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Introduction
Characteristics
o
Vocabulary
Grammar
Writing System
Varieties of Japanese
Regional Dialects
Further Readings
Introduction
The Japanese language is spoken by the approximately 120 million inhabitants of
Japan, and by the Japanese living in Hawaii and on the North and South American
mainlands. It is also spoken as a second language by the Chinese and the Korean
people who lived under Japanese occupation earlier this century.
Characteristics of Japanese
Vocabulary (My note: Also read Chpt. 4 Words of Iwasaki)
Three categories of words exist in Japanese. The native Japanese words constitute the
largest category, followed by words originally borrowed from China in earlier history,
and the smallest but a rapidly growing category of words borrowed in modern times
from Western languages such as English. This third category also contains a small
number of words that have come from other Asian languages. Studies by the National
Language Institute show that the frequency of these three types of words varies
according to the kinds of written material examined. In magazines, native Japanese
words constitute more than half of the total words, while the Chinese borrowed words
average about 40%, and the rest drawn from the recently borrowed words from
Western languages. In newspapers, the words of Chinese origin number greater than
the Japanese native words.
(e.g., She saw him). If we go back in history, the older English of five hundred to one
thousand years ago had an extensive case-marking system similar to modern Japanese.
These case markers make it possible for the words in Japanese to appear in different
orders and retain the same meaning. In the sentence we have been looking at, it is
possible to place the object where the subject normally occurs, and the subject in the
normal object position, and not change the meaning: konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga tukau. If
we do the same thing to English, the meaning of the sentence is radically altered (The
computer uses Naomi). If we have a more complex sentence, it is still possible to
change the order of all the words as long as the verb remains at the end. The sentence
"Naomi gave a computer to Taro" has the subject-indirect object-object- verb basic
order, Naomi-ga (Naomi) Taro-ni (to Taro) konpyuuta-o (computer) ageta (gave). This
sentence has the following word order possibilities, starting with the basic order we
just observed.
Naomi-ga Taro-ni konpyuuta-o
Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o Taro-ni
Taro-ni Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o
konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga Taro-ni
Taro-ni konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga
konpyuuta-o Taro-ni Naomi-ga
ageta
ageta
ageta
ageta
ageta
ageta
Although the Japanese language allows a multitude of word orders, the one inflexible
order is the verb, in that it must appear at the end of the sentence. This is no accident.
The core element in a sentence is the verb, because the verb expresses the action or
the event involving the referents of the other words. Such a core is often referred to as
the "head" of a sentence or a clause, and Japanese always places the head at the end of
its clause. In a noun phrase, modifiers function to modify the head, as in expensive
computer, where expensive modifies the head of the phrase, computer. In Japanese,
the modifier always precedes the head, as expected (takai (expensive) konpyuuta
(computer)). This is not only true of simple modifiers, but for modifiers that involve
an entire sentence. Note that in the English sentence the computer [that Naomi uses],
the bracketed portion modifies the head computer, and this modifier follows the head.
In Japanese, the head-final order is invariably followed, so that this would be
expressed with the modifier preceding the head: [Naomi-ga tukau (that Naomi uses)]
konpyuuta. With few exceptions, the languages of the world either follow the headfinal order, just as in Japanese, or the head-initial order (for example, Indonesian).
Within the same language, we might see one or the otheroption for different types of
clauses, as we saw for English simple modifiers (head-final) and sentence modifiers
(head-initial). Japanese is consistently head-final for all types of clauses.
The Japanese verb does not indicate number or gender. The same form for the verb is
used with singular and plural subjects, and no gender distinction is made. The verb
inflects for tense, negation, aspect, and mood. Following are some inflections for the
verb "to push," which has the root os-.
os-u (push) present/dictionary form
os-ita (pushed) past
os-anai (not push) negation
os-ite iru (is pushing) progressive
os-e (push) imperative
os-itara (if (you) push) conditional
These forms vary depending on whether the root of the verb ends in a consonant or a
vowel. While the root of the verb "to push" above is consonant-final, a verb such as
"to eat" has a vowel-final root (tabe-), and it takes a slightly different shape for each
of the inflections: tabe- ru (present/dictionary form), tabe-ta (past), tabe-nakatta
(negation), tabe-te iru (progressive), tabe-ro (imperative), tabe-tara (conditional). In
languages such as Italian and Spanish, a rich verbal inflection that indicates both
number and gender often allows the speaker not to express the subject if it is
understood in the context, e.g., (Juan) vio ese film ((Juan) saw that film) in Spanish.
In Japanese, despite the lack of number and gender inflection on the verb, it is
possible not only to leave the subject out, but any other element in the sentence except
the verb, so long as it is understood in the sentence. The Japanese counterpart of the
sentence "Naomi uses the computer" may be expressed simply by saying the verb
tukau (use), so long as it's clear to the hearer from context that the sentence refers to
Naomi and to the computer.
In Japanese, ideas often expressed in other languages with separate clauses and
sentences frequently take the shape of a word, albeit a complex one. This is the
agglutinative nature of the language. For example, the expression in English, Naomi
was made to go purchase a more expensive computer by Mary, contains separate
verbs was made, go, and purchase. In the Japanese counterpart, these verbs together
form one complex verb (Japanese uses "come" for the English "go" in this context) :
katte-ko-sase-rare-ta (buy-come-made-was-past). Other languages that have an
agglutinative verb system include Korean, Navaho, and Turkish.
Writing System (My note: Also read Chpt. 2 Writing System in Iwasaki)
Japanese is traditionally written vertically, with the lines starting from the right side of
the page. While this way of writing is still predominant, there is another way that is
identical to English in starting from the top left hand side, with each line written
horizontally.
relationship to Korean. According to Roy Andrew Miller, the original Altaic language
was spoken in the Transcaspian steppe country, and the speakers of this language
undertook massive migrations before 2,000 B.C., spreading this language family from
Turkey in the west to Japan in the east. However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with
some major features of Japanese, leading some scholars to turn to the languages of the
South Pacific in the Austronesian family for clues of genetic relationship. A
hypothesis that has currency among a number of Japanese historical linguists is a
"hybrid" theory that accepts the relationship to the Altaic family, but also hypothesizes
influence from Austronesian languages possibly through heavy lexical borrowing. It is
also important to note that in the northern island of Hokkaido, the Ainu people, who
are physically and culturally different from the rest of the Japanese, speak a language
that has even more successfully escaped attempts to relate it to a single language
family.
With the introduction of the writing system from China starting about 1,500 years ago,
the Japanese people began to extensively record their language through poetry and
prose. The language of that era, called Old Japanese, had a number of features that
have been lost through time. For example, Susumu Ono has argues that Old Japanese
had eight vowels instead of the five that we see today. There were also a number of
grammatical and morphological features that no longer exist. The transition from Old
Japanese to Modern Japanese took place from about the twelfth century, A.D., to the
sixteenth century, A.D.
VARIETIES OF JAPANESE
Regional Dialects (My note: Also read Chpt. 1 Overview in Iwasaki)
There are a large number of dialects throughout the four main islands and the smaller
islands of Okinawa and others. Some dialects such as those spoken in the southern
parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa) are virtually incomprehensible to the speakers of
other dialects, requiring the use of the standard (or "common") dialect for
communication. The two dialect families with the largest number of speakers are the
dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which is equivalent to the "common" dialect, and
the dialects of the Kansai region spoken in western Japan in cities such as Kyoto,
Osaka, and Kobe. Due to the spread of the common dialect through television and
radio, most people outside the Tokyo region speak the common dialect as well as the
dialect of their area.
Social Styles of Speech (My note: Also read Chpt. 3 The Keigo System in
Niyekawa)
Further Readings
Masayoshi, Shibatani. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press. 1990.
Miller, Roy Andrew. Origins of the Japanese Language. University of Washington
Press. 1980.
Text from Microsoft Incarta, Permission given by Microsoft Corporation for use by JP
NET.