General Information about the Japanese Language

General information about Japanese * Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been spoken outside. * Before and during World War II, when Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of China, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands, 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. * More than the 1.2 million of the United States sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. * Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese. * Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia ,Canada, the United States (California) and the Philippines. * As with any language, Japanese has its share of regional dialects. * The lingua franca of Japan is called “hyōjungo” (standard language).

Classification of Japanese * Japanese is a member of the Japonic languages family, which also includes the languages spoken throughout the Ryūkyū Islands. * Japanese is often called a language isolate. It is agglutinative type of language. * Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu, Korean, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, Ural-Altaic, Altaic, Uralian, Mon–Khmer, Malayo-Polynesian and Ryukyuan.

Characteristics of Japanese * Vocabulary There are three different categories of words in the Japanese language. The largest category is made up of traditional Japanese words. The next largest group belongs to words borrowed from China through their long mutual history. The smallest group, though the fastest growing and possibly of the greatest concern, are the words borrowed from modern western languages (especially American English). To a much smaller extent, the third group also contains words borrowed from other Asian languages (besides China).