Basic Syntax of Japanese Language
by: Bill Ross
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In Japanese, the word “Japan” is comprised of two characters, which in this article can only be described, not illustrated (due to limitations of format and typography). You might want to reproduce the characters on a piece of scratch paper from the following description:
-- The first character is a vertical rectangle (proportioned like a brick standing on end, perhaps a bit more square) with a horizontal line through the middle. This is the character for “sun.”
-- The second, placed to the right of the first, is a kind of large “plus” sign, except the horizontal bar is a bit higher than the vertical center, and the bottom stroke is longer and forms a slight hook to the left at its end. (This “hook” is like a brush stroke in calligraphy.) On each side of the center vertical stroke, descending from the cross point of the “plus sign” and spreading outward like the sides of a skirt on a female stick figure, are two diagonal lines. As such, this character stands for “tree.” At the bottom of the vertical stroke, but above the hook, is a short, horizontal stroke, like a long dash, which crosses it. This line serves to focus attention to the bottom part of the character, near the hook. As such, the entire ideograph means “root.”
-- The two characters together mean “sun-root,” that is, land from which the sun springs up, or more poetically, "land of the rising sun:" They are pronounced “Ni-Hong,” which is the name of Japan in Japanese. Early visitors from the West heard the strong “h” in “Nihong” as a “p,” which explains why “Nippon” was used for so many years in English.
-- A third character, pronounced “go,” is added to create “Nihon-go” or “Japanese Language.” These three characters are “Kanji” characters, representing one of three writing systems simultaneously in use in Japan. Here is where the fun begins.
Kanji.
Kanji was imported from Chinese many centuries ago, and is ideographic. This means that it is comprised of characters or pictures, not phonetic symbols. One explanation of the origin of the term “Kanji” is that it is a corruption of the Chinese expression “Han-dze,” meaning “Chinese (Han) characters.”
The first Kanji character in “Ni-hong” means “sun.” This character also means “sun” in Chinese, though it may be pronounced a number of different ways. The same is true for “root.” It is a picture of a tree with a root, not a phonetic description of how to say “Hong.” The third character (which, with 15 strokes, is too complex to describe in words here) is “Go” in Japanese, and “Hua” (also meaning “language”) in most dialects of Chinese. Over 1,000 of these imported characters are in daily use in written Japanese. Of course, several of them have evolved over the years until they are quite different from their original Chinese models, and the meanings of several of them also have drifted considerably. Thus, knowing Chinese does not guarantee that you could read Kanji with complete comprehension.
Hiragana and Katakana.
If you look at a Japanese newspaper, you will see much more than Kanji characters. The other two writing systems are called “Hiragana” and “Katakana.” They are sometimes called “alphabets,” but this is a misnomer. It is true that characters of Hiragana and Katakana tell you how to pronounce the syllable in question, but they are not “letters” that stand for “vowels” and “consonants,” the way Western alphabets work. Hiragana looks rounded and flowing to the Western eye, while Katakana seems more angular and stark. The preference in educated writing is to use Kanji whenever possible, then Hiragana, and then Katakana only when needed for clarity. For example, older forms of messaging (like telegraph or Telex) required the draft message to be written in Katakana because of its relative simplicity. Today it is still the main medium for messaging by cell phone. A hand-written message will probably be written mostly in Katakana so as to be more legible. In advertisements, Katakana is used for some headlines and for listing telephone numbers, also because of its simplicity and clarity. Japanese with very rudimentary education will be able to read Katakana fairly well, and perhaps Hiragana, too, but their command of Kanji may be very limited.
Romanization.
“Romanji” refers to any one of several systems of expressing Japanese in the Latin alphabet. This is mainly useful for foreigners who can not read any of the three standard scripts; however, modern Japanese also use “romanji” to spell foreign names, international terms and technical jargon (when other scripts are unavailable). Numbers often are written in Arabic format as well in Chinese system (Kanji) or Katakana.
Where Does Japanese Come From?
Scholars are puzzled and divided on the distant origins of Japanese. Together with its near relative, Ryukyu, it seems to have grown up in isolation. Some say it is part of a “Japani-Korean” family of language, but many linguists say that such a relationship has yet to be demonstrated. It is at best a speculation.
What is the Language Like?
Similar to German and somewhat like English, Japanese is “agglutinative.” That means you can create words by sticking words and word particles together, like Lego blocks.
Different from Western tongues (and from many in Asia as well), Japanese pays much attention to the status of the speaker vis-à-vis the person being addressed and the person being discussed. Special terms, word changes and even grammatical inflections (collectively called “honorifics”) are used to alter the intentions of the speaker in terms of this status. For example, “-san,” is a status-neutral suffix for an adult (meaning roughly “Mr.” or “Mrs.”), whereas “-chan” is a status-neutral suffix for children in general.
Unlike Chinese, Japanese uses no tones to make distinctions between syllables. Like English, pitch and accent are used for syntactical meaning (such as asking a question rather than making a statement).
Japanese is what linguists call a “moraic” language. The sounds come in rhythmic pulses rather than as syllables. For example, the word "doomo" (sometimes written with one long “o” in the first syllable) means thank you. Westerners think it has two syllables. “doo-” and “-mo.” But the double “o” or long “o” is there to tell you the “o” part should take twice the time of the conventional “o”. The word may only have two syllabic sounds, but the first part takes twice as long to say. Thus, “doomo” has three units of time. Those units are called “moras.”
Japanese has borrowed vocabulary extensively from all over the world. For centuries it has adopted many words from Chinese. The wide use of Kanji characters, of course, stimulated a widespread importation of vocabulary, too. In the 1500’s the Portuguese arrived in Asia (settling in Macao and trading up the entire southern coast of the mainland). They contributed words like “tempura” (from “tempero”) and “arigato” (from “obrigado”). The commercial presence of the Germans and the Dutch in the 17th century caused many more foreign words to come into use. English also had its influences in the 19th century, with the imperial expansion of Britain, and also in the post-war 20th century, with American-style industrialization. The “ultimate” in foreign loan-words came when the Academie Française rejected "Le Walkman" as a term of foreign origin (in favor of the more purely Gallic “baladeur”). The intruder did not come from an English-speaking country – it was invented by Sony Corporation in Japan!
In subsequent articles we will take a look at some interesting grammatical features of Japanese that make it very distinct – both in concept and in practice – from the languages used for communications in North America and Europe.
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About the Author
Bill Ross writes for Green Crescent Translations, a translation firm that has served international businesses for almost 10 years. Mr. Ross is part of a professional team that translates in over 100 languages, in technical and literary fields. Website localization and subtitles are also supported, as are all major office, DTP and Web formats. To reach him, click this link to Green Crescent's web site: Japanese Translation and go to the contact page.
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