Japanese language

Japanese日本語, , listen is an East Asian language spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people as living as primarily in Japan, a only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic i.e. Japanese-Ryukyuan Linguistic communication family, and its classification with other language families is unclear. Linguists produce tried formation the Japonic languages with other families such(a) as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, in addition to now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals remain to gained widespread acceptance. Japanese has no demonstrable genealogical relationship with Chinese. However, a large detail of its vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese. Loanwords develope become frequent in advanced Japanese, and words from English roots have proliferated.

Japanese is an mora-timed language with relatively simple phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word format is commonly subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to increase emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.

Written Japanese still allowed prevalent use of Chinese characters, invited as 漢字, lit. Han characters. The Japanese writing system also uses two unique syllabic or moraic scripts derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ひらがな or 平仮名, 'simple characters' and katakana カタカナ or 片仮名, 'partial characters'. Latin script rōmaji ローマ字 is also used in a limited fashion such(a) as for imported acronyms in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals.

Little is call of the language's prehistory, or when it number one appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century advertising recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did non appear until the 8th century. During the Heian period 794–1185 in Japan, the Chinese language had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese 1185–1600 spoke changes in atttributes that brought it closer to the contemporary language, and the first appearance of European loanwords. The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region in the south, up to the Edo region modern Tokyo in the Early Modern Japanese period early 17th century–mid 19th century. coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly.

Geographic distribution

Although Japanese is spoken most exclusively in Japan, it has been spoken outside. before and during World War II, through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea, as living as partial occupation of China, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, numerous elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese.

Japanese emigrant communities the largest of which are to be found in Brazil, with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than the 1.2 million of the United States sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. about 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia especially in the eastern states, Canada especially in Vancouver where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry, the United States notably Hawaii, where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California, and the Philippines particularly in Davao region and Laguna province.

Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo標準語, meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo共通語, "common language". The meanings of the two terms are most the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a impression that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration明治維新, , 1868 from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo see Yamanote. Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. this is the the description of Japanese discussed in this article.

Formerly, specifications Japanese in writing文語, . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers numerous Japanese laws that survived World War II are still calculation in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language. Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.

The 1982 state constitution of Angaur, Palau, names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of the state. However, the results of the 2005 census show that in April 2005 there were no usual or legal residents of Angaur aged 5 or older who intended Japanese at home at all.

Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.

In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found the four most unintelligible dialects excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tohoku dialects to students from Greater Tokyo are the Kiso dialect in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture, the Himi dialect in Toyama Prefecture, the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect in Okayama Prefecture. The survey is based on recordings of 12- to 20-long, of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened and translated word-by-word. The listeners are any Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region.

There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island whose dialects are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese. Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy see Kansai dialect. Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers.

The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time. Most likely being the spoken form of Classical Japanese language, a writing nature that was prevalent during the Heian period, but began decline during the slow Meiji period. The Ryūkyūan languages are spoken by a decreasing number of elderly people so UNESCO classified it as endangered, because they could become extinct by 2050. Young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand the Ryukyuan languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of indications Japanese influenced by the Ryukyuan languages. It is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands.

Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide including the Ryūkyū islands due to education, mass media, and an increase of mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration.