Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HISTORY
Unlike most western languages,
Japanese has an extensive
Japanese Today grammatical system to express
politeness and formality. Broadly
speaking, there are three main
More than 130 million people politeness levels in spoken
speak Japanese, making it the Japanese: the plain form
ninth most widely spoken language (“kudaketa”), the simple polite
in the world. Outside of Japan, form (“teinei”) and the advanced
there are another 5 million people polite form (“keigo”). The person in
who speak Japanese with some the lower position is expected to
degree of proficiency – use a polite form of speech,
predominantly Japanese whereas the other might use a
descendants in Hawaii and Brazil. more plain form. Strangers will also
speak to each other politely.
Japanese roots
Japanese is the only major language whose genetic affiliation is not known.
The hypothesis relating Japanese to Korean remains the strongest, but other
hypotheses also have been advanced. Some attempt to relate Japanese to the
language groups of South Asia such as the Austronesian, the Austroasiatic,
and the Tibeto-Burman family of the Sino-Tibetan languages.
Writing system
漢字 - kanji
カタカナ- katakana
ひらがな- hiragana
The adaptation of Chinese characters during the sixth to ninth centuries
A.D. was the most important event in the development of the language. By
the 12th century, the syllabic writing systems, “hiragana” and “katakana”,
were created out of “kanji”, providing the Japanese new freedom in
writing their native language. Today, Japanese is written with a mixture of
the three: “kanji”, “hiragana”, and “katakana”.
Foreign influence
語
(beer), “gurasu” (glass), “aisu” (ice), “takushi” (taxi) and
“hoteru” (hotel).