Name: Briar rose V.

Carag Sepetember 5, 2020

Foreign Language 1 (JAPANESE)

 History of the Japanese Language

Because the overwhelming majority of Japan’s population speaks Japanese as their first language, here we will
take some time to explore the history of that language in some detail.
The origin of the Japanese language is a topic of considerable dispute among scholars.  Evidence has been
offered for a number of source languages, including Ural-Altaic, Polynesian, and Chinese among others.  Of
these, Japanese is most widely believed to be connected to the Ural-Altaic family of languages, which includes
Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean within its domain.
Among the Ural-Altaic family of languages, Korean is most frequently compared to Japanese, as both
languages share significant key features such as general structure, vowel harmony, lack of conjunctions, and
the extensive use of honorific speech, in which the hierarchical rank of the listener heavily affects the
discourse.  However, it’s important to keep in mind that pronunciation of Japanese is significantly different
from Korean, and the languages are mutually unintelligible.  The Japanese language also shares considerable
similarities with the languages of the Ryukyu Islands, within which Okinawa is located, although the Ryukyu
languages and Japanese are also mutually unintelligible.
In the same way that the origin of the Japanese language is a bit vague and ambiguous, there is also a
substantial amount of uncertainty with regards to the precise origins of the Japanese people themselves.
Noteworthy influences from the horse cultures of Mongolia and Northern Asia, the rice cultures of Korea,
China, and Southeast Asia, and Polynesia have all been identified. Consequently, it is difficult to establish a
date for the origin of Japanese peoples, but a proto-Japanese must have existed from at least the 3rd century
AD, when the various clan-tribes of Japan were consolidated to become a nation by the Yamato Clan, and
possibly from a much earlier time, based on Chinese records which indicate the unification of Japan as a nation
of tribal communities from several hundred years BCE.
Throughout the 6th century AD, elements of Chinese culture flooded into Japan, a result of diplomatic and
religious intercourse between the Chinese Han Dynasty, Korea, and the Japanese Yamato rulers.  Along with
the introduction of Chinese governmental systems, art styles, manufacturing methods, and Buddhism, the
Chinese writing system was also adopted, providing the Japanese with the ability to write for the first time.
The Kojiki, (Records of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan), Japan’s first recorded
books, were written in Chinese characters during this time.
Both of these books offer historical anthologies containing a large number of legends. Numerous Chinese
vocabulary words were also added to Japanese. The influence of the Chinese language on Japanese remains
apparent today, as approximately 40% of the vocabulary of modern Japanese consists of words adapted from
the Chinese language.
The providence of borrowed vocabulary did not, however, carry over to the borrowed Chinese written system.
The Chinese writing system posed problems in terms of accent, syllabic structure and overall divergence of
structure of the languages themselves.  The Japanese desired the ability to express themselves freely in written
form, and by the 7th century writers were inserting Chinese characters into the written format of their own
language, word order and participle structure.  Not long after this time, Buddhist priests invented a simplified
phonetic system for writing shorthand, the foundation for the present-day katakana phonetic script.
In the 8th century, women of the Heian Court in Kyoto developed the second phonetic script of Japanese,
known as hiragana, as a way to write poetry, novels, and diaries.  Still today, both of these phonetic scripts
(katakana and hiragana) are used in a modernized form, along with Chinese characters, or kanji, to render
written Japanese. In general, katakana is used with loan words, onomatopoetic words, terms for flora and
Name: Briar rose V. Carag Sepetember 5, 2020

fauna, and for italicized words.  Hiragana is also used in children’s writing and to represent function words.
With the writing of the Heike Monogatari (Tales of the Heike) in the 12th century, the use of Chinese
characters, kana phonetic script, and Japanese language structure had become completely intertwined.
Spoken Japanese evolved in four stages: Old Japanese (to the 8th century), Late Old Japanese (9th-11th
centuries), Middle Japanese (12th-16th centuries), and Modern Japanese (from the 17th century to the present).
Significant changes from ancient to modern times have seen the gradual reduction of eight vowel sounds to
five as well as phonological, morphological, and vocabulary changes. The Japanese syntax has largely
remained intact.
Several distinct regional dialects have existed within Japan since ancient times.  During the past 700 years, the
principal, or most important dialect, has shifted from the Capital, Heian Kyo (Kyoto) to Kamakura (near
present-day Tokyo) in 1292. This coincides with the rise to power of a warrior class which established its
power base in the Kanto Region of Eastern Japan. Today the primary dialect of Japanese remains the Tokyo
dialect.
In the Sengoku (Warring States) Period of the 1500s, Portuguese and other Western nations came into contact
with Japan, bringing technology, Christianity, and, naturally, their own languages. The Portuguese compiled a
Japanese dictionary, and the Japanese borrowed a number of words from Portuguese. One Japanese warrior by
the name of Toyotomi Hideyoshi also brought wooden moveable type from Korea into Japan at the very end of
this period.  Later, during the Tokugawa Period which followed, the printing that was made achievable by
means of this moveable type greatly expanded and enhanced the literacy rate of the growing populations, and
increased the standing/importance of the Edo (Tokyo) Dialect as the primary dialect of Japanese.
In 1603, with the rise of the Shogun or military leader, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan became almost completely
closed off from outside influences. Christianity, along with western styles of learning and western linguistic
influence, was abandoned (save for very limited contact with Dutch traders in the Japanese port city of
Nagasaki). For the next two hundred and fifty years, Japan remained closed to the outside world.
In the year 1868, following the uproar and chaos that resulted within Japan from the visit of the American
Admiral Perry, Japan’s new Meiji leaders determined to Westernize Japan and to adopt Western technology
for the sake of survival and competition.  Soon after, the vocabulary of English, German, and other western
languages was introduced into Japanese.
As with the introduction of Chinese some centuries before, these western words were soon adapted to the
pronunciation and writing systems of the Japanese; adapted in a way that would make them more easily used
and understood.  Many novel Japanese vocabulary terms were also created as a way to express new concepts
adopted from the West.  Another major language development of the Meiji Period was the bridging of the gap
between spoken and written Japanese—a gap that had existed for centuries. New developments within
literature and media both broke conventional barriers, so that for the first time in history everyday spoken
Japanese could be expressed in written form.
As Japan became a military force and its economy began to grow, the country began expanding by conquest
into other parts of Asia, including China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines.  During this period
millions within Asia acquired skills in the Japanese language; some people were forced to learn it by means of
compulsory Japanese language education, while others picked up language cues through their contact with
Japanese troops, businessmen, and their families.  Even today, there are many elderly people in these regions
that still retain their Japanese language abilities.  Even more, the remnants of the linguistic influence of
Japanese may still be seen through the continued use of Japanese vocabulary words in other Asian languages—
especially in Korean.
Following the massive devastation of World War II, the military forces which occupied Japan set out to
simplify the written Japanese language—a language they considered cumbersome. To accomplish this, they
considered abolishing the ancient Chinese characters, or Kanji, in favor of Romanized symbols, or romaji—
symbols based on the alphabet of Western languages.  This change never occurred, although Japan’s Education
Ministry in 1946 completed a major revision of Chinese characters, bringing their numbers to a more
 Name: Briar rose V. Carag Sepetember 5, 2020

manageable sum of 1850 characters (now revised to slightly under 2,000). Since that time, the Japanese
government has maintained strict centralized control of the language and how it is taught within the Japanese
educational system.
Today, the expanding influence of English and of Western culture is having a grand impact on the Japanese
language, an impact that is expected to continue.  Another influence of current note is the generation gap that
exists with regard to the manner in which the Japanese language is used.  For example, today’s younger
generation is tending to favor the utilization of more neutral and informal speech, ignoring the importance of
the role of honorific and gender-specific speech regarded important in traditional Japanese. Other
developments, such as the development of new slang terms and youth-specific grammar usage, are also being
observed.
Today there are three major regional dialects within Japan:  the Kansai  Dialect of the Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe
region of Western Japan; the Kyushu Dialect of Japan’s southernmost main island; and the Tokyo Dialect of
the Kanto Region (considered the standard dialect), along with numerous smaller dialects found throughout the
country.  What is sometimes referred to as the "Okinawan Dialect" is actually one of the languages of the
Ryukyu Island language family, closely related to, but not actually a form of the Japanese language. The ever-
strengthening role of the media, through television, radio, and the internet, continues to work to homogenize
the Japanese language, further reducing the influence of the local dialects in favor of the omnipresent Tokyo
Dialect.
Reference: https://www.studycountry.com/guide/JP-language.htm

 Languages spoken in Japan

Several languages or dialects in Japan include the Ryukyuan languages, Ainu languages, the Orok
language and the Nivkh language. These languages belong to two language families spoken in Japan
– the Japonic languages and the Ainu languages.

The Japonic languages include the following:

1. Japanese languages: Hachijo, Eastern, Western and Kyushu
2. Ryukyuan languages: Northern Ryukyuan languages including Amami, Kunigami and Okinawa and
Southern Ryukyuan languages such as Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni.
The Ainu languages have three dialects. Two languages, Sakhalin Ainu and Kuril Ainu are already
extinct. Only the Hokkaido Ainu language remains.

Reference: https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/languages-spoken-in-japan/