Facts About Japanese Language In General To Keep You Informed

Japanese, hailing from Japan, is one of the oldest East Asian languages which is used by almost 128 million individuals.

The Japanese language reflects the history of the Japanese culture and belongs to the Japonic language family. Although its origins and relationship to other languages are unknown as this tonal language is one of the toughest languages to learn.

Did you know almost 15% of Hawaiian residents are Japanese speakers!

Even some Chinese symbols have Japanese grammar characteristics, such as Japanese word order. It also consists of foreign words.

The Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa and the Amami Islands are divergent enough to be regarded as a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only are they unintelligible to Japanese language speakers, but they are also unintelligible to speakers of other Ryukyuan languages.

However, many ordinary Japanese people, unlike linguists, see the Ryukyuan languages as dialects of Japanese such as the Kansai dialect.

The royal court also appears to have spoken a unique Japanese dialect at the time. Most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese, a writing style that was popular throughout the Heian period but fell out of favor in the late Meiji period.

It is one of the East Asian languages. It is considered a minority language by some but it's convenient for people studying Japanese. They have different writing systems than Chinese writing.

After reading the facts around this tonal language, also check aboriginal language facts and Brazil language facts.

Japanese Throughout The World

The origin of the Japanese language has been a bone of contention among linguists. Some believe that the language hails from Ural-Altaic while others believe it has a Polynesian or Chinese influence.

The Japanese language is widely related to the Ural-Altaic family, which nests Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean among a few.

Japanese, in all probability, seems to have a language family of its own. N the contrary, there are some linguists, who believe that it is related to Japanese and Turkish. Over 130 million and ex-pats, speak this language across the world. English and Japanese share differences more than similarities.

Both languages stand different in sentence structure. The European languages like German and Swedish have much in common with English. Also, the Japanese language is regarded as the toughest language for native English speakers to learn.

The Japanese language students find it difficult to study English due to this striking difference. There could be other differences too! Read them here!

Writing Styles

Does Chinese influence on Japanese mean that the Japanese language has a relationship with Chinese? Not necessarily.

In the Japanese script, we can spot various characters in Chinese. These characters are addressed as Kanji characters. Chinese, has undeniably contributed loads to the Japanese vocabulary.

The writing system followed for the Japanese language, like the Chinese, employs scripts named Hiragana and Katakana. Chinese, along with Arabic has made immense add-ons to the Japanese numeral system. When English has a vocabulary with Latin and Greek roots, the Latin script in Japanese, makes an occasional appearance.

It is believed that this popular language has no genetic relation to any other language, making it one of the unique languages to be ever used for children's literature in Japan.

The present Japanese script is a blend of all three. It was in the mid 18th century, Japanese acquainted with English which gifted the language with anglicized versions of words like ‘teburu’ for the table, ‘Biru’ for Beer, ‘gurasu’ for glass, ‘asiu’ for ice, ‘takashi’ for tax and ‘hoteru’ for the hotel.

Japanese has derived some words from the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish too.

Those like ‘pan’ for bread and ‘igirisu’ from the Portuguese ‘po’ and ‘ingles’. They came along with missionaries and merchants to Japan during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Japanese Language Characters

Japanese is often called a mora-timed language, for it has a simple phonotactic, a vowel system, and a weighty pitch accent.

The worse order of the language can be described as subject followed by the object and then by a verb. The reasons how the Japanese are agglutinative and mora-timed are many.

The phrase-suffixes in the language, give it an emphatic tone. Verbs are coupled for tense and voice and so are the adjectives. You would be amazed at the fact that the Japanese have an intricate system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to address persons of all designations!

Korean is widely seen as pertinent to the Japanese in terms of general structure, vowel harmony, lack of conjunctions, and the extensive honorifics that both languages enjoy. Except for the pronunciation of either language, they have several things in common.

Japanese has a complex writing system with two sets of phonetic syllabaries; that hold at least 50 syllables each, and boundless Chinese characters called ‘Kanji’. The Japanese Ministry of education has made them compulsory before high school graduation.

The characters in the language underwent a huge transition with the adaptation of Chinese characters between the sixth to ninth centuries. The ‘Hiragana’ and ‘Katakana’ were derived from ‘Kanji’.

English Vs Japanese

When it comes to the alphabetic system, the Japanese writing system looks tangled. It has three scripts, Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, while the modern Japanese uses Latin script in company names and advertisements.

That’s a beautiful blend! These were written and printed in columns from top to bottom and right to left, while the modern Japanese is printed in the English order of scripting.

Despite these differences, Japanese learners of English easily grasp English writing. With the evolution of modern Japanese, Latin and English scripts have become familiar among the Japanese. The Romaji; which is a representation of the entire Japanese writing system in Latin script, for the non-native speakers to acquaint with the language easily-says it all!

When it comes to phonology, Japanese is characterized by five pure vowel sounds that may be short or long; a simple syllable structure and a vowel sound preceded by 15 consonant sounds. In English, on the other hand, consonant sound combinations are not that composite as in Japanese.

This hinders the Japanese learners of English to some extent, as they may have difficulty in perceiving certain consonant sounds.

You might have noticed that in English, words like a coat or caught, bought or boat sound similar and some have altogether different spellings but a parallel pronunciation. Vowel sounds, therefore, could be a problem for non-native speakers.

I and r sound the same at times and so is the trouble with the v sound.

B is often pronounced in place of V, as in ban for van or ‘bery’ for very. The ‘eth’ sounds like in the words clothes, thirteenth and month often prove to be gnarly for the learners.

In English, meaning can be simply conveyed with a change of pitch and stressing the sounds while expressing. The intonation style of Japanese stands aloof. However, little exposure to English is all enough to acquaint with the sounds and for an upper hand on the language.

Both in English and Japanese, tense and voice are conveyed through changes in verb forms. Peculiarly, Japanese doesn’t have any auxiliary verbs, due to why they tend to use simple tense in English too. For instance, ‘I help you after school’.

Japanese As A Second Language

Learning a language means opening doors to a new vista of culture and ideas. Learning Japanese would mean the same. It would introduce us to Japanese society, culture, and people.

Learning Japanese as a second language would mean that we get to fathom the 130 million people. Should language ever be a barrier to breaking through inter-cultural boundaries and acquaint with diverse spheres of the world? Here is a quick read on Japanese as a second language.

Learning a second language is not always an easy task. It’s challenging to learn fluency and speaking skills, which might take a lifetime! It's not easy as the way you mastered your mother tongue.

From ‘Karate’ and ‘Karaoke’ to ‘adzuki beans’ and Zen Buddhism’, we have borrowed countless words from Japanese. Though it has had a huge European influence, the oriental traditions disseminated throughout the world and west, in particular, are praiseworthy. The Japanese cuisine names like the ‘Koi’, ‘Sushi’ and ‘Bonsai’ are worth-mentioning.

Japanese is the ninth commonly spoken language in the world. The diaspora of around 5 million talks Japanese. The language is predominant among the Japanese descendants of Hawaii and Brazil; who speak the language with utmost proficiency.

Japanese has become inevitable in the social and business settings. Since the second world war, the country is booming as an economic giant to become one of the world’s leading economic powers. In spite of its few natural resources, Japan is a well-to-do industrial power.

Japan is recognized for the people’s profound work ethics and ties of cooperation between the government and industrial sector; giving the industrial and service sectors, a conducive work environment. The position of a person hinges on the factors such as their job, age, experience, and even psychological state.

They use varying degrees of politeness to different people based on that rank. Interestingly, the Japanese children rarely use polite ways till their teenage, when they are taught to talk more politely.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for facts about Japanese language then why not take a look at Japan government facts, or Japan geography facts.