CLASSIFICATION

History of the Japanese Language

There is no evidence relating Japanese to a single family of languages, not even the East Asian languages. The East Asian languages belong to the Sino-Tibetan family.  Many place Japanese in the Altaic family, which includes Turkish, Mongolian, and Korean, with the closest relationship to Korean. The original Altaic language was spoken in the Transcaspian steppe country.  The speakers of this language went through massive migrations before 2,000 B.C., spreading this language family from Turkey in the west to Japan in the east. Linguists also find similarities between Japanese and the Austronesian languages of the South Pacific.  It is currently classified under the Altaic language family.

It is also important to note that Ainu is Japan's only other indigenous language in the northern island of Hokkaido.  The Ainu people, who are physically and culturally different from the rest of the Japanese, speak a language that has even more successfully escaped attempts to relate it to a single language family.  Ainu is neither related to the Japanese language nor to any of the Altaic languages.  The language is now nearly extinct.

Language Family Trees

(Source: www.ethnologue.com)

Regional Dialects

There are a large number of dialects throughout the four main islands and the smaller islands of Okinawa and others. Some dialects such as those spoken in the southern parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa) are virtually incomprehensible to the speakers of other dialects, requiring the use of the standard (or "common") dialect for communication. The two dialect families with the largest number of speakers are the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which is equivalent to the "common" dialect and the dialects of the Kansai region spoken in western Japan in cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe.

Common Dialect

Standard Japanese, the form heard most commonly on national television and radio and television is traditionally the dialect of educated people in Tokyo but is now understood everywhere in Japan. Although standard Japanese has begun to replace some regional accents, many of these remain quite distinctive.

Kansai Ben Dialect

Kansai Ben is a dialect of the Kansai area.  The district covers the areas of Shiga, Mie, Nara, Kyoto, Wakayama, Osaka, and Hyogo.  Generally this dialect encompasses the greater Osaka region, and the area around Kobe, and Kyoto.  Differences between Kansai Ben and common Japanese can be seen below.

Some differences between Kansai ben and standard Japanese "Hyojun go"
("hyojun" means standard and "go" means language.)

Many words in Hyojun go are shortened in Kansai ben.

The number of syllables decrease.

Long vowels, especially at the end of words, are often shortened.  

Ya is often used in Kansai ben. Desu and its variations in Hyojun go are replaced by ya.

(Ya and desu can be thought to function as the verb "to be" or "to do".)

(Source from: Hidetoshi Tokumara)

From the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern islands of Okinawa, Japan is rich in various regional dialects. The Japanese dialects can be divided into the Eastern and Western dialects.

While the Easterners say "yano-assatte" (the day after tomorrow), "shoppai" (salty) and "-nai" (not), the Westerners use "shi-asatte," "karai" and "-n" or "-nu." (The Tokyoites are the only folks in eastern Japan who use "shi-asatte.") The consonants are more emphasized in the East, whereas the vowels are more carefully pronounced in the West. And the Japanese high-low tonal accents sometimes take different forms between the eastern and western dialects.

The dialects of Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto and the eastern part of Chubu are the Eastern Dialects, while those of the western part of Chubu (including Nagoya City), Kansai (including Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe Cities), Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa are the Western Dialects. The Japanese common language used to be based on the dialects of the Kansai region, but since the 17th century is based on the dialect of Tokyo in the Kanto region, as Japan's political and economic center moved from Kyoto and Osaka to Tokyo.

Eastern Dialects

Tohoku Dialects

The Japanese dialects spoken in the six prefectures (Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata and Fukushima) of Japan's Tohoku (Northeast) Region are collectively called the Tokoku-Ben (Tohoku Dialects). Phonetically, it has such features as: "e" is pronounced just like "i"; "shi" and "su" are pronounced the same, likewise with "ji" and "zu," and "chi" and "chu." Therefore, "sushi" (sushi in English), "susu" (soot) and "suzu" (bell) are all pronounced the same. Voiceless sounds often become voiced, as in "tsugue" (desk in English, tsukue in Japanese) and "kada" (shoulder, kata).

The Tohoku dialects can be divided into two: the Northern Tohoku Dialects spoken in the areas including Aomori, Morioka, Akita and Sakata Cities; and the Southern Tohoku Dialects spoken in the area including Sendai, Yamagata,  Aizu-Wakamatsu and Fukushima Cities. The Tsugaru-Ben among the northern dialects, the Satsuma-Ben and the Okinawa-Ben, are said to be the most difficult Japanese dialects. .

The southern Tohoku dialects in addition have such features as: "shi," "su" and "shu" are pronounced the same: likewise with "ji," "zu" and "ju"; "chi," "chu," and "ju"; the regular Japanese high-low tonal accent is lacking; etc.

Izumo Ben (Izumo Dialect) in Japanese sushi, susu (soot) and shishi (lion) are all pronounced the same as "susu," as in the southern Tohoku dialect.

Western Dialects

Kyoto Dialect

The Kyoto dialect, Kyo Kotoba, has a long history and developed in Kyoto's own refined culture.  It has a unique sound apart from standard Japanese. Moreover, the implication of a word changes according to place, time, relationship between people and subtle pronunciation.

Ryukyuan Dialect

The language of Okinawa belongs to the Japanese-Ryukyuan language family, which extends from Hokkaido in northern Japan to Yonaguni (73 m. off the coast of Taiwan) in the southern Ryukyus.

In Okinawan, there are five long vowels (a, i, u, e and o) like in Japanese, while there are only three short vowels (a, i and u), with Japanese "e" and "o" corresponding to Okinawan "i" and "u." Examples: "ami" (English "rain," Japanese "ame") and "kumu" (English "cloud," Japanese "kumo"). As in the Okinawan words "pana" (English "nose," Japanese "hana") and "pigi" (English "beard," Japanese "hige")

Within the Ryukyuan language (extending from Amami Oshima to Yonaguni), the Okinawan language itself is comprised of many different dialects and sub-dialects from village to village. The Shuri dialect was common in the King Sho Shin’s kingdom (1477-1526). It was the official lanugage used in conversation by the aristocratic class of Shuri castle. 

The Shuri dialect is characterized by complexity of honorific markers, which differentiate class, sex, and age. A diversity of respect forms was strictly adhered to among the three social classes of aristocracy, gentry, and commoners; between male and female; and also between different age groups. The appropriate respect forms had to be used when two speakers were from the same class, same sex, and even to the same age. When two speakers were of completely different status, conversational usage was extremely complex.

The phonological characteristics of the Shuri dialect as compared to standard Japanese are mainly the vowel changes of the e to i and o to u. For example, the word for rain is pronounced ame in Japanese while it is pronounced ami in Shuri. In the same manner, the word for cloud is pronounced kumo in Japanese while it is pronounced kumu in Shuri. Some differences between Japnese and Shuri dialect also exist in consonants.

This map shows the various locations of the different dialects in Japan. Refer to the family tree above for more information.

(Source: Shibatani, M)

For more information on the different dialects in Japan refer to this website: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Japan

English is a verb-subject-object formation.  Basically the auxiliary verb tenses precede the verb.  The adverbs follow the verb, and prepositions precede the noun.  Japanese fits into the subject-object-verb category.  An auxiliary verb follows the verb.  Adverbs precede the verb.  Postpositions like prepositions will follow the noun. 

To better illustrate the differences here are two examples. 

Example 1

Japanese

Akiko              wa                   sakana           o                                  tabete             iru.

Akiko              topic marker  fish                  object marker            eating             is.

Akiko fish eating is.

English

Akiko is eating fish. 

Example 2

Japanese

Kanojo wa      akai     sukato o         haite                imasu.

She                 red      skirt                 wearing          is.

English

She is wearing a red skirt.

For more information click here

Typology

The Japanese language is an agglutinating language. That means one morpheme has one function or meaning. The boundaries of separating one morpheme from another is easily recognizable. Words are readily segmented into their parts. Each bit of grammatical meaning is "glued" to the stem in the form of a separate affix. One affix is assigned per bit of information.

Morphology

Japanese was solely a spoken language before the Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan in about the 5th century. With the introduction of the writing system from China starting about 1,500 years ago, the Japanese people began to extensively record their language through poetry and prose. The language of that era, called Old Japanese, had a number of features that have been lost through time. For example, Old Japanese had eight vowels instead of the five that we see today.  Old Japanese, however, lacked the contrast between long and short vowels that is so important to modern Japanese. Middle Japanese extends to the end of the 16th century, bridging the wide differences in grammar and lexicon between Old Japanese and the modern language.  The transition from Old Japanese to Modern Japanese took place from about the twelfth century, A.D., to the sixteenth century, A.D.

Japanese is usually written vertically and from right to left across a page. Thus, the first page of a Japanese book is what readers of English would normally think of as the last page. In modern times, Japan has adopted the Western style of writing horizontally from left to right for some publications, such as textbooks. Written or printed Japanese has no spaces between words.

There are three basic writing systems in Japanese; they are Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji.  There is a fourth system called Romaji.

Katakana

Katakana is a very angular script.  It is composed of 46 distinctive characters.  Katakana can be used to express any sound in the Japanese language. The first 5 characters correspond to 5 vowels common to many languages.

·       A sounds like the a in the English word father.

·       E sounds like the e in the English word prey.

·       I sounds like the i in the English word machine.

·        O sounds like the o in the English word most.

·         U sounds like the u in the English word truth.

Katakana is most commonly used to express

a)     Foreign names like John Doe.

b)     Borrowed foreign words, like computer or beer.

c)    Company names like Toyota, and Honda.

d)     New words in Japanese, like karaoke.

Hiragana (the last 3 characters are hiragana)

Hiragana is a much smoother script, full of loops and curves. There are 46 basic hiragana characters, each one having a counterpart in katakana.  All sounds in the Japanese language can be expressed with just hiragana. These two basic writing systems share most rules, but lengthening vowel sounds and making consonant sounds harder are done differently in the two sets.

Hiragana is most commonly used to express

a) Simple words, like the verb aru or the noun neko.
b) Conjugations at the ends of verbs, like mimasu (I see) and mimashita (I saw.)
c) Particles of speech, such as wa, e, and o. Note that the particle wa is the same as the hiragana ha, eis the same as the hiragana he, and the particle o is different from the normal hiragana o.

Hiragana is the first writing system taught to Japanese children, so low-level children's books are written exclusively in hiragana, and even in more advanced level texts, difficult kanji will have the pronunciation written above in hiragana.

Kanji

Kanji is the most complicated script in Japanese. First brought to Japan by Buddhist monks more than 1200 years ago.  They are based on Chinese ideograms and there are thousands of characters.  Each one represents a different idea, but not necessarily a different sound as is the case with katakana, hiragana, and romaji. In fact, most of the characters have more than one possible reading. The ideogram for person can be read as jin, nin, hito, bito, ri.

Kanji is most commonly used to express

a) Place names, like Tokyo or Osaka.
b) The names of people, like my wife.
c)Most nouns, as well as verb and adjective stems.

Romaji ABC...

Besides the three forms of writing of Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji, Japanese is sometimes written in Romaji. Romaji is primarily used for the convenience of foreigners. With Romaji, one can read Japanese without knowing any Japanese writing system.

If you would like to learn how to write your name in Japanese click here: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ft5k-ymd/Yn.html