Japanese language
1. Origin of the language.
Origin of the Japanese language has been a subject discussed by linguists but no definite proof has not been found yet. Strangely, nobody knows, for now.
There are numbers of hypothesis that claims the origin of Japanese language. Korean, Altaic, Austronesian, Dravidian, Ainu, and Chinese.
Although Japanese language shares many features with Korean, the relationship between the two language has not yet been proven.
In terms of vocabulary, it has borrowed many from English and Chinese.
2. "Kanji" and "Kana".
Japanese is, as far as I know, the only race that use 3 characters; "kanji", "hiragana", and "katakana".
But in the past, Japanese did not have a written form of communication until we encountered Chinese. In order to learn from China, culturally and technologically advanced nation, ancient Japanese needed to adopt Chinese characters. That is "kanji".
There are about 50,000 characters, 3000 characters are commonly used.
"Hiragana" is a form of simplifying "kanji" characters and consists of 48 characters which represent single syllables. Although there are quite a few theories of its origin, started in 800 A.D. by noblewomen for their love letters.
"Katakana" is also a form of simplifying "kanji" characters and consists of 48 characters which represent single syllables. These characters were created by ancient Japanese monks who learnt Buddhism imported through China. They used a memo to chant Buddhism scripture.
Nowadays, "kanji" is mainly used to write nouns. A combination of "kanji" and "hiragana" is used to write verbs and adjectives. "Katakana" is used to write loanwords from English and European language.
3. Honorifics.
There are various honorific expressions, which makes harder the language to learn. Although the honorific in terms of linguistics, is used in all over the world, complexed level of such can be found in Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, and many other Asian language.
Both written and spoken forms, 2 ways of honorifics is commonly used in Japan. One to respectful expressions used for others. Other one to express oneself in, a sort of, humble way.
Honorifics expression is difficult for even a Japanese person to master. (Well, who could?)
Comments