The Japanese Language (2023)

Shigeru Miyagawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Introduction
• Characteristics
  • Vocabulary
  • Sounds of the Language
  • Grammar
  • Writing System
• History of the Japanese Language
• Varieties of Japanese
  • Regional Dialects
  • Social Styles of Speech
• Further Readings

Introduction

The Japanese language is spoken by the approximately 120 millioninhabitants of Japan, and by the Japanese living in Hawaii and on theNorth and South American mainlands. It is also spoken as a secondlanguage by the Chinese and the Korean people who lived under Japaneseoccupation earlier this century.

Characteristics of Japanese

Vocabulary

Three categories of words exist in Japanese. The native Japanesewords constitute the largest category, followed by words originallyborrowed from China in earlier history, and the smallest but a rapidlygrowing category of words borrowed in modern times from Westernlanguages such as English. This third category also contains a smallnumber of words that have come from other Asian languages. Studies bythe National Language Institute show that the frequency of these threetypes of words varies according to the kinds of written materialexamined. In magazines, native Japanese words constitute more thanhalf of the total words, while the Chinese borrowed words averageabout 40%, and the rest drawn from the recently borrowed words fromWestern languages. In newspapers, the words of Chinese origin numbergreater than the Japanese native words.

Sounds of the Language

Japanese has an open-syllable sound pattern, so that most syllablesend in a vowel -- the syllable may be composed solely of the vowel.There are five vowels, /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/. Vowel lengthoften distinguishes words, as in to for "door" and too for "ten." Thebasic consonants are: /k/, /s/, /t/, /n/, /h/, /m/, /y/, /r/, /w/, andthe syllabic nasal /N/. Many of these consonants can be palatalizedin front of the vowels /a/, /u/, and /o/, for example, /kya/, /kyu/,/kyo/. When the two consonants, /s/ and /t/, occur with the vowel/i/, these consonants are automatically palatalized as /shi/ and/chi/. The consonant /t/ is pronounced as /ts/ in front of the vowel/u/.

Unlike English, which has stress accent, Japanese has pitch accent,which means that after an accented syllable, the pitch falls. Theword for "chopsticks," hashi, has the accent on the first syllable, soits pitch contour is ha shi. Without the accent on the firstsyllable, hashi may mean "bridge" or "edge." "Bridge" has accent onthe second syllable, which can be seen if a grammatical particle suchas the subject marker ga is attached to the word: hashi ga. "Edge"has no accent, so it would be pronounced without any fall in the pitcheven with a grammatical marker such as ga.

Grammar

Every language has a basic word order for the words in a sentence. InEnglish, the sentence Naomi uses a computer has the order subject(Naomi), verb (uses), and object (a computer). In the correspondingJapanese sentence, the subject comes first, just as in English, butthen the object appears, followed finally by the verb: Naomi-ga(Naomi) konpyuuta-o (computer) tukau (use). The rule of thumb inJapanese is that in a sentence, the verb comes at the end. The twoword orders, subject-verb-object for English and subject-object-verbfor Japanese, are both common among the languages of the world. If welook again at the Japanese sentence, we see that the subject and theobject are accompanied by particles, ga with the subject "Naomi"(Naomi-ga) and o with the object "computer" (konpyuuta-o). These arecalled case markers, and a large number of the world's languages havethem. We can see a remnant of a case-marking system even in English:the pronouns in English change shape depending on where it occurs,he/she/they in the subject position, but him/her/them in the objectposition (e.g., She saw him). If we go back in history, the olderEnglish of five hundred to one thousand years ago had an extensivecase-marking system similar to modern Japanese. These case markersmake it possible for the words in Japanese to appear in differentorders and retain the same meaning. In the sentence we have beenlooking at, it is possible to place the object where the subjectnormally occurs, and the subject in the normal object position, andnot change the meaning: konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga tukau. If we do the samething to English, the meaning of the sentence is radically altered(The computer uses Naomi). If we have a more complex sentence, it isstill possible to change the order of all the words as long as theverb 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). Thissentence has the following word order possibilities, starting with thebasic order we just observed.

Naomi-ga Taro-ni konpyuuta-o ageta (subject-indirect object-object verb)Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o Taro-ni ageta (subject-object-indirect object verb)Taro-ni Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o ageta (indirect object-subject-object-verb)konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga Taro-ni ageta (object-subject-indirect object verb)Taro-ni konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga ageta (indirect object-object-subject verb)konpyuuta-o Taro-ni Naomi-ga ageta (object-indirect object-subject-verb)

Although the Japanese language allows a multitude of word orders, theone inflexible order is the verb, in that it must appear at the end ofthe sentence. This is no accident. The core element in a sentence isthe verb, because the verb expresses the action or the event involvingthe referents of the other words. Such a core is often referred to asthe "head" of a sentence or a clause, and Japanese always places thehead at the end of its clause. In a noun phrase, modifiers functionto modify the head, as in expensive computer, where expensive modifiesthe head of the phrase, computer. In Japanese, the modifier alwaysprecedes the head, as expected (takai (expensive) konpyuuta(computer)). This is not only true of simple modifiers, but formodifiers that involve an entire sentence. Note that in the Englishsentence the computer [that Naomi uses], the bracketed portionmodifies the head computer, and this modifier follows the head. InJapanese, the head-final order is invariably followed, so that thiswould be expressed with the modifier preceding the head: [Naomi-gatukau (that Naomi uses)] konpyuuta. With few exceptions, thelanguages of the world either follow the head-final order, just as inJapanese, or the head-initial order (for example, Indonesian). Withinthe same language, we might see one or the otheroption for differenttypes of clauses, as we saw for English simple modifiers (head-final)and sentence modifiers (head-initial). Japanese is consistentlyhead-final for all types of clauses.

The Japanese verb does not indicate number or gender. The same formfor the verb is used with singular and plural subjects, and no genderdistinction 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) pastos-anai (not push) negationos-ite iru (is pushing) progressiveos-e (push) imperativeos-itara (if (you) push) conditional

These forms vary depending on whether the root of the verb ends in aconsonant or a vowel. While the root of the verb "to push" above isconsonant-final, a verb such as "to eat" has a vowel-final root(tabe-), and it takes a slightly different shape for each of theinflections: 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 Italianand Spanish, a rich verbal inflection that indicates both number andgender often allows the speaker not to express the subject if it isunderstood in the context, e.g., (Juan) vio ese film ((Juan) saw thatfilm) in Spanish. In Japanese, despite the lack of number and genderinflection on the verb, it is possible not only to leave the subjectout, but any other element in the sentence except the verb, so long asit is understood in the sentence. The Japanese counterpart of thesentence "Naomi uses the computer" may be expressed simply by sayingthe verb tukau (use), so long as it's clear to the hearer from contextthat the sentence refers to Naomi and to the computer.

In Japanese, ideas often expressed in other languages with separateclauses and sentences frequently take the shape of a word, albeit acomplex one. This is the agglutinative nature of the language. Forexample, the expression in English, Naomi was made to go purchase amore expensive computer by Mary, contains separate verbs was made, go,and purchase. In the Japanese counterpart, these verbs together formone complex verb (Japanese uses "come" for the English "go" in thiscontext) : katte-ko-sase-rare-ta (buy-come-made-was-past). Otherlanguages that have an agglutinative verb system include Korean,Navaho, and Turkish.

Writing System

Japanese is traditionally written vertically, with the lines startingfrom the right side of the page. While this way of writing is stillpredominant, there is another way that is identical to English instarting from the top left hand side, with each line writtenhorizontally.

Japanese is written using two systems of orthography, Chinesecharacters and syllabaries. Chinese characters, or kanji, werebrought in from China starting about 1,500 years ago. Prior to theirintroduction, Japanese was strictly a spoken language. Chinesecharacters are by far the more difficult system because of the sheernumber of characters and the complexity both in writing and readingeach character. Each character is associated with a meaning; forexample, the character $B9T(B has the basic meaning "to go." There aretens of thousands of characters attested, but in 1946, the Japanesegovernment identified 1,850 characters for daily use. In 1981, thelist was increased in number to 1,945 characters, and given the nameJoyo Kanji List (Kanji for Daily Use). The characters in the DailyUse List must be learned in primary and secondary schools, andnewspapers generally limit the use of characters to this list. Mostcharacters are associated with at least two readings, the nativeJapanese reading, and the reading that simulates the original Chinesepronunciation of the same character. If the same character came intoJapan at different periods or from different dialect regions of China,the character may be associated with a multitude of Chinese readingsthat represent different historical periods and dialectal differences.For example, the character , "to go," has four different readings,the Japanese reading and three distinct originally Chinese readings.The second system of wriiting are syllabaries, or kana, which weredeveloped by the Japanese from certain Chinese characters about 1,000years ago. Each syllabary represents a syllable in the language, and,unlike Chinese characters, it represents a sound but not meaning.There are two types of syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, eachcontaining the same set of sounds. For example, the sound "ka" inJapanese may be represented by the hiragana or the katakana , both of which were developed from the Chinese character . Hiraganais often used in combination with a Chinese character, in such a waythat, for example, the character represents roughly the root of averb, and the inflection is written with hiragana. Katakana is usedto write loan words from Western languages such as English, French,and German. It is not uncommon to find kanji, hiragana, and katakanaused in the same sentence. Along with Chinese characters andsyllabaries, Roman alphabets are sometimes employed for such things asnames of organizations. For example, companies such as Honda, Toyota,and Sony often use Roman alphabets for their name in advertisements.

HISTORY OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE

Through painstaking research, we now have conclusive evidence for thegenetic relationships of the major languages of the world. English,along with a host of languages spoken in Europe, Russia, and India,belong to the Indo-European family of languages. In contrast, thereis no conclusive evidence relating Japanese to a single family oflanguages. The most prominent hypothesis places Japanese in theAltaic family, which includes Turkish, Tungusic, Mongolian, andKorean, with the closest relationship to Korean. According to RoyAndrew Miller, the original Altaic language was spoken in theTranscaspian steppe country, and the speakers of this languageundertook massive migrations before 2,000 B.C., spreading thislanguage family from Turkey in the west to Japan in the east.However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with some major features ofJapanese, leading some scholars to turn to the languages of the SouthPacific in the Austronesian family for clues of genetic relationship.A hypothesis that has currency among a number of Japanese historicallinguists is a "hybrid" theory that accepts the relationship to theAltaic family, but also hypothesizes influence from Austronesianlanguages possibly through heavy lexical borrowing. It is alsoimportant to note that in the northern island of Hokkaido, the Ainupeople, who are physically and culturally different from the rest ofthe Japanese, speak a language that has even more successfully escapedattempts to relate it to a single language family.

With the introduction of the writing system from China starting about1,500 years ago, the Japanese people began to extensively record theirlanguage through poetry and prose. The language of that era, calledOld Japanese, had a number of features that have been lost throughtime. For example, Susumu Ono has argues that Old Japanese had eightvowels instead of the five that we see today. There were also anumber of grammatical and morphological features that no longer exist.The transition from Old Japanese to Modern Japanese took place fromabout the twelfth century, A.D., to the sixteenth century, A.D.

VARIETIES OF JAPANESE

Regional Dialects

There are a large number of dialects throughout the four main islandsand the smaller islands of Okinawa and others. Some dialects such asthose spoken in the southern parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa) arevirtually incomprehensible to the speakers of other dialects,requiring the use of the standard (or "common") dialect forcommunication. The two dialect families with the largest number ofspeakers are the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which isequivalent to the "common" dialect, and the dialects of the Kansairegion spoken in western Japan in cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, andKobe. Due to the spread of the common dialect through television andradio, most people outside the Tokyo region speak the common dialectas well as the dialect of their area.

Social Styles of Speech

The Japanese language employs an extensive system of politeness andhonorific markers. It is often the case that in order to utter anykind of expression, the speaker must keep in mind his/her socialstanding to the person addressed, and the person being talked about.These markers appear on verbs, adjectives, and even nouns. Forexample, the informal form of the verb "to go," iku, is used whenspeaking with someone close to the speaker, but if the personaddressed is a stranger or is older than the speaker, the politenessmarker -masu appears: iki- masu. If the person being talked about issocially superior to the speaker, the honorific form of the verb "togo," irassyaru, is may be employed, even if this person is notpresent. In using this honorific form to talk about asocially-superior person, if the person addressed doesn't have a closerelation to the speaker, such as a relative or a friend, or is older,the politeness marker appears on the honorific form: irassyai-masu.Thus, this form, irassyai-masu, simultaneously allows the speaker tobe polite to the person addressed and show respect to the person beingtalked about. The prefix o- (go- in some contexts) may be used withnouns and adjectives to show politeness or respect to the personaddressed or spoken of, as in o-tuskue (desk) and o-suki (like).

The use of pronouns varies according to social context and also oftenaccording to gender. The first person pronoun boku is used by a malein relatively informal situations, while watashi is used by a femalein informal situations and by both male and female in formalsituations. There are a large number of ways to expressed "you"according to social context and gender, including using the actualname of the person addressed. Aside from pronouns, the choice of somesentence-final particles varies by gender in informal speech.

The use of politeness and honorific markers and the various pronounsreflect the prominent role that in-group/out-of-group factors play inJapanese. If the person addressed is not within the "group" of thespeaker in personal relationship or age, the speaker uses the politestyle of speech. Familial words also reflect this. The word for yourown mother is haha, but okaasan for the mother of others. We see thesame bifurcation for the terms for father, sister, brother, and soforth.

Further Readings

Masayoshi, Shibatani. The Languages of Japan. CambridgeUniversity Press. 1990.

Miller, Roy Andrew. Origins of the JapaneseLanguage. University of Washington Press. 1980.

Text from Microsoft Incarta, Permission given by MicrosoftCorporation for use by JP NET.