Japanese language

Last updated

Nihongo ('Japanese') in kanji in Japanese script
Pronunciation/nihoNɡo/: [ɲihoŋɡo]
Native to Japan
Ethnicity Japanese (Yamato)
Native speakers
~128 million (2020) [1]
  • Japanese
Early forms
Signed Japanese
Official status
Official language in
Flag of Japan.svg  Japan (de facto)
Flag of Palau.svg  Palau
(on Angaur Island)
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ja
ISO 639-2 jpn
ISO 639-3 jpn
Glottolog nucl1643   excluding Hachijo
Linguasphere 45-CAA-a

Japanese (日本語, Nihongo [ɲihoŋɡo] ( Loudspeaker.svg listen )) is an East Asian language spoken by about 128 million people, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, and its ultimate derivation and relation to other languages is unclear. Japonic languages have been grouped with other language families such as Ainu, Austroasiatic, Korean, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained widespread acceptance.


Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th century. During the Heian period (794–1185) in Japan, the Chinese language had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) included changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, and the first appearance of European loanwords. The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region in the south, up to the Edo region (modern Tokyo) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly. English loanwords, in particular, have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated.


Japanese has no clear genealogical relationship with Chinese, [2] though in its written form it makes prevalent use of Chinese characters, known as kanji (漢字), and a large portion of its vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese. The Japanese writing system also uses two syllabic (or moraic) scripts: hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名) and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名), however Latin script is used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms). The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals.



Proto-Japonic, the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period), replacing the languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, [3] including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period. Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on reconstructions of Old Japanese.

Old Japanese

A page from the Man'yoshu, the oldest anthology of classical Japanese poetry Genryaku Manyosyu.JPG

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan. The earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show influences of Japanese grammar, such as the word order (for example, placing the verb after the object). In these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early 8th century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters. The end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794. Old Japanese uses the Man'yōgana system of writing, which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced (ki), (hi), (mi), (ke), (he), (me), (ko), (so), (to), (no), (mo), (yo) and (ro). [4] (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo1 and mo2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence.

Due to these extra syllables, it has been hypothesized that Old Japanese's vowel system was larger than that of Modern Japanese – it perhaps contained up to eight vowels. According to Shinkichi Hashimoto, the extra syllables in Man'yōgana derive from differences between the vowels of the syllables in question. [5] These differences would indicate that Old Japanese had an eight-vowel system, [6] in contrast to the five vowels of later Japanese. The vowel system would have to have shrunk some time between these texts and the invention of the kana ( hiragana and katakana ) in the early 9th century. According to this view, the eight-vowel system of ancient Japanese would resemble that of the Uralic and Altaic language families. [7] However, it is not fully certain that the alternation between syllables necessarily reflects a difference in the vowels rather than the consonants – at the moment, the only undisputed fact is that they are different syllables. A newer reconstruction of ancient Japanese shows striking similarities with Southeast-Asian languages, especially with Austronesian languages. [8]



Early Middle Japanese

A 12th-century emaki scroll of The Tale of Genji from the 11th century Genji emaki 01003 001.jpg

Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese, which remained in common use until the early 20th century.

During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords. These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels, palatal consonants (e.g. kya) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa), and closed syllables. [9] [10] This had the effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. [9]

Late Middle Japanese



Modern Japanese

Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese, the de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect, especially that of Kyoto. However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languagessuch as German, Portuguese and English. [11] Many English loan words especially relate to technologyfor example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to the large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti], and [dʑi] and [di], with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. [12]

Geographic distribution

Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been spoken outside. Before and during World War II, through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea, as well as partial occupation of China, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands, [13] locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese.

Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil, [14] with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than the 1.2 million of the United States [15] ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, [16] with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry [17] ), the United States (notably Hawaii, where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, [18] and California), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao region and Laguna province). [19] [20] [21]

Official status

Japanese has no official status in Japan, [22] but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo (標準語), meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo (共通語), "common language". The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration (明治維新, meiji ishin, 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. [23] It is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.


The 1982 state constitution of Angaur, Palau, names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of the state. [24] However, the results of the 2005 census show that in April 2005 there were no usual or legal residents of Angaur aged 5 or older who spoke Japanese at home at all. [25]

Dialects and mutual intelligibility

Map of Japanese dialects and Japonic languages Japanese dialects-en.png
Map of Japanese dialects and Japonic languages


In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tohoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo are the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture). [26] The survey is based on recordings of 12- to 20- second long, of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened and translated word-by-word. The listeners are all Keio University students grew up in the Kanto region. [26]

Intelligibility to students from Tokyo and Kanto region (Date: 1967) [26]
Dialect Osaka City Kyoto City Tatsuta, Aichi Kiso, Nagano Himi, Toyama Maniwa, Okayama Ōgata, Kōchi Kanagi, Shimane Kumamoto City Kagoshima City







Current theories and possibilities


Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups or as a distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighbouring languages. [35] [36] [37]



Spoken Japanese


The vowels of Standard Japanese on a vowel chart. Adapted from Okada (1999:117). Japanese vowel chart II.svg
Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

All Japanese vowels are pure that is, there are no diphthongs, only monophthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel /u/( Loudspeaker.svg listen ), which may be compressed rather than rounded and fronted. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron) in rōmaji, a repeated vowel character in hiragana, or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana.


Bilabial Alveolar Alveolo-
Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n ( ɲ )( ŋ )( ɴ )
Stop p    b t    d k    ɡ
Liquid r
Semivowel j w
Special moras /N/, /Q/

Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi], approximately chi( Loudspeaker.svg listen ); however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii[tɕii] "social status".


The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), [39] that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant, a glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant (/, represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda (/, represented as N).

The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃]. Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant.

Japanese also includes a pitch accent, which is not represented in syllabic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし (hashi), and are only differentiated by the tone contour. [40]


Sentence structure







But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:

Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct)




Inflection and conjugation








There are three types of adjectives (see Japanese adjectives):

    暑い日atsui hi "a hot day".
    あの山ano yama "that mountain".

Both keiyōshi and keiyōdōshi may predicate sentences. For example,




変になるhen ni naru "become strange",

and by changing i to ku in the case of keiyōshi:

熱くなるatsuku naru "become hot".




私のカメラ。watashi no kamera "my camera"


















In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate European concepts;[ citation needed ] these are known as wasei kango (Japanese-made Chinese words). Many of these were then imported into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[ citation needed ] For example, seiji (政治, "politics"), and kagaku (化学, "chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way many Greek- and Latin-derived words – both inherited or borrowed into European languages, or modern coinages from Greek or Latin roots – are shared among modern European languages – see classical compound.[ citation needed ]



Writing system


Literacy was introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, by way of Baekje before the 5th century. [44] Using this language, the Japanese king Bu presented a petition to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in AD 478. [lower-alpha 1] After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (続守言/薩弘格/ [lower-alpha 2] [lower-alpha 3] 袁晋卿 [lower-alpha 4] ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.

Table of Kana (including Youon): Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romanized equivalents at the bottom Nihongo ichiran 01-converted.svg



Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana which were developed based on Manyogana. Some scholars claim that Manyogana originated from Baekje, but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars. [46] [47]

Yoshinori Kobayashi and Alexander Vovin argued that Japan's Katakana originated from the Gugyeol writing system used during the Silla Dynasty. [48]











Yoshinori Kobayashi of Hiroshima University asserted the hypothesis that Katakana originated from Gugyeol.

Non-native study

Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. This is a significant increase from before World War II; in 1940, only 65 Americans not of Japanese descent were able to read, write and understand the language. [51]

International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 19th century but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese popular culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. As of 2015, more than 3.6 million people studied the language worldwide, primarily in East and Southeast Asia. [52] Nearly one million Chinese, 745,000 Indonesians, 556,000 South Koreans and 357,000 Australians studied Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. [52] Between 2012 and 2015, considerable growth of learners originated in Australia (20.5%), Thailand (34.1%), Vietnam (38.7%) and the Philippines (54.4%). [52]

The Japanese government provides standardized tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features five levels of exams. The JLPT is offered twice a year.

See also



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Works cited

  • Okada, Hideo (1999). "Japanese". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 117-119.

Further reading