Historical linguists agree that Japanese is a Japonic language, but do not agree further about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several competing theories (presented roughly in descending order of likelihood):
- Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the less-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related, because of all these cultures' historic ties.
- Japanese is a relative of other Asian languages. This theory maintains that Japanese split from - or had large influences from - other East Asian languages such as Korean (and possibly the Sino-Tibetan languages).
- Japanese is a relative of the Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and sometimes, Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Japanese also has (phonologically distinctive) pitch (called pitch accent in linguistics), similar to Serbian/Croatian. Additionally, there are a suggestive number of apparently regular correspondences in basic vocabulary, such as ishi "stone" to Turkic daş, yo "four" to Turkic dört.
- Phonological and lexical similarities to Austronesian languages have been noted.
- Japanese is a kind of creole, with an Altaic grammatical substructure, and core Austronesian vocabulary.
- Japanese is related to southern Asian languages. Some researchers have suggested a possible relationship between Japanese and Tamil, a member of the Dravidian language family spoken in southern India.
Specialists in Japanese historical linguistics all agree that Japanese is related to the Ryukyuan languages (including Okinawan); together, Japanese and Ryukyuan are grouped in the Japonic languages. Among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to Korean is considered plausible but not demonstrated; the Altaic hypothesis has somewhat less currency. Almost all specialists reject the idea that Japanese could be related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages or Sino-Tibetan languages, and the idea that Japanese could be related to Tamil is given no credence at all.
Geographic Distribution
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and is still sometimes spoken in countries besides Japan. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of China, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese. As a result, there are still many people in these countries who speak Japanese instead of or as well as the local languages. In addition, emigrants from Japan, the majority of whom are found in the United States (notably California and Hawaii), and Brazil also frequently speak Japanese. There is also a small community in Davao, Philippines. Their descendants (known as nikkei 日系, literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently. There are estimated to be several million non-Japanese studying the language as well.
Official Status
Japanese is the only official language of Japan, and Japan is the only country to have Japanese as an official language. There are two forms of the language considered standard: hyōjungo 標準語 or standard Japanese, and kyōtsūgo 共通語 or the common language. As government policy has modernized Japanese, many of the distinctions between the two have blurred. Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Because it is Japan's only official language and there are few foreign Japanese speakers, the language is heavily tied to Japanese culture and vice-versa. There are many Japanese words describing certain Japanese cultural ideas, traditions, and customs (e.g., wa, nemawashi, kaizen, seppuku), which do not have corresponding words in other languages.
Dialects
There are dozens of dialects spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to the mountainous island terrain and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, morphology of the verb and adjectives, particle usage, vocabulary and in some cases pronunciation. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
Of all the numerous dialects, the most well known are Kansai-ben spoken in the area surrounding Kyoto and Osaka, Tōhoku-ben spoken in northern Honshu, and Kantō-ben spoken in Tokyo and the surrounding area. Kantō-ben is very close to the standard language, and varies essentially in slang; some consider it to be equivalent to the standard language. Kansai-ben has within it a number of regional variations, but is usually characterized by the dialect prominent in Osaka. It is famous for being the dialect used by a large number of famous comedians, and its use in even serious situations outside of the Kansai region tends to elicit laughter. Tōhoku-ben is considered to be hopelessly inaka by most Japanese people, its use is supposedly a sign of rural backwardness.
Japanese dialects are typically mutually intelligible, although extremely geographically separated dialects such as Tōhoku-ben and Tsushima-ben may not be; in such cases speakers switch to the standard language with which all Japanese are familiar from school and from the media. The dialect used in Kagoshima in southern Kyūshū is famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects in northern Kyūshū as well.
The Ryukyuan languages used in and around Okinawa are related to Japanese, but the two are mutually unintelligible. Due to the close relationship they are still sometimes said to be only dialects of Japanese, but linguists consider them to be separate languages.
Sounds
If considered as a system of morae instead of syllables, (as the katakana and hiragana phonetic writing systems explicitly do) the sound structure is very simple: The language is made of morae (or moras), each with the same time value and stress. Each mora consists of an optional consonant sound, followed by a vowel sound. The vowel sound may optionally begin with /j/. Consonants may be geminate (doubled) using the moraic /Q/, and vowels may be lengthened; each takes an extra time beat. Moraic /N/ is considered a full mora to itself. Hence all words are made up of atomic morae, each of which has a "V" or "CV" (or "jV" or "CjV") structure, or is /N/, or /Q/. Each kana would correspond to a mora in this system. The moraic /Q/ is shown as a small "tsu" symbol (subscript ツ in katakana, or っ in hiragana) which precedes a kana to double the consonant, and another special symbol (a horizontal long dash) follows a kana to double the vowel.
Vowels
Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds, similar to their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel, which is indicated as /u/ in the diagram. This vowel is often described as unrounded, but is actually pronounced with "compressed lips", which is a different articulatory gesture from either rounded or unrounded lips: it is unrounded, but with spreading. The "u=" to the right of the diagram are possible narrow transcriptions using IPA, as suggested by the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.
In some English dialects, Japanese vowels can be approximated as follows:
/a/ as in father
/i/ as in feet
/u/ as in flute
/e/ as in etch
/o/ as in fort
Vowels have a phonetic length distinction (short vs. long). Cf. contrasting pairs of words like ojisan ("uncle") vs. ojiisan ("grandfather"), or tsuki ("moon") vs. tsūki ("airflow").
In most phonological analyses, however, all vowels are treated as occuring with the time frame of only one mora. Phonetically long vowels, then, are, treated as a sequence of two identical vowels, i.e. ojiisan is /oziisaN/ not /oziːsaN/.
In addition, Japanese has no diphthongs instead having sequences of two different vowels. These sequences of two vowels are perceptually (to the Japanese speaker) and phonetically different from the diphthongs that occur in languages like English. In English a diphthong such as in eye is pronounced as a vowel with a following off-glide: [aɪ̯] or [aj]; while in Japanese the sequence in ai 愛 'eye' is pronounced as [ai] where each vowel segment is of equal length. Glide plus vowel are analyzed as a sequence of consonant and vowel.
Japanese allows long sequences of vowels without intervening pauses or consonants, as in tōō wo ōu 東欧を覆う [toooooooɯ].
Consonants
The consonant /ɺ/ (an Alveolar lateral flap) is tricky for some English speakers. To an English speaker's ears, its pronunciation lies somewhere between an "r" /ɹ/, an "l", and a "d". The sound may be made by lightly placing the tongue on the back of the upper set of teeth and producing the sound /l/. Japanese "r" is somewhat close to the Spanish "r" or the flap in American English, i.e. the "t"s in be[tt]er and the "d"s in la[dd]er. Japanese "r" is rather close to Korean "l".
The consonant sound /ɰ/ transliterated "w" in Romaji, is not quite a /w/ since it's performed without lip rounding.
Note that this table does not cover all sounds in the Japanese language. Please refer below for the details of pronunciation.
Phonology
Japanese contains a number of allophonic processes which greatly alter its phonetic realization. This sometimes causes its phonemic inventory to appear larger than it actually is.
The palatal /i/ and /j/ palatalize the consonants they follow:
/s/ and /z/ become alveolo-palatal [ɕ] and [ɟʑ] or [ʑ];
/t/ becomes the alveolo-palatal affricates [cɕ];
/h/ becomes the palatal fricative [ç], as in German "mich";
other consonants are noticeably palatalized: [pʲ], [mʲ], [gʲ], etc.
The vowel /u/ also causes frication on consonants it follows:
/h/ becomes bilabial [ɸ] (like English "f" but considerably softer: it is not made by pressing the teeth against the lips; rather, it is made by closing one's lips slightly and lightly blowing);
/t/ and /d/ respectively become [ts] and [z] or [dz].
Archiphoneme /Q/, the moraic obstruent, assimilates to the following obstruent, resulting in a geminate (i.e. double) consonant. /Q/ cannont occur before vowels or nasal consonants. This archiphoneme has a wide variety of phonetic realizations.
Archiphoneme /N/, the moraic nasal, undergoes a variety of assimilation processes. Its "default" word-final pronunciation varies considerably from dialect to dialect, and is sometimes realized as bilabial [m] uvular [ɴ], or dental [n] (among other realizations). Within words, it variously becomes:
bilabial [m] before /p/ and /b/ (like English "ample", "umber);
dental [n] before coronals /d/ and /t/ (like English "and" and "ant");
velar [ŋ] before /k/ and /g/ (like English "sunk" and "sung");
[Ṽ] a nasalized vowel before a vowel, approximant (i.e. /j/ & /ɰ/), /h/, or /s/.
Elision is also a major factor in Japanese pronunciation, with /i/ and /u/ tending to be elided when between unvoiced consonants or at the end of sentences, except when they are in accented or lengthened syllables (as in inu or kami, for example). Often, preceding fricatives will replace the vowel altogether. For example, Matsushita is pronounced "MaTSUshta", and the common sentence-ending copula desu is pronounced "dess". Gender roles also play a part: it is regarded as effeminate to pronounce elided vowels, particularly the terminal "u" as in "arimasu". Basilectic varieties of Japanese can sometimes be recognized by their hyper-elision, and formal or archaic dialects by their tendency to pronounce every syllable.
Intonation
In English, stressed syllables in a word are pronounced louder and longer. In Japanese, all morae are pronounced with equal length and loudness. Syllables typically consist of one or two moras, depending on the presence or absence of a long vowel, a syllable-final "n", or a doubled consonant (often but not always pronounced with an accompanying glottal stop), each of which adds one mora to the syllable length, but some syllables have three (e.g., tōtta 'passed through') or even four (e.g., hōō 'phoenix') moras. Japanese is therefore said to be a mora-timed language.
In Japanese, an accented mora is pronounced with higher pitch than the following mora. This is part of the Japanese intonation pattern. See also Japanese pitch accent.
Japanese does have a distinct intonation pattern. This pattern can be heard not only in individual words, but also in whole sentences. Intonation is produced by a rise and fall in pitch over certain syllables. In the case of questions, the Japanese intonation patterns bear little resemblance to the English ones. This is a large source of confusion for many non-native speakers. On the other hand, since all syllables have equal stress in Japanese, some unstressed syllables in European languages tend to be inaudible to the Japanese ear, leading to confusion.
The Japanese intonation pattern varies with regional dialect.
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Grammar
Japanese grammar can be characterized by the following prominent features:
- The basic sentence structure of a Japanese sentence is topic-comment. For example, consider the sentence "kochira wa, Sangā san desu". Kochira is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa; this means "as for this person". The verb is desu ("be"). As a phrase, Sangā san desu is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr. Sanger". So Japanese, like Korean and somewhat like Chinese, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it marks topic separately from subject, and the two do not always coincide.
- Japanese nouns in general have neither number nor gender. Thus hon (book) can be used for the singular or plural. However, in the case of a small number of native words (of proto-Japanese rather than Chinese origin) plurality may be indicated by reduplication. For example, hito means "person" while hitobito means "people"; ware is a form of "I" while wareware means "we" (although the kunyomi "ware" may also be of Chinese origin, just more ancient than the Chinese onyomi readings). Sometimes suffixes may also indicate plurality. Examples include the suffixes -tachi and -ra: watashi, a form of "I", becomes watashitachi, meaning "we", and kare (him) becomes karera (them).
- With some exceptions Japanese is SOV (with the verb at the end of the sentence.) It also has an unmarked phrase order of Time Manner Place (the reverse of English order).
- Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (also called non-past tense, since the same form is used for the present and the future). The present tense in Japanese serves the function of the simple present and the future tense, while the past tense (or perfect tense) in Japanese serves the function of the simple past tense. The distinction is between actions which are completed (perfect) or are not yet completed (imperfect). The present perfect, present continuous, present perfect continuous, future perfect, future continuous, and future perfect continuous are usually expressed as a gerund (-te form) plus the auxiliary form imasu/iru. Similarly, the past perfect, past continuous, and past perfect continuous are usually expressed with the gerund plus the past tense of imasu/iru. For some verbs, that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form regularly indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others, that represent a change of state, the -te iru form regularly indicates a perfect tense. For example, kite imasu regularly means "I have come", and not "I am coming", but tabete imasu regularly means "I am eating", and not "I have eaten". Note that in this form the initial i of imasu/iru is often not voiced, especially in casual speech and the speech of young people. The exact meaning is determined from the context, as Japanese tenses do not always map one-to-one to English tenses. In addition, Japanese verbs are also conjugated to show various moods.
- There are three types of words that correspond to adjectives in English: stative verbs (also called i-adjectives), copular nouns (na-adjectives), and the limited set of true adjectives in Japanese. Both copular nouns and stative verbs may predicate sentences, and both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in other verbs. There is a regular way to turn the stative verbs into adverbs. The true adjectives are limited to modifying nouns.
- The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions. These include possession (no), subject (ga), direct object (o), indirect object (ni) and others. The topic is also marked by a postposed particle (wa). These particles play an extremely important function in Japanese.
- Japanese has many ways to express different levels of politeness, including a different conjugation for verbs, special verbs and pronouns, verbs indicating relative status, use of different nouns, etc., as shown above.
- The verb desu/da is the copula verb, though it doesn't play all the roles of the English "to be" and often takes on other roles. In the sentences above, it has played the copulative function of equality, that is: A = B. However a separate function of "to be" is to indicate existence, for which the verbs arimasu/aru and imasu/iru are used for inanimate and animate things respectively.
- Strictly speaking, desu is a contraction of -de, the particle indicating subject complement, (see copula) and su, an elision of gozaimasu (a polite copula). So an alternative, more accurate (though seldom seen) parsing of Kochira-wa, Sumisu-san desu is Kochira-wa, Sumisu-san-de su:
Kochira-wa This person, subject
Sumisu-san-de Mr. Smith, subject complement
su (=gozaimasu) is, (animate)
- The verb "to do" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns of action and state (aisuru "to love", benkyōsuru "to study", etc.). Japanese also employs regular compounding of verbs (e. g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee" from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to go out").
- There are many derivative forms of words that may turn one part of speech into another. Nouns can be made into verbs, adjectives into nouns, gerunds, and other forms, and so on. Verbs, in addition to other derived forms, have one (the -tai form) which is an adjective meaning "want(ing) to do X"; e.g., tabetai desu means "I want to eat".
- Japanese has a lot of pronouns for use in different occasions, and different pronouns for men and women, younger or older, etc. These pronouns are not used all the time, but often elided when the reference has been established and is obvious from context. Japanese is therefore called a pro-drop language. For example, instead of saying "Watashi wa byōki desu" ("I am sick"), one would simply say "Byōki desu" ("Am sick"). A single verb can often constitute a complete sentence.
Politeness
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Broadly speaking, there are three main politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form (kudaketa), the simple polite form (teinei) and the advanced polite form (keigo).
Since most relationships are not equal in Japanese society, one person typically has a higher position. This position is determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favor tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until their teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto
The plain form in Japanese is recognized by the shorter, so-called dictionary (jisho) form of verbs, and the da form of the copula. In the teinei level, verbs end with the helping verb -masu, and the copula desu is used. The advanced polite form, keigo, actually consists of two kinds of politeness: honorific language (sonkeigo) and humble (kenjōgo) language. Whereas teineigo is an inflectional system, keigo often employs many special (often irregular) honorific and humble verb forms.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his group. For example, the -san suffix ("Mr.", "Mrs." or "Ms.") is an example of honorific language. It should not be used to talk about oneself. Nor should it be employed when talking about someone from one's own company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group".
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made honorific by the addition of お o- or ご go-; as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word and is included even in non-honorific speech, such as gohan, or rice. Such a construction usually indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi ("friend"), would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status. On the other hand, a female speaker may sometimes refer to mizu (water) as o-mizu merely to show her cultural refinement, compared to more abrupt male speech patterns. See Japanese honorifics
Many researchers report that since the 1990s, the use of polite forms has become rarer, particularly among the young, who employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but as a relationship becomes more intimate, they speak more frankly. This often occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
Vocabulary
Historically, Japanese has a large number of words that are borrowed from Chinese. (See further discussion below in the section on the Japanese writing system.) Japan also borrowed a number of words from Portuguese in the 16th century, and then with the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowed from Dutch, German, French, and most recently English. Japanese also coined many neologisms (in kanji) to carry Western concepts; many of these were exported to Chinese and Korean via characters, in late 19th and early 20th century. In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as wanpatan (one-pattern) and sukinshippu (skinship), although coined from English, are nonsensical in a non-Japanese context.
The words koko, soko, doko, and miyako were once kōkō, sōkō, iduku, and miyako respectively.
Learning Japanese
Learning Japanese involves understanding grammar, pronunciation, the writing system, and acquiring adequate vocabulary. While the sound system is simple compared with other languages, the writing system and certain words that have a close connection with Japanese culture usually prove to be difficult to master. A background in another language which uses Chinese characters may enhance the study of kanji. As for culture-specific terminology, study of translated works in Japanese philosophy and arts will simplify comprehension.
The Japanese government provides standard tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).
The motivation to learn Japanese is usually due to a job opportunity in a Japanese organization, access to Japanese pop culture and its subcultures, or interest in traditional Japanese arts. Study of the language is enhanced by study of specific vocabulary and kanji used in such situations. Those with an interest in a specific aspect of Japanese culture usually have more success in learning the language than those with only a generalized interest in Japan.
Unlike languages like Italian in which knowledge of the standard language is sufficient for communication in almost any circumstance, it may be necessary to be familiar with local dialects of Japanese on some occasions. Many learners testify that reading manga and watching anime helps quite a lot, however the benefits of this are disputed.
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