luckily she made it and survived, even though it’s a bit unclear in this recording.

If you’ve never experienced the immediate threat of death by tsunami then maybe this video clip gives you a hint about the panic we here in Japan felt on 11th of March 2011.

Other Uses Of Hayaku In Japanese Language

Hayaku is a so called adverb (if you care about grammar terms) and it can mean fast as I mentioned earlier, but it can also mean rapidly, swiftly and quickly.

There are also another meanings of hayaku and those are early and soon.

If you want to learn more about this then you should take a look at hayai which is fast. Are you getting confused now? If not then also take a peek at isogu which means to do something fast by purpose. Those are some words in Japanese that you should learn.

Filed under: Japanese Words

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