Japanese is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages, but whatever relationships with other languages it may have remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of speaker, listener and the third person mentioned in conversation whether he is there or not. The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language. The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: Chinese characters called kanji (漢字 / かんじ), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮名 / ひらがな) and katakana (片仮名 / カタカナ). The Latin alphabet, rōmaji (ローマ字), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace. Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese, German and Dutch have also been influential. (more)
Type: language
Genres: politics, entertainment, science, technology, business, movies, religious
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Chinese character:
A Chinese character, Han character or Hanzi ( ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), less frequently Korean (hanja), and formerly Vietnamese (hán tự). The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is
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Kanji:
are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (ひらがな, 平仮名), katakana (カタカナ, 片仮名), Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet. The Japanese term kanji (漢字) literally me
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Katakana:
Katakana In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo). For example, "television" is written terebi : 2 : In modern times, ウォ ("wo") is used as the representation of a "wo" sound
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Hiragana:
Hiragana), or like the nasal vowels of French. Hiragana are used for words for which there are no kanji, including particles such as kara から "from," and suffixes such as ~san さん "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Hiragana are also used in words for which the kan
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Romanization of Japanese:
The romanization of Japanese or rōmaji) is the use of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. Japanese is normally written in logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts (kana). The romanization of Japanese is
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Honorific speech in Japanese:
The Japanese language has many honorifics, parts of speech which show respect, and their use is mandatory in many social situations. Honorifics in Japanese may be used to emphasize social distance or disparity in rank, or to emphasize social intimacy
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Sino-Japanese vocabulary:
Sino-Japanese or Kango (漢語) in Japanese, refers to that portion of the Japanese vocabulary that originated in the Chinese language or has been created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical or sentence patterns can also be identified w
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Japanese pitch accent:
Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language. It distinguishes words in most Japanese dialects, though the nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, in standard Tokyo Japanese the word
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Mora (linguistics):
Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress or timing) in some languages. Like many technical linguistics terms, the exact definition of mora is debated. Perhaps t
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Agglutinative language:
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It wa
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Japanese name:
Japanese names in modern times usually consist of a family name (surname), followed by a given name. This naming order is common in countries that have long been part of the Chinese cultural sphere, including among the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese
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Japanese literature:
Japanese literature spans a period of almost two millennia. Early works were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. But Japanese literature developed into a separate style in its
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Wiktionary:
Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. Unlike standard dictionaries, it is written collaboratively by volunteers using wiki software
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Culture of Japan:
The culture of Japan has evolved greatly over the years, from the country's original Jomon culture to its contemporary hybrid culture, which combines influences from Asia, Europe and North America. After several waves of immigration from the continen
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Hepburn romanization:
The Hepburn romanization system is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was orig
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Eurasiatic languages:
Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe, Asia, and North America.
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Japonic languages:
The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages is a language family that descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. The essential feature of this hypothesis is that the first split in the famil
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Japanese numerals:
The system of Japanese numerals is the system of number names used in the Japanese language. The Japanese numerals in writing are entirely based on the Chinese numerals and the grouping of large numbers follow the Chinese tradition of grouping by 10,
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Rendaku:
is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology which governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. Rendaku is a common but unpredictable phenomenon in modern Japanese. The "voicing" is not a stri
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Old Japanese:
Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language.
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Japanese dialects:
Japanese dialects (hōgen 方言) is comprised of many regional variants. The lingua franca of Japan is called hyōjungo (標準語 lit. "standard language"), or kyōtsūgo (共通語 lit. "common language") and while it was based initially on Tokyo dialect, the languag
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Japanese counter word:
In Japanese, counter words or counters (josūshi 助数詞) are used along with numbers to count things, actions, and events. In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from
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Japanese language and computers:
In relation to the Japanese language and computers many adaptation issues arise, some unique to Japanese and others common to languages which have a very large number of characters. The number of characters needed in order to write English is very sm
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Classification of the Japanese language:
The immediate classification of the Japanese language is clear: it is a Japonic language, along with the Ryukyuan languages. Traditionally, these are considered dialects of a single language isolate. However, more distant connections remain contentio
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Yojijukugo:
is a Japanese lexeme consisting of four kanji, or "Chinese characters". English translations of yojijikugo include "four-character compound", "four-character idiom" (Chinese chengyu 成語), or "four-character idiomatic compound".
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Late Old Japanese:
Late Old Japanese is a stage of the Japanese language used between 794 and 1185, a time known as the Heian Period. It is the successor to Old Japanese.
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Henohenomoheji:
Henohenomoheji (へのへのもへじ) or hehenonomoheji (へへののもへじ) is a face drawn by Japanese schoolchildren using hiragana characters. The word breaks down into the seven hiragana characters he（へ）, no（の）, he（へ）, no（の）, mo（も）, he（へ）, ji（じ）. The first two "he" are
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Chinese language:
Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语/漢語, pinyin: Hànyǔ; 华语/華語, Huáyǔ; or 中文, Zhōngwén) can be considered a language or language family . Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sin
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Portuguese language:
Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal from the Latin spoken by romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (namely the Gallaeci, the Lusitanians, the Cel
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Syllabary:
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound.
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Ryukyuan languages:
The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subfamily of the Japonic language family. Some disagree as to how these languages should be divided. However, there is a consensus among Ryukyuanists that there are 6 different gr
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Anime:
Anime ( in Japanese, but typically , /ˈænɪmə/, /ə'naɪm/, or /'ænaɪm/ in English) is an abbreviation of the English word "animation", originating in Japan through the roots of manga. Although the term is used in Japan to refer to animation in general,
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Kamikaze:
( ) is a word of Japanese origin, which in English usually refers to the suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan, against Allied shipping, in the closing stages of the Pacific campaigns of World War II, to destroy as much warshi
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Sakoku:
Sakoku (Japanese: 鎖国, literally "country in chains" or "lock up of country") was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter or Japanese could leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugaw
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Ainu language:
The Ainu language (Ainu: アイヌ イタ ク , aynu itak; Japanese: アイヌ語 ainu-go) is spoken by the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō. Until the twentieth century, Ainu was also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sak
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Japanese Brazilian:
A Japanese Brazilian (日系ブラジル人 in Japanese ; nipo-brasileiro in Portuguese) is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese ethnic origin, or a Japanese immigrant living in Brazil. The first Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil 100 years ago. Nowadays, Brazil is
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Furigana:
Furigana is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are
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Japanese verb conjugations:
This page is a list of Japanese verb and adjective conjugations. Since these are almost all regular, they can all be included on one page. Japanese verb conjugation is fairly simple and is the same for all subjects, first person ("I", "we"), second p
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British Association for Japanese studies:
The British Association for Japanese Studies, BAJS, is an association at Essex University in the United Kingdom, whose aim is to promote studies in the Japanese language. Founded in 1974, the organisation is a member of the Japan Library Group and ha
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Okurigana:
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. Generally used to inflect an adjective or verb, okurigana can indicate aspect (perfective versus imperfective), affirmative or negative meaning, or grammatical politeness, among many
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Japanese words of Portuguese origin:
Many Japanese words of Portuguese origin entered the Japanese language when Portuguese Jesuit priests introduced Christian ideas, Western science and technology, among other things to the Japanese during the Muromachi period (15-16th century).
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Japanese adjectives:
According to many analyses, the Japanese language does not have words that function as adjectives in a syntactic sense, i.e. tree diagrams of Japanese sentences can be constructed without employing adjective phrases. However, there are words that fun
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Go-on:
"Go-on" are one of the different readings of Japanese kanji. They are old pronunciations of Chinese characters, believed to be taken from China to Japan prior to the importation (by the Kenzuishi envoy to the Sui dynasty and monks studying abroad) of
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Uchi-soto:
Uchi-soto in the Japanese language is the distinction between in-groups (uchi, 内, "inside") and out-groups (soto, 外, "outside"). This distinction between groups is not merely a fundamental part of Japanese social custom, but is also directly reflecte
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Korean language:
Korean (한국어/below) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 80 million Korean speakers, with large groups in Australia,
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Haiku:
Haiku is a kind of Japanese poetry. Previously called hokku, it was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of 19th century. Shiki suggested haiku as an abbreviation of the phrase "haikai no ku" meaning a verse of hai
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Tōhoku region:
The Tōhoku region is a geographical area of Japan. Tōhoku is Japanese for "northeast," and the Tōhoku region occupies the northeastern portion of Honshū, the largest island of Japan. The area is also known as Michinoku
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Dative case:
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave a book to Mary". The name is derived from the Latin casus dativus, meaning "the case appropriate to giving"; this was in
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Gemination:
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Italian, Latin, Japanese, Arabic, Finnish, Hungarian a
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Rickshaw:
Rickshaws (or rickshas) are a mode of human-powered transport: a runner draws a two-wheeled cart which seats one or two persons. The word rickshaw came from Asia where they were mainly used as means of transportation for the social elite. However, in
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Written Chinese:
Written Chinese comprises the written symbols used to represent spoken Chinese and the rules about how they are arranged and punctuated. These symbols are commonly known as Chinese characters (traditional/simplified Chinese: 漢字/汉字; pīnyīn: hànzì), ma
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Focus (linguistics):
Focus is a concept in linguistic theory that deals with how information in one phrase relates to information that has come before. Focus has been analyzed in a variety of ways by linguists. Historically, there have been two main approaches to focus –
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List of English words of Japanese origin:
Words of Japanese origin have entered many languages. Some words are simple transliterations of Japanese language words for concepts inherent to Japanese culture, but some are actually words of Chinese origin that were first exposed to English via Ja
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Phonotactics:
Phonotactics (in Greek phone = voice and tactic = course) is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vo
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Pro-drop language:
A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable (the precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate). T
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Japan External Trade Organization:
Japan External Trade Organization (ジェトロ JETRO) is an independent government agency established by Japan Export Trade Research Organization as a nonprofit corporation in Osaka on Feb.1951, and reorganized as the Ministry of International Trade and Ind
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Topic-prominent language:
A topic-prominent language is one that organizes its syntax so that sentences have a topic–comment (or theme–rheme) structure, where the topic is the thing being talked about (predicated) and the comment is what is said about the topic. This structur
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