What language does Japanese belong to?

Japanese, the full name of Japanese, is the official language of Japan. The language family is controversial. Some people think it can be classified as Altaic language family, and some Japanese scholars think it is an isolated language (later, some Japanese scholars put forward the concept of Korean-Japanese Ryukyu language family, thinking that Japanese is subordinate) or Japanese language family. It is a glue language, and there are many borrowed Chinese characters in the writing system. Japanese has two sets of phonetic symbols: hiragana (hiragana) and katakana (katakana). It can also be written in Roman characters and Latin letters. Pseudonyms and Chinese characters are often used in daily life, and Roman characters are often used in signboards or advertisements. The phonetic notation of Japanese characters uses Hiragana instead of Roman characters. Similar to Japanese is Ryukyu. Japanese is mainly used in Japan. When Japan ruled Taiwan Province Province, Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, Oceania and parts of China, local people were forced to learn to speak Japanese, and they were forced to give Japanese names, so there are still people who can speak Japanese and local languages at the same time, or use Japanese more skillfully. Many Japanese immigrants who have settled in California and Brazil also speak Japanese. Although their descendants have Japanese names, they rarely use Japanese skillfully. Japanese is a cohesive language, which forms sentences by pasting grammatical elements on words. This language is called flexible use. The combination between them is not close, only showing grammatical functions without changing the meaning of the original words. Japanese is very diverse, not only in spoken and written language, but also in simplicity, simplicity, dignity, solemnity, men, women and children. People in different industries and positions speak differently. This aspect reflects the strict hierarchy and team thinking of Japanese society. Honorific words are developed in Japanese. The use of honorifics makes Japanese in public very elegant. However, the overly complicated grammar makes it extremely difficult to learn honorifics. Even the native Japanese can't fully grasp it. The developed languages of honorifics are Korean and Mongolian. Japanese pronunciation is very simple, with only five vowels and several consonants. With all kinds of unusual sounds, the total * * * does not exceed 100. Spanish and Italian are similar in pronunciation to Japanese. Generally speaking, the proportion of consonants and vowels in the pronunciation of these three languages is close to 1: 1. Japanese vocabulary is very rich and huge, absorbing a lot of foreign words. Generally speaking, there are more than 30,000 (excluding names and places) (1956). (See Japanese # Japanese Vocabulary) is closely related to Altai language family and Austronesian language family, and is greatly influenced by Chinese, which absorbs tones and quantifiers originally characteristic of Sino-Tibetan language family, thus making the language attribution of Japanese very complicated. Linguists have different opinions about the origin of Japanese.

Linguistically speaking, Japan is almost a single nation, with more than 99% of the population using the same language. This means that Japanese is the sixth largest language in the world. However, Japanese is rarely used outside Japan.

There are many theories about the origin of Japanese. Many scholars believe that, syntactically, Japanese is close to Altaic languages such as Turkish and Mongolian. It is generally believed that Japanese is syntactically similar to Korean. There is also evidence that Japanese morphology and vocabulary were influenced by southern Malay-Polynesian languages in prehistoric times.

It is generally believed that the writing system in contemporary Japan includes Japanese characters, Hiragana and Katakana, which originated in China. Among them, ideographic Chinese characters were once called "real names" compared with pseudonyms. Although China people are no strangers to Chinese characters, they are still confused when they encounter Chinese characters such as "Yi", "Yi" and "Bian". These Chinese characters were created by the Japanese. Perhaps many people don't know that the word "gland" used in Chinese now was also created by the Japanese in the Edo period. Of course, the pronunciation of Japanese Chinese characters is different from that of Chinese, but it can be expressed by pseudonyms. A Chinese character usually has multiple pronunciations. For example, "wood" has many pronunciations, such as "き, もく, ぼく". There are two main situations. One is that after Chinese characters were introduced into Japan, the Chinese pronunciation of Chinese characters themselves was also introduced. This pronunciation is called "phonetic reading", such as "もく, ぼく" in the above example; However, when Japanese proper words express their meanings in Chinese characters, the pronunciation becomes "training reading". As an example, "き".

Although Japanese and China speak completely different languages, the Japanese writing system comes from China. The development of China in Tang Dynasty was very prosperous. At that time, there was no writing in Japan. Therefore, at that time, the Japanese sent envoys from the Tang Dynasty to China to study language and writing. After thousands of years of changes, although Japanese characters have changed, some of them are still very similar or close to Chinese pronunciation.

There are many local dialects in Japan. Under the influence of mass media such as radio, television and movies, standard Japanese based on Tokyo dialect gradually spread to the whole country, but the dialects spoken by people in Kyoto and Osaka, in particular, continued to prosper and retained their prestige.

Japanese is English Japanese, French Japanese, Arabic Arabic.

Japonês is Portuguese.

[Edit this paragraph] Japanese learning

In order to reduce the number of words, please refer to the Japanese learning project for relevant content.

[1] Japanese 50-tone chart

[Edit this paragraph] Phonology

Spanish and Italian speakers will find that Japanese short vowels -A, I, U, E, O- are similar in pronunciation to those languages. Long vowels-AA, ii, uu, ei, ee or oo-are pronounced twice as long as short vowels (although ei is often pronounced with two vowels). The difference between long vowels and short vowels is very important, because it will change the meaning of a word.

Consonants include K, S, sh, T, ch, ts, N, H, F, M, Y, R, W, G, J, Z, D, B, P, fricative sh (such as "shoot" in English) and fricative ch, ts, J (such as "charge" in English, respectively) The pronunciation of G is usually like the voiced consonant in English "game", not the pronunciation of G in "gene".

One of the main differences from English is that Japanese has no stress: the stress of each syllable is the same. English syllables are sometimes elongated, but in Japanese, the pronunciation of a series of syllables is as regular as a metronome. Like English, Japanese has an accent system of high and low tones.

[Edit this paragraph] The origin of Japanese pseudonyms

In ancient times, the Japanese nation only had its own national language, but not its own writing. Later, China culture was introduced to Japan, and literate Japanese began to record in Chinese.

After the middle of the fifth century, the Japanese created a Japanese writing method with Chinese characters as symbols between tables. After the eighth century, this method of using Chinese characters as symbols between tables was widely adopted, and the famous ancient Japanese poetry collection "Ye Wan Collection" adopted this writing method. For example, the Japanese word "mountain" is pronounced "やま", and the Chinese character "Ma Ye" is used to write in "Ye Wan Ji". "Bangbang" is pronounced "さくら", so it is written in three Chinese characters: Sanjiuliang. Japanese auxiliary words "て, に, を, は" are expressed by Chinese characters "Tian, Er, Hu, Bo" and so on. This writing was later called "Wanye pen name". However, it is very complicated to write notes in Chinese characters with 10,000 pseudonyms, which will be simplified in the future. Only the radicals of Chinese characters are written in regular script, such as "a"->; "","Yi"->; ィ and Yu->; ""wait. In addition, the soft China cursive script is suitable for writing Japanese songs, especially after cursive script is popular in writing letters, diaries and novels. It is a simple, fluent and free and easy font, such as "An"->; ぁ and Yu->; ぅ and so on.

At this point, the Japanese nation finally created its own characters by using Chinese characters. Because these words are borrowed from Chinese characters, they are called "pseudonyms" According to the different writing methods of pseudonyms, pseudonyms taken from regular script of Chinese characters are called katakana (カタカナ), and pseudonyms evolved from cursive script of Chinese characters are called hiragana (ひらがな). Both katakana and hiragana are phonography based on Chinese characters. Hiragana is commonly used for writing and printing, and katakana is usually used to represent loanwords and special words.

For example: これはのテキストです. This is a Japanese textbook. This is a Japanese text.

"これは", "の" and "です" in this sentence are hiragana. Hiragana is an important part of Japanese, which can directly form words, such as "これ" (pronounced "ko re"), meaning "this" (equivalent to "this" in English); の (pronounced "no") means yes, and the last です means yes. Hiragana can also be used as other components in a sentence that have no specific meaning. For example, "は" is an auxiliary word that separates "これ" (this) from "Japanese". In addition, it is also the basic unit of Chinese character pronunciation in Japanese, which is somewhat similar to the function of Chinese Pinyin.

Katakana "テキスト" is a katakana. Katakana and Hiragana are in one-to-one correspondence, with the same pronunciation, but different writing styles. You can understand the difference between uppercase letters and lowercase letters in English (but they are not the same thing, just for your understanding). Katakana is mainly used to form western loanwords and other special words. For example, "テキスト" (pronounced "te ki su to") means "textbook", which is transliterated from the English word "text".

In addition, there is another way to express Japanese with Latin letters from Rome, which is called "Roman characters". Similar to China's "Pinyin".

Roman characters mainly appear in proper nouns such as names of people, places and institutions. And it is commonly used in Japanese computer input methods.

[Edit this paragraph] Chinese characters in Japanese

Chinese characters, called Chinese characters in Japanese, are actually ideographic symbols, and each symbol represents a thing or an idea. It is common for a Chinese character to have more than one sound. In Japan, Chinese characters are used to write words originated in China and Japanese words native to Japan.

Japanese is a Chinese character. "Japanese" means "Japanese", but its pronunciation is not Chinese. The pronunciation of Japanese is にほんご (pronounced "Ni Hong Weiqi"). The pen name "にほんご" here is equivalent to the pinyin of the Japanese character "Japanese" (not the real pinyin, of course). There are many Chinese characters in Japanese, most of which are related to their Chinese meanings, but their pronunciations are often different.

Although a relatively complete Japanese dictionary can accept 50,000 Chinese characters, the number used now is much less. 1946 The Ministry of Education defines the number of commonly used and formally used words as 1850, including 996 words taught in primary and junior high schools. In 198 1, this list is replaced by a slightly expanded list of 1945 words, although most of them are the same. Publications other than newspapers are not restricted by this list. In addition, many readers know the meaning of Chinese characters better than those taught in standard public school courses.

Now the list has been changed to more than 2000 words, which is expected to be completed in 20 10. Deleted the word "oh" and so on.

Pronunciation, training and familiar words training

Chinese characters are widely used in Japanese. There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters in Japanese, but only a few thousand are commonly used. 1946 10 10 In October, the Japanese government published the List of Chinese Characters to be Used, which included 1850 Chinese characters. 198 1, 10 released the List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters, which contains 1946 Chinese characters. In textbooks and official documents, only the Chinese characters listed in the List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters are generally used.

Generally, there are two ways to pronounce each Chinese character, one is called "phonetic reading" (phonetic reading/ぉんよみ) and the other is called "training reading/みくん).

"Phonetic reading" is to imitate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. When it was introduced from China to Japan, it was pronounced according to the pronunciation of this Chinese character. According to the different times and sources of Chinese characters, they can be roughly divided into "Tangyin", "Song Yin" and "Five Tones". But the pronunciation of these Chinese characters is different from that of the same Chinese character in modern Chinese. The vocabulary of "phonetic reading" is mostly Chinese inherent vocabulary.

"Training reading" is the way to read this Chinese character according to the inherent language of Japan. The vocabulary of "training reading" is mostly the inherent vocabulary to express the inherent things in Japan.

Many Chinese characters have more than two kinds of "phonetic reading" and "training reading"

Some words are as follows:

Examples of pronounced words:

Youth (せぃねん), science and technology (ぎじゅつ), love (れんぁぃ), jade (ひぃ)

Training vocabulary:

Qing (), Shu (,), Love (,), Kindness (,), Kindness.

The Chinese character "Hai" can be pronounced as "カィ" or "ぅみ". "カィ" is its pronunciation and "ぅみ" is its training.

Pronunciation is based on the pronunciation introduced into Japan from China; Training reading is formed by fixing the original Japanese pronunciation, which corresponds to the meaning of Chinese characters, as its pronunciation.

Chinese characters such as "Ten Xianju" generally use only one pronunciation, and "Beiyou Yi (さく)" generally use only one pronunciation, but such Chinese characters are rare. Chinese characters in Japanese usually have two, three or even more pronunciations. For example, pronunciation can be pronounced as "セィシ 125 19ウ", while training can be pronounced as "ぃきるかすぃけ".

As mentioned above, each Chinese character has its corresponding pronunciation and training, but there are also some special ones. For example, "Meiyu" is pronounced as "つゆ", and it is impossible to distinguish what each Chinese character reads separately. We call this pronunciation "familiar word training". The following is also "idiom training":

Tian () and Shi () sumo ()

[Edit this paragraph] Interesting talk about Japanese words.

Japanese is greatly influenced by Chinese. In Japanese, words with grammatical meaning all contain Chinese characters, and most of them are related to real meaning. So usually even friends who don't know Japanese can understand the meaning when they see a short sentence. However, some words cannot be understood from the perspective of modern Chinese, because it is classical Chinese rather than vernacular Chinese that affects Japanese.

There are also some words that contain Chinese characters (sometimes not made in Japan), but their meanings are far from perfect!

Interesting, isn't it? Let's look at them in three parts.

Can understand the meaning from Chinese characters.

Tram (でんしゃ) tram

Weighing instrument (たぃじゅぅけぃ) weighing instrument

Ting (にわ) courtyard

ぉぉちゃ tea

Art Museum (びじゅぅつかん) Art Museum

Souvenir (きねんひん)

Time (じかん) time

Problem (もんだぃ) problem

All employees (everyone)

Park (こぅぇん) Park

You can guess the meaning from Chinese characters.

Clocks (とけぃ) watches

Humanoid doll (にんぎょぅ)

Yuan Xi is very healthy.

Film screening (ぇぃが)

Graduation (そつぎょぅ)

Teaching (じゅぎょぅ)

Dress (よぅふく) suit

Overtime for the disabled (ざんぎょぅ)

Winter vacation (ふゆやすみ) Winter vacation

Split yourself (じぷん)

Chinese characters have nothing to do with writing.

Before meals (ぁさめしまぇ) is very simple.

Blind (blind) of the same kind.

The Origin and Identity of Appropriateness (ぇたぃ)

Foresight (ぇんりょ) courtesy

Generous (ぉぉかた) Volkswagen

Stay behind (るす) is not at home.

Everyone (ぉぉや) Landlord

The proprietress of a female general (ぉかみ)

Eighteen times (ぉはここ) is the most proud one.

[Edit this paragraph] Loanwords

Japanese is not only rich in locally produced words, but also has many words from Chinese. Many loanwords from Chinese are widely used in today's daily life, so they are not considered as loanwords imported from outside Japan. For centuries, China culture has had a far-reaching influence, and many words with intellectual or philosophical backgrounds originated in China. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when new concepts were introduced from the West, they were often translated with new collocations of Chinese characters. These words are an important part of the knowledge vocabulary used in modern Japanese.

For example: radio, coffee, computer, etc.

In addition to these foreign words, many words in Japanese are also borrowed from English and other European languages. Although methods of creating new words continue to exist, it is common to introduce western words as they are, such as "volunteers" and "news announcers". Japanese has also created some fake English words such as "night" (night sports competition) and "salaryman" (wage earners) (actually, they don't exist in English). This trend has obviously increased in recent years.

[Edit this paragraph] honorific

The Japanese have developed a complete system of honorific words, which are called honorific words in Japanese to show the speaker's respect for the interviewee. Different levels of languages are involved here, and skilled honorific users have a wide range of vocabulary and expressions to choose from in order to achieve the ideal level of politeness. A simple sentence can be expressed in more than 20 ways, depending on the relative position between the speaker and the interviewee. It is quite challenging to determine the appropriate level of politeness in conversation, because the relative status relationship is determined by a complex combination of many factors, such as social status, rank, age, gender, and even helping others or owing others favors. When two people meet for the first time, they don't know which class the other person belongs to, or their social status seems to be the same (that is, there is no obvious difference in clothing or behavior), and there is a neutral or intermediate language to use. Generally speaking, women tend to use more polite language than men, and they use it more frequently. It is not easy to master honorifics. Some Japanese are better at using honorifics than others. There are almost countless honorifics, mostly embodied in nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. The so-called honorifics are used to address the person you are talking to or something related to him/her, such as relatives, houses or property. On the contrary, there are some particularly modest words that speakers use to refer to themselves or things related to themselves. The gap between these two expressions shows due respect for the interviewees.