Japanese language

Japanese language
Nhật Bản ngữ Nihon-go
"Nihongo"(" Japanese ") inJapanese script
Pronunciation	/nihoɴɡo/:[ɲihoŋɡo], [ɲihoŋŋo]
Native to	Japan Russia Taiwan South Korea Palau
Ethnicity	Japanese(Yamato)
Native speakers	125 million (2010)
Language family	Japonic Japanese language
Early forms	Old Japanese Early Middle Japanese Late Middle Japanese Early Modern Japanese
Writing system	Chinese characters(kanji) Kana(hiragana katakana) Japanese Braille
Signed forms	Signed Japanese
Official status
Official language in	Japan(de facto)
Recognised minority language in	Palau ∟Angaur
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ja
ISO 639-2	jpn
ISO 639-3	jpn
Glottolog	nucl1643excludingHachijo
Linguasphere	45-CAA-a

A replica from theMan'yōshū,the oldest surviving collection of Japanese poetry from theNara period.Written in Chinese characters, it is in the Japanese language.

The story Japanese “Botchan”reading inJapanese (Kansai dialect)

TheJapanese language(Japanese:Nhật Bản ngữ,romanized:Nihongo) is theofficial languageofJapan,in EastAsia.Japanese belongs to theJaponic language family,which also includes the endangeredRyukyuan languages.One theory says Japanese andKoreanare related, but most linguists no longer think so. Other theories about the origin of Japanese are that it is related to theAustronesian languages,theDravidian languages,or thecontroversialAltaiclanguage family.The term used for Japanese as a course of study by citizens is"kokugo" ( quốc ngữ ), which meansnational language.Nonetheless, Japanese is still referred to as Nihon-go by the Japanese.

Japanese uses three separate writing systems:hiragana,katakana,andkanji.Hiragana and katakana are phonetic systems and show the pronunciation of Japanese words. Kanji is the Japanese variation ofChinese charactersand 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.

InEnglish,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 kaand そうですsou desu,respectively). A Japanese word has a stem called a "body", and additional parts (calledsuffixes). Changing the suffix can change the meaning or the grammar of the word.

AfterWorld War II,many English words entered the Japanese language (wasei-eigo). An example of one would be "アイスクリーム (romanized: aisukurīmu)”, meaning “ice cream”.

Sounds

Japanese has fivevowelsounds that can have two different lengths. They area, i, u, e, o.In IPA they are transliterated as /a/, /i/, /ɯ/, /e/, /o/; and they are pronounced in English asah, ee, oo, eh, oh.Lengthening a vowel can change the meaning of the word:ojisan(おじさん, uncle) andojiisan(おじいさん, grandfather). Japanese has a sound that is like theEnglishl,but it is also like the Englishr.(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 uncommon in English and is usually writtenTsu(つ). This sound appears in "tsunami"(つなみ), the Japanese word for large ocean waves caused byearthquakesorextreme weather.

Grammar

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 theverbis at the end of thesentenceand thesubjectis 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 calledNihon( Nhật Bản ), and the language is calledNihongo( Nhật Bản ngữ ) (-go meanslanguage). Sometimes, the wordsNipponandNippongoare also used, but both words are now thought of as morenationalist,andNihonis a more neutral word. The kanji of the word mean "sun-origin. "Since Japan is at the eastern edge of Asia, to observers inChina,the sun rose from the direction of Japan. That is why Japan is called "The Land of Rising Sun."

Japanese is alsoagglutinative 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 iswago( cùng ngữ ), which are native Japanese words and can also be calledyamato kotoba( đại cùng ngôn diệp ). The second iskango( Hán ngữ ), which are Chineseloanwords.The third isgairaigo( từ ngoại lai ), which are loanwords borrowed from languages other than Chinese (usually English since theSecond World War).

Writing System

Japanese has three main writing systems:

• Hiragana(ひらがな)
• Katakana(カタカナ)
• Kanji( chữ Hán )

Hiragana is a Syllabary, meaning each character represents asyllableorvowel.Each character is a comprised of either a vowel, a consonant-vowel blend, or the syllabic consonant, n (ん). Hiragana is the standard,phoneticwriting system in Japanese and is used for grammatical words or particles e.g. は, を (wa - Subject particle, o - Object Particle); words that don't have Kanji characters e.g. 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. Lấy →い).

Katakana is also a Syllabary, with each Hiragana character having a character in Katakana (e.g. あ = ア こ = コ). Katakana is used for impact (similar to italics in English) as well asgairaigowords and directtransliterationsfrom English e.g. メニュー (Menyuu - Menu). Katakana was originally made byBuddhistMonks to teach Japanese people how to read Chinese.

Kanji is an adaptation of the Chineselogographicwriting system, meaning each symbol was originally meant to look like the word it was describing. Each symbol can represent a word e.g. Âm (oto - sound) or a syllable in a larger word. There are multiple pronunciations for each Kanji character, categorised into On'yomi ( âm đọc み) or Kun'yomi ( huấn đọc み), depending on the word's origin.