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| Japanese (日本語 [Nihongo]) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Japan |
| Region: | East Asia |
| Total speakers: | 127 million |
| Ranking: | 8 |
| Genetic classification: | Disputed, considered language isolate |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Japan |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ja |
| ISO 639-2 | jpn |
| SIL | JPN |
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and is still sometimes spoken in countries besides Japan. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan and parts of China, locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese and in Korea people were given a Japanese name. As a result, there are still many people in these countries who speak Japanese instead of or as well as the local languages. In addition, emigrants from Japan, the majority of whom are found in the United States (notably California and Hawaii), and Brazil also frequently speak Japanese. There is also a small community in Davao, Philippines. Their descendants (known as nikkei 日系, literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently. There are estimated to be several million non-Japanese studying the language as well.
Japanese is the only official language of Japan, and Japan is the only country to have Japanese as an official language. There are two forms of the language considered standard: hyojungo 標準語 or standard Japanese, and kyotsugo 共通語 or the common language. As government policy has modernized Japan many of the distinctions between the two have blurred. Hyojungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Because it is Japan's only official language and there are few foreign Japanese speakers, the language is heavily tied to Japanese culture and vice-versa. There are many Japanese words describing certain Japanese cultural ideas, traditions, and customs (e.g., wa, nemawashi, kaizen, seppuku), which do not have corresponding words in other languages. Understanding the Japanese language requires knowledge of Japanese society.
There are dozens of dialects spoken in Japan. Among them are Kansai-ben, Tohoku-ben , and Kanto-ben (Tokyo and surrounding areas). Dialects are generally mutually intelligible, although extremely geographically separated dialects such as the Tohoku and Kyushu variants are not. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, morphology of the verb and adjectives, particle usage, vocabulary and in some cases pronunciation.
The Ryukyuan languages used in and around Okinawa are related to Japanese, but the two are mutually unintelligible. Due to the close relationship they are still sometimes considered only dialects of Japanese.
The Japanese sound system is relatively simple, compared to most languages. Syllables generally consist of at most one consonant and one vowel. There are 5 vowel and 17 consonant phonemes (compared to 15 vowels and 22 consonants in English). Japanese syllables consist of:
The vowels of Japanese are:
Japanese vowels are pure sounds like their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel, which is indicated as /u/ in the diagram. This vowel is often described as unrounded, but is actually pronounced with "compressed lips", which is a different articulatory gesture from either rounded or unrounded lips: it is unrounded, but without spreading. The "u=" to the right of the diagram are possible narrow transcriptions using IPA, as suggested by the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.
In some English dialects, Japanese vowels can be approximated as follows:
Vowels have a length distinction (short vs. long). Cf contrasting pairs of words like ojisan ("uncle") vs. ojiisan ("grandfather"), or tsuki ("moon") vs. tsuuki ("airflow").
Although Japanese has formally no diphthongs because phonologically two different vowels in a row are not considered a diphthong, there are diphthong-like monomoraic glide-vowel or bimoraic vowel-vowel sequences. When phonetically considered, sequences like hyo, pyu, hai among others are diphthongs.
| Coronal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Plosive | p b | t d | k g | |||
| Nasal | m | n̩ n | ||||
| Flap | ɺ | |||||
| Fricative | s z | h | ||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||
Japanese contains a number of allophonic processes which greatly alter its phonetic realization. This sometimes causes its phonemic inventory to appear larger than it actually is.
Elision is a major factor in Japanese pronunciation, with /i/ and /u/ tending to be elided when between unvoiced consonants or at the end of sentences, except when they are in accented or lengthened syllables (as in inu or kami, for example). Often, preceding fricatives will replace the vowel altogether. For example, Matsushita is pronounced "MaTSUshta", and the common sentence-ending copula desu is pronounced "dess". Gender roles also play a part: it is regarded as effeminate to pronounce elided vowels, particularly the terminal "u" as in "arimasu". Basilectic varieties of Japanese can sometimes be recognized by their hyper-elision, and formal or archaic dialects by their tendency to pronounce every syllable./ʔ/ assimilates to the following consonant, resulting in a geminate (double) consonant. It is thus normally realized as something other than a glottal stop.
/n̩/, the moraic nasal, undergoes a variety of assimilation processes. Its "default" word-final pronunciation varies considerably from dialect to dialect, and is sometimes realized as [m] or [ɴ]. Within words, it variously becomes:
The vowel /i/ and the "glide vowels" /ja/, /jo/, and /ju/ palatalize the consonants they follow:
Finally, the vowel /u/ has some effects of its own:
In English, stressed syllables in a word are pronounced louder and longer. In Japanese, all moras are pronounced with equal length and loudness. Syllables can consist of one or two moras, depending on the presence or absence of a long vowel, a syllable-final "n", or a doubled consonant (really a glottal stop), each of which adds one mora to the syllable length. Japanese is therefore said to be a mora-timed language.
In Japanese, a stressed syllable is merely pronounced at a higher pitch. This is part of the Japanese intonation pattern.
Japanese does have a distinct intonation pattern. This pattern can be heard not only in individual words, but also in whole sentences. Intonation is produced by a rise and fall in pitch over certain syllables. In the case of questions, the Japanese intonation patterns bear little resemblance to the English ones. This is a large source of confusion for westerners.
The Japanese intonation pattern varies with regional dialect.
Main article: Japanese grammar
Japanese grammar has the following features:
For example:
Therefore Japanese, like Korean and somewhat like Chinese, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it marks topic separately from subject, and the two do not always coincide.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Broadly speaking, there are three main politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form (kudaketa), the simple polite form (teinei) and the advanced polite form ( keigo).
Since most relationships are not equal in Japanese society, one person typically has a higher position. This position is determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favor tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until their teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto
The plain form in Japanese is recognized by the shorter, so-called dictionary (jisho) form of verbs, and the da form of the copula. In the teinei level, verbs end with the helping verb -masu, and the copula desu is used. The advanced polite form, keigo, actually consists of two kinds of politeness: honorific language (sonkeigo) and humble (kenjogo) language. Whereas teineigo is an inflectional system, keigo often employs many special (often irregular) honorific and humble verb forms.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his group. For example, the -san suffix ("Mr.", "Mrs." or "Ms.") is an example of honorific language. It should not be used to talk about oneself. Nor should it be employed when talking about someone from one's own company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group".
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made honorific by the addition of お o- or ご go-; as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word and is included even in non-honorific speech, such as gohan, or rice. Such a construction usually indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi ("friend"), would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status. On the other hand, a female speaker may sometimes refer to mizu (water) as o-mizu merely to show her cultural refinement, compared to more abrupt male speech patterns. See Japanese honorifics
Many researchers report that since the 1990s, the use of polite forms has become rarer, particularly among the young, who employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but as a relationship becomes more intimate, they speak more frankly. This often occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
Historically, Japanese has a large number of words that are borrowed from Chinese. (See further discussion below in the section on the Japanese writing system.) Japan also borrowed many words from European languages starting in the 19th century, including Portuguese, Dutch, German, French, and most recently English. Japanese also coined many neologisms (in kanji) to carry Western concepts; many of these were exported to Chinese and Korean via characters, in late 19th and early 20th century. In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon, particularly in the speech of the young and trendy. Words such as wanpatan (one-pattern) and sukinshippu (skinship), although coined from English, are nonsensical in a non-Japanese context.
Modern Japanese uses four different scripts:
For example, here is a phrase using all four scripts (a headline from the Asahi Shimbun on April 19, 2004) (kanji red, hiragana blue, katakana green, romaji and European numerals black):
For an example of a word (watashi, meaning "I") written in each of the four scripts, see the table below.
Kanji Hiragana Katakana Romaji 私 わたし ワタシ watashi
Since all Japanese are taught English in middle school and high school, most Japanese can read romaji. As a result, the amount of romaji in Japanese has increased considerably in recent decades. Japanese popular music lyrics in particular increasingly contain English words and phrases. Foreign loanword ( gairaigo 外来語) usage has both proponents and opponents in and out of Japan.
A large portion of the Japanese lexicon is comprised of direct borrowings from Chinese languages. These borrowings were historically written using the same kanji used to write the original words, but it's not a hard-and-fast rule that katakana is never used to write Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean loanwords. Almost all modern loanwords in Japanese are written using katakana; some examples from East Asian languages include:
The converse has also historically occurred; non-East Asian loanwords from the early days of Portuguese contact with Japanese society were originally written using kanji instead of katakana. Examples include:
In modern usage, these early loanwords are most commonly written in katakana, but the kanji readings are still well-known.
The Japanese writing system can be traced back to the 4th century AD, when the written Chinese language was introduced to Japan. Although several nationalists claimed that there was an even older ancient written form (神代文字, kamiyo moji) originated at Japan, the supporting evidences were found counterfeit. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates this is known to exist.
Initially, this was not used for writing Japanese: to be a literate Japanese meant the ability to read and write Classical Chinese. Eventually a system called kanbun (漢文) was developed, which used both Chinese characters ( kanji) and something very similar to Chinese grammar, but often with diacritic marks placed alongside the Chinese text to give hints as to the Japanese equivalent. The earliest written history of Japan, the Kojiki (古事記), believed to have been compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Japanese schoolchildren are still taught introductory classes in kanbun.
There was still no system for rendering Japanese in written form until the development of manyogana (万葉仮名), which used Chinese characters for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Manyogana was initially used to record poetry, as in the Manyoshu (万葉集), which was compiled sometime before 759, and from which the writing system derives its name. Hiragana and katakana were both outgrowths from manyogana.
Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan from China which had no native equivalent, many kanji words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese. This Chinese-derived reading is known as on-yomi 音読み, and this vocabulary as whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as kun-yomi 訓読み. A kanji may have zero, one or several of each of on-yomi and kun-yomi. In verbs and adjectives, okurigana can help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading.
Linguists have sometimes compared Japan's borrowing and adaptation of Chinese words into Japanese as similar to the effect that the Norman conquest of the British Isles had on the English language. Like English, Japanese has many synonyms of differing origin: words from both Chinese and native Japanese. In another similarity, words of Chinese origin often sound more formal or intellectual to a Japanese speaker, just as the latinate words in English often sound to an English speaker.The Japanese writing system remained largely unchanged up until the 19th century Meiji era educational reforms. These reforms included:
Western influences during the Meiji Era, and continued influences during the American occupation after World War II, also had important effects on the Japanese written language.
Some Japanese scholars suggested a radical change: abandon Japanese completely and adopt French or English as the national language. Although this suggestion was not adopted, the importation of foreign words (gairaigo 外来語) and the use of romaji has increased.
Another effect was to change the writing direction of Japanese. Until the Meiji era, Japanese text was written top to bottom, with columns advancing right to left. The Meiji era saw the first use of horizontally written Japanese. Before World War II, this horizontal text was written from right to left, so as to be consistent with traditional Japanese writing. Pages in books were turned from left to right, contrary to the Western style. After the end of World War II, horizontal text started to be written from left to right, in the common western style. Both vertical and horizontal (left to right) writing are in use today. Generally, newspapers and books use vertical text with pages turning from left to right, while magazines and print advertising are split evenly between the two formats. It is not uncommon even to see horizontal and vertical text on the same page.
Occasionally, horizontal writing from right to left can still be seen, when the reader is likely to encounter the text in that direction (i.e. on the sides of vehicles, where text is often written from the front to the rear on both sides of the vehicle). This can sometimes cause a funny situation. "Kaba", a type of tree, was used as a name for a frigate in WWII but was spelled "Baka", "idiot" on the side of the ship.
Later reforms include changing the kana representation to accord with modern pronunciation. For more information, see Historical kana usage.
One of the less well-known aspects of the modern Japanese writing system is that it allows for transmitting information usually done by using different words or by adding extra descriptive words in other languages. For example, Kanji watashi 私 "I" is often used in formal writing and by both sexes. Hiragana watashi わたし tends to be used in informal writing such as a diary or a letter to a friend and by a female. Katakana watashi ワタシ is used only rarely; Katakana is primarily used to spell out foreign words. Romaji watashi is rarely used and when it is, is used with a special message in mind.
When a Japanese reader encounters the different script, he can infer the nuance and the subject of the sentence. In manga (to a lesser extent, video games), encoding information by script shifts plays a significant role as it enables artists to pack more information in a little space. For example, with the single word watashi in Katakana readers will expect a foreign character to appear next, without even a single drawing of a foreigner beforehand. This could also be used for a dramatic effect coupled with the conjugation of verbs. A female disguised as a male could be written to use Kanji watashi when her secret is kept with the appropriate conjugation of verbs. Then when the secret is revealed, she would be written to use Hiragana watashi without taking off her disguise or any change in the way she is drawn. This technique could be inverted if a male is disguised as a female. With these techniques, even artists with limited drawing skill could represent different characters easily. This technique is used in other forms of literature, with similar or even more dramatic effects.
In addition to this, kanji compounds can be given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes: in Natsume Soseki's short story The Fifth Night the example 接続って can be found, which would usually be written 繋がって or just つながって .
There are a number of methods of rendering Japanese in Roman letters. The Hepburn method of romanization, designed for English speakers, is a de facto standard widely used inside and outside Japan (and used in the English Wikipedia). The Kunrei-shiki system has a better correspondance with kana, making it easier for the Japanese themselves to learn; it is officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, but rarely used outside Japan. Other systems of romanization include Nihon-shiki, JSL, and Wpuro. A comparison of these systems is given in the romaji article.
Learning Japanese involves understanding grammar, pronunciation, the writing system, and acquiring adequate vocabulary. While the sound system is simple compared with other languages, the writing system and certain words that have a close connection with Japanese culture may prove to be difficult. Those who speak a language involving Chinese characters may find learning kanji easy. A large number of learners come from Australia, China, and Korea. The Japanese government has provided some standard tests to measure the ability to speak Japanese for non-Japanese speakers. Among them is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). The motivation to learn Japanese is usually an opportunity of a job in Japanese companies or access to Japanese pop and sub cultures. Unlike languages like Chinese, knowing standard Japanese suffices most of the time but it may be necessary to be familiar with local dialects on some occasions. Many learners testify that reading manga and watching anime helps quite a lot.
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