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At the part of the 3 adjectives called Keiyōshi the example ‘あつくない atsuku nai’ is given with translation "it is not hot" later on with the explication of using inflection the example ‘熱くなる atsuku naru’ with translation "become hot" is given. Shouldn’t the first example then better be translated as, ‘it has not become hot’ ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomvasseur ( talk • contribs) 19:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Compare: 'atsui' "it is hot", 'atsukunai' "it is not hot" -- 'atsuku naru' "it becomes hot", 'atsukunaku naru' "it becomes not hot" - 'naru' meaning "become" in both cases; contrast with 'it has not become hot': "atsuku naranai". It may be a bit confusing, but the examples are correct as given. The concept of 'to not become' is distinct and represented by 'naranai'. But 'atsuku nai' hasn't got 'naru' at all, so there's no becoming. ArlenCuss ( talk) 02:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/japanese.shtml is a link stating that the number of Japanese speakers in the UK is approximately ~50,000 - the list given appears to be in numerical order. Surely the UK should hence feature in it? 83.104.170.115 19:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Made new page and moved content: see Japanese language classification. Justification: this main article is too long, and some of the finer points were not appropriate for a general article. Godfrey Daniel 20:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Older comments:
I am a Western researcher doing work on the possible relationship of Japanese to other languages, and I know all the leading Western researchers in the field, as well as many of the Japanese ones. While it is well-known that some work has been "fraught with [...] political tensions," I know no one who allows politics to interfere in their linguistics. Please leave the qualifying statement "However, these tensions are nearly absent among Western researchers" in the article. Godfrey Daniel 19:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I have edited Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English: to modern Indo-European pronouns as Latin pronouns can be used in a similar way.-- Darthanakin 11:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Want pronouns? Okay, pronouns:
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.8.196.195 ( talk • contribs) 01:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Removed from the article:
Japanese has only one liquid, commonly written /r/. The Japanese liquid is not a retroflex sound. Furthermore, no Japanese dialect has any retroflex sounds, liquid or otherwise. Check Vance, Shibatani, Miller, Bloch, Tsujimura, or any of the myriad Japanese textbooks out there.
It might also be interesting to note that in general, neither the presence nor the absence of a certain sound has any bearing on the genetic relationship of languages. For example, English and Mandarin both have retroflex /r/, but they are not related. English and Burmese both have /θ/, but they are not related. On the other hand, French, German, Italian, Russian, Swedish, and many other European languages have neither /ɻ/ nor /θ/, yet all of these languages (and many more without /ɻ/ or /θ/) are all related to English.
While it's important to note that Ono et al. have posited a relationship with Tamil, retroflexion, being absent from Japanese, is not a relevant criterion for making the comparison. Godfrey Daniel 18:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia, sure Japanese language is spoken by 140 million people?? The correct number probably around 126-130 million Japanese or non- Japanese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bostonprofessor ( talk • contribs) 23:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Should we add a section to the article that has names of the best books and software that help teach Japanese? I'd do this myself but I'm interested in learning the language myself so I'm not sure which books or computer software would help me read or understand Japanese. -- AS Artimour 15:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I am interested in learning the language, but do not have the time or effort to look up any literary works, so maybe instead listl inks to any websites proferring itself towards teaching Japanese User:cpettijohn93 —Preceding comment was added at 17:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
While the initial removal may have been grossly inaccurate and poorly solicited, it is indeed true that very few, if any Irish secondary schools provide Japanese. (Indeed, most universities, except most foul Trinity >:( , seem to do it.) I myself currently do it after school two days a week after practically petitioning to get my school to provide it, and they still didn't fit it into the regular timetable. Certainly, even if it is a Leaving Certificate subject, it is almost never provided in regular schools and, even then, Ireland doesn't deserve mention in such a miniscule list of states that do it in lower level schools. elvenscout742 00:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
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 of the first half of the twentieth century, /ti/ was palatalized to [tɕi], approximately chi; however, now /ti/ and /tɕi/ are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii [paatii] "party" and chi [chi] "ground."
Is there any other example that can be given to demonstrate how ti and chi are different phonemes? Since party is a loanword and chi is a native word is it really a natural phonemic difference? Or more of a foreign sound being transposed on native language. My question is whether ti and chi, specifically in the sample given, are considered seperate japanese phonemes or are still just allophones?
A couple of notes, I added two links but I would like to add that in the language learning section it should be noted that most japanese universities require a contract for a bachelor degree after language courses (yes even the junior colleges). I didn't add it but if anyone finds it worthwhile they can add it.
Tzu7
06:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Korean and Japanese ( Grammar) is same. Only difference is Koreans do not rely on Chinese characters even though Koreans language does have many borrowed words from Chinese. Like English and Latin/Greek relationship between Korean and Chinese. Japanese language do rely on Chinese characters on daily life. Percentage wise Korean and Japanese grammar relationship is about 90 percent same ( 10 percent difference). Chinese relationship between Korean and Japanese ( Vocabulary percentage) Korean: Korean native words 40 percent, Korean-Chinese vocabulary 60 percent. Japanese: Japanese native words 20 percent, Japanese-Chinese vocabulary and character usage 80 percent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.63.207.12 ( talk) 15:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
The
Classification section in the article notes that "among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to
Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to
Korean is considered plausible but is still up to debate". I find this somewhat confusing, as the
Korean language page itself notes:
So if Korean is considered to be based at least in part on Goguryeo, and Japanese is considered to be related to Goguryeo, then it sounds to me an awful lot like splitting hairs to say that Japanese and Goguryeo are genetically related but Japanese and Korean might not be. It's a bit like saying that I'm related to my great grandfather, but maybe not to my second cousin once removed. ??? Can anyone clear this up?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sekicho. Yep, also a bit like suggesting that Dutch and German are dialects of each other, or that Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are besically the same thing. I'm aware of the political reasons for this particular issue, and given the history in Asia they're fully understandable.
To rephrase my initial thoughts, what I'm wondering is whether we could re-word the statements in the Classification section to be a bit clearer. As it stands, the text suggests that Goguryeo and modern Korean are not related, which stands in contrast to what is said in the actual Korean language article.
In addition to this disagreement between the two articles, the statement I quoted at the top of this subsection is also confusing in that it mixes what is apparently objective fact (" Goguryeo has the most evidence") with subjective specialist opinion ("relationship to Korean ... is still up to debate"). Perhaps changing "evidence" here to "currency" or "credence" would suffice? Should we also add a parenthetic comment to the effect that Goguryeo is considered an ancestor of modern Korean, to further avoid confusion and make the text more clearly consistent with the Korean language article?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I am not a professional linguist, but I am half-Japanese and I am fluent in several languages, not only Japanese and English. I have noticed that Yamato words bear a striking similarity to Polynesian words and Japanese grammar is very similar to Korean. Phonologically, Korean is difficult for me, but Maori and Hawaiian are practically identical. Maori even has the exact same 'r' sound as Japanese, which I have only heard on Pacific islands, never in Asia. A couple of words examples that show a relationship:
Hawaiian | Maori | Japanese |
---|---|---|
Haile mai/come to me | Haire mai/come to me | Haire/Get inside; Mairu/come |
Wahine, -hine -female | wahine/woman | Hina/girl -hime/princess |
Kane/man | Tane, ta/man | ka/man |
Another, what I think is a significant thread, is the preference for the vowel over the consonant. In Indo-European languages, the consonant is conserved over the vowel. Thus, Proto-IE is often written as strings of vowel-less consonants, e.g., 'ptr' for 'father.' In Pacific languages, where the vowel is more important, this would be absurd. In my family we often say 'shito' instead of 'hito' and 'shitenno' instead of 'shiteiruno' and are never misunderstood. So it doesn't surprise me that in Maori, 'wh' can represent an 'f' or 'h' sound. Furthermore, speakers of European languages think it's strange that in Japanese - and in Polynesian languages - you can change the meaning of a word by elongating a vowel. More importantly is the fact that in Polynesian languages and Japanese, a syllable always ends with a vowel. I don't know of any other language group where this is true, including Altaic languages.
There are a lot of other cultural similarities that put Japan squarely in the Pacific Rim too, such as eating raw fish, clothing, music based on drumbeats (the koto is a Chinese instrument but taiko are distinctly Japanese), social structure, and wearing tattoos, which later was discouraged, again because of Chinese influence, but never died off completely.
I believe that cultural prejudices have prevented people from seeing these obvious characteristics. It's always the lower classes and ethnic groups that preserve heritage, but are also repugned by the elites who do the studies. The upper classes seek foreign influences and set themselves apart by means of their acquired exoticisms. Regardless, the evidence remains. It is my adamant belief that Japanese is a patois of Korean grammar and Proto-Polynesian vocabulary upon which Chinese has been superimposed. 76.102.114.88 23:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)Steve
I had read about the supposed relation of Japanese and Korean languages to Altaic group. As I recall the theory is supported by some Japanese linguists(I don't know about Koreans). Does anybody know about this topic better, what about evidence for this theory. 81.214.36.116 ( talk) 12:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I have a question about the rentaishi class of adjective. I just looked back at the old talk page entry for this, and there's no mention of rentaishi. The Kōjien examples of rentaishi include ano, aru, saru, iwayuru, and interestingly ōkina (which I'd always considered as simply a variant of ōkii). The definition of rentaishi is given as:
I take "only to modify nouns" to mean that rentaishi cannot end a phrase nor stand on their own, hence the mention in the article that these are "also called true adjectives". In contrast, i adjectives look a lot like stative verbs, in that they can form predicates and even complete utterances in and of themselves, and also conjugate for tense.
However, it looks like onaji might be a bad example of rentaishi. The Kōjien gives two entries for onaji, with one classified as an irregular i adjective, as evidenced by the adverbial form onajiku. The other entry mentions its use as a meishi and as a rentaishi, but with the note that this is from the keiyōshi ("形容詞「おなじ」が体言化したもの").
Given that onaji can in fact serve as a predicate (followed by the copula, like any other na adjective), and given its adverbial form, it looks a lot less like a regular rentaishi and a lot more like an i adjective that has become rather irregular, a kind of keiyōshi / keiyōdōshi hybrid. As such, could we use some other word as an example for rentaishi?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 06:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
" Perhaps this is a bit strange, but as an outsider I always noticed that the Korean language took alot from the Japanese system. Furthermore, Korean culture itself seems to take whatever is popular in Japan and slap a Korean name on it, and then enjoy the payoff.???"
1) Korean Peninsula: Like it or not without Korean peninsula. ( Yayoi or Ainu). It was Korean farmers that settled and intermarried with native tribe made the people and culture as modern day Japan as today. ( Blood flow, Human flow, and culture flow) Japan did received directly from Korean Peninsula.
2) Japanese Emperor: He himself announced his ancestors came from Baekje (Kudara) Kingdom.
3) Korean and Japanese grammar: Korean and Japanese grammar and language intonation is same or similiar. Is this because Chinese language or Chinese cultural influence??? I don't think so.
4) Lotte Company: Founder of this food company is Korean. Lotte company is located in Korea and Japan.
5) Kyokushinkai Karate: Founder of strongest Karate in Japan was Korean. Mas Oyama. ( Choi Bai dal)
6) The second richest person in Japan is Korean. Masayoshi Son the founder (Soft Bank company). Is this all Chinese or Japanese influence over Korea???) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one ( talk • contribs) 08:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
So Japan or China never copied from Koreans or Korean culture. Japan slap a Japanese name on it, and they never enjoyed payed off???? GIVE ME A BREAK GUYS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one ( talk • contribs) 09:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Would anybody be interested in doing a section or sub-article on Japanese pronouns (watashi, ore, omae etc.) and in particular the question of when each is used? -- Kenji Yamada 04:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
This sentence not clear enough:
If considered as a system of morae instead of syllables, (as the katakana and hiragana phonetic writing systems explicitly do) the sound structure is very simple:
It is not clear enough if they consider it the former or latter. --jidanni
One wonders e.g., why kawa becomes gawa, sawa becomes zawa, when behind some words, but not others. This simple level question should be answered. --jidanni
Keep in mind that this is not uniform throughout Japan. In general, Kansai tends to get rid of the vocalizations (the dakuten). On Lake Biwa, there is a train station called Katata (with no dakuten in the hiragana on the station sign). In Kanto, this train station would be called Katada. Also, there is the place name Chigusa, which in Kansai is pronounced Chikusa. Westwind273 05:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Sir Edgar -- you note that before the 5th century, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. But the main Japanese writing page states that Chinese characters began to show up in the 4th century. My memory's fuzzy, but which is it? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 17:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
About Chinese characters:
There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cāng Jié, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huángdì of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. A few symbols exist on pottery shards from the Neolithic period in China, but whether or not they constitute writing or are ancestral to the Chinese writing system is a topic of much controversy among scholars. Archaeological evidence, mainly the oracle bones found in the 19-20th centuries, at present only dates Chinese characters to the Shāng dynasty, specifically to the 14th to 11th centuries BC, although this fully mature script implies an earlier period of development.
The image of a table showing hiragana and katakana made a mistake - the i sound is represented as a hiragana twice(い), without its katakana equivalent (イ). Someone should fix that, or put up a new one. Ozarker 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello Nobu Sho --
Though pulled from the Japonic languages page, I must point out that your edit of 10:25, 3 February 2006 contains some inconsistencies.
Old | New |
---|---|
* Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory. | * Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. Japanese is related to modern Korean based primarily on near-identical grammar, but there is scarce lexical similarity between the two; supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory. |
The Buyeo languages page itself notes that the hypothetical Fuyu language was thought to be only "somewhat different from the language of Samhan and Silla". Given this and the above quote, I must ask, where is it said that "supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family"? Unfortunately, in digging through the Japonic languages page, where you found this text, I could find no source for this sweeping statement that contradicts other information elsewhere in Wikipedia. It appears that one Gilgamesh initially added this statement to that page. ( Edit diff here.) I will write this person and see if they care to add anything to this discussion.
I must note that you are involved in an ongoing dispute over on the Yayoi Talk page, wherein you stand accused of inserting unsubstantiated POV commentary. I bring this up simply to point out that your credibility is not very high right now, particularly in relation to Korean and Japanese issues. Making ultimately unsubstantiated additions that contradict other pages and that might be construed as POV is not a good way of improving one's credibility within the Wikipedia community. If you are aware of any verifiable source, please provide one. Such citations also add to Wikipedia's quality as a research tool.
For the time being, in light of the logical error and contradictory information on other pages, I am commenting out this addition -- the text will remain in the editable source, but will not be visible to the casual browser. I will also post on the Japonic languages Talk page to bring up these same concerns about sources. I thank you for bringing this page to my attention, particularly the section at issue here.
I look forward to any replies. Thank you, Eiríkr Útlendi 20:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi folks, I am a historical linguist who works on the history and origins of Japanese. Not only am I up-to-date on the scholarly work in this area, I know most of the scholars who wrote those works. We agree that as yet, there is no consensus. However, given our current state of knowledge, the "related to extinct Korean-peninsular languages" hypothesis is given the most credence. Still, that isn't definite, and some people are still hanging on to Korean & Altaic connections (which cannot be rejected the way that the silly Tamil hypothesis can). I have reordered the list to reflect this.
As for the debate above, it doesn't seem to need any comment by me. Godfrey Daniel 04:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does Japanese come from 800 A.D., while the Hangul alphabet come from 1400 A.D.? That is what I was taught in my Asiatic languages course.
Taw --
I understand that the Altaic hypothesis is considered disputed (as was duly noted in the infobox), but I was not aware that it was so apparently controversial. Though I'm admittedly not as widely read regarding Japanese linguistic theory as I'd like to be, what I have read so far consistently mentions the Altaic hypothesis as a likely, albeit incomplete or flawed, contender. Should it not then at least bear mention here in the infobox, with the "disputed" tag in plain view? I feel it's better for those browsing Wikipedia to see something that's disputed, and marked as such, than to simply have anything controversial swept under the rug and removed from public view. What does everyone think? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
To me it seems like somebody wrote a quite POV part about learning Japanese language which since the creation has been entirely rewritten NPOV-ly but keeping the basic structure. Should it even be there in the first place? I know many people have an interest in learning Japanese, largely because of the recent popularity of manga and the like (which is becoming an increasing problem when people with little knowledge of Japan outside what's portrayed in manga start "contributing" to articles on things Japanese), but I don't think that's enough to put it in an encyclopedia. I don't see similar headings on languages like Spanish, so why should Japanese have one? Some of the informatino there is relevant though but I'd like to move it all to different places. Mackan 17:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Something that I haven't undersood (or maybe misunderstood) is why in Japanese language, the grammatical particles are very empathized while grammatical cases are not mentioned. Why is, for example, the the possesive particle "no" not a counted as a genitiv suffix? In spoken Japanese "no" sounds very merged with the possesor (pronoun, noun etc), like a case ending. Not even in Encyclopædia Britannica are cases mentioned in the article on Japanese in Macropedia (or at least not that i remember. Might have to check that up though).-- Blackfield 21:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
The text of the article states that it is the official language of Japan; the infobox states it is de facto. Which is it? Peter1968 05:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Are those links to ethnologue.com really necessary? The "Ethnologue report for Japanese" link points to a dead page (Apr 26 2006), and the "Ethnologue report for language code JPN" doesn't seem to provide any additional information of any value on the subject. -- Sakurambo 16:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
on my UserPage on Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bigdowski_robert under 7 How people describe Robert Bigdowski (found on the web) I wrote a citate I found from the web in Japanese. If anyone would have time to summarize it on my site he is very welcome. Many thanks in advance, Robert
There seems to be some dispute over what constitutes spam vs. an informative link. I've noticed that there are two websites involved here that are inserted and then swapped for one another:
A page dealing with the Kansai dialect of Japanese
The Japanese Language Informative article about the Japanese language.
Note that the descriptions aren't my own, they're just whatever the wiki authors at the time used.
Having just visited both sites for myself, they both seem to have some useful, or at the very least, interesting material. The nihongoresources website does recommend that people buy a particular textbook, but not in a pushy manner. The eLanguageSchool website seems to offer free language lessons, with additional content accessible upon registration.
Instead of engaging in an edit war, could we just discuss here on the talk page why or why not these links should be included? -- Tachikoma 16:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Japanese is an established minority language in Paraguay. Please see the link below:
Emigrants from Japan to Paraguay begin in 1936, and there is a Japanese village in Paraguayan each place now. There are 10 schools only in a Japanese school, too. It was a minority race of 0.14%, but 7% of all production of the soy bean which was one of the Paraguayan main farm products were produced in a Japanese-farmhouse and occupied about 40% of the export total sum of the country now, and, as for about 7,000 Japanese immigrants in current Paraguay, judging from population, it was it with the fourth place export country in the world. http://federacion.hp.infoseek.co.jp/contenido/contenido.html
Any evidence? I think many language articles in English wikipedia are exaggerating the extent to which one language is spoken. You may say Spanish is the official language of 10+ countries, French 10+, German 3+, etc. But how to estimate the number of speakers in regions where that language is not officially endorsed? So, now this version says, Japanese IS spoken in North Korea. Are many North Koreans speaking Japanese? Who knows?--User:Fitzwilliam 15:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
If there's anybody out there that knows and can also translate to Japanese... Please send me a note ASAP!!! -- WIKISCRIPPS 07 THU OCT 5 2006 9:28 PM EDT
Recently someone changed the japanese word otoko to dansei in the article Ergative-absolutive language The changes can be seen here: otoko>dansei. Could some japanese speaker please check if this change is all well in relation to the article? Maunus 20:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Do people say "no" between the noun and adjective in Kanji where the noun precedes the adjective? Because somebody said Mononoke-hime like this: Mononoke no hime. -- PJ Pete
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Moonspeak&redirect=no
Should there be a section or at least a couple of sentences in this article mentioning that "Moonspeak" is an American colloquial term for the Japanese language? Otherwise, one might be confused as to exactly why 'Moonspeak' re-directs to this article. EvaXephon 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I've done a bit of trawling about and turned up the following:
FWIW, if anyone wants to do anything with it. -- RJCraig 08:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll delete the following paragraphs in the current edition as of 2007-01-22 19:58 because they are wrong.
They are not levels; Japanese has addressee honorifics and referent honorifics, and they are independent. The former is called teineigo (丁寧語) or polite forms. The latter is called sonkeigo (尊敬語) or honorific/respectful forms for positive out-group referent honorifics, and kenjōgo (謙譲語) or humble forms for negative in-group referent honorifics.
ex.
taberu (eat) > tabemasu (eat + addr.hon.)
meshiagaru (eat + pos.out.ref.hon.) > meshiagarimasu (eat + pos.out.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)
itadaku (eat + neg.in.ref.hon) > itadakimasu (eat + neg.in.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)
Again, they are not levels. Many keigo have dictionary forms, such as meshiagaru and itadaku.
Referent honorifics, Sonkeigo and kenjōgo, are gradually disappearing, but addressee honorifics, teineigo, are commonly used even today. Young people might try improving their skills of referent honorifics before getting a job. - TAKASUGI Shinji 03:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
From the article:
I would prefer to see an example here where "ti" and "chi" form a minimal pair. Which is generally expected to make a full claim of them being different phonetic elements. Namely, if saying [ti] instead of [tɕi], or vice-versa, does not create a distinct new word, then the two remain phonologically allophones of each other. I am aware of the difference in writing "ti" when it occurs in foreign loan words: "チィ" but this often doesn't mean that the sound itself has become phonologically different. An example, is the letter combonation in Latin: "ph", for words borrowed from Greek words, which used the "Φ" (phi) character which represented a [pʰ], an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, at the time of borrowing the word. Never-the-less this sound did not become phonologically different from [f], and Latin by consensus never considered them as different sounds. (I'm certain there were people who were language-source purists, who insisted on pronouncing it "correctly", but that is always at the risk of those using the borrowed word not understanding you.)
So, simply, I would hope that someone could find a minimal pair between these two sounds, otherwise it's a fairly uninteresting, and non-notable statement of Japanese borrowing a sound from a language only for loan words. -- Puellanivis 22:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I've edited the article under "Geographical Distribution" to include Vancouver, Canada. Although the current Japanese community is far less compared to in the 1930s, there are still quite a bit of Japanese residents here and tourists visit here frequently because of many Japanese-speaking tours, shops and such. I myself spoke Japanese as my primary language until I learned English, having lived in Japan.
If anyone objects, please comment below.
-Edwin- 06:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
theres a big similarities between those languages something would be change i think.
look here:
Ainu is currently considered a language isolate with no known relation to other languages. It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a cover term for several isolates and small language families believed to have been present in Siberia prior to the arrival of Turkic and Tungusic speakers; it is not a proper language family. Most linguists believe the shared vocabulary between Ainu and Nivkh (spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing; there are also loanwords both from Ainu to Japanese and Japanese to Ainu. In recent years, the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama and others have tried to link it by both vocabulary and cultural comparisons to the Austronesian languages. Alexander Vovin (1993) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with Austroasiatic; he regards this hypothesis as preliminary. More recently, Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002) has argued that Ainu belongs to the “Eurasiatic languages”; this hypothesis remains highly controversial. Evidence from studies of the genetics of Ainu and other world populations tend to hint that the Ainu people, and therefore also their language, may have some distant connection to Japanese, Koreans, or Turkic peoples of Central Asia, but it is clear from all forms of inquiry that the Ainu people and language have a very long history of isolation and independent development. They do appear, however, to have experienced some intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history; it is not known to what extent this might have affected the Ainu language.
Okay, I don't get the double negative. How does it work? If you put two negatives in a Japanese sentence does it become negative? -- 71.107.199.113 06:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
The CIA report is untrustworthy, or at least, too rough in some cases. For example, it says in 'background of JAPAN', ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html)
In 1603, a Tokugawa shogunate (military dictatorship) ushered in a long period of isolation from foreign influence in order to secure its power. For 250 years this policy enabled Japan to enjoy stability and a flowering of its indigenous culture. Following the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854, Japan opened its ports and began to intensively modernize and industrialize.
Actuallly, " sakoku" policy started in 1616 on a small scale, completed in 1641. It was not a sudden change but a somewhat gradual process. And even under the sakoku policy some ports were always opened, and Japan was continuously trading under the shogun's control with four countries — the Netherlands, China, Korea and Ryukyuu — and with Ainu people. So the above remark is rather lacking for the accuracy in scholarly standpoint, even if it is not wrong. Is such a report valid?
From a commonsense viewpoint, it's absurd that one of OFFICIAL languages of Angaur is Japanese, granting that there are some Japanese speakers in Palau.
I insist that the descriptions about Palau should be deleted.
CutieNakky
00:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, there already is a wikipage for the Gender Differences in Spoken Japanese. My bad! Yanqui9 19:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
There's this jpg image of the list of Hiragana and Katakana characters in the article "Writing System". I saw two unfamiliar dymbols there ('wi' and 'we'). Are there words that REALLY use these symbols in Nihongo? Zxyggrhyn 13:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Is the Japanese language considered ideographic, logographic, or neither? Apparantly, Chinese is logographic, which makes sense, as the Chinese characters are used exclusively. Japanese, on the other hand, uses kanji only to provide meaning, and never to indicate for tense, particles, etc... Does that make Japanese an ideographic language? I ask because an argument arose on a Japanese martial arts related article as to whether kanji should be called logograms or ideograms. Bradford44 03:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Can someone please translate this phrase: "Be yourself" into casual, neutral Japanese? (Consider that the "be" is imperative, yet not aggressive. Kikiluvscheese 03:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Related to this: Tom Hanks in Savign private Ryan tells Private Ryan with his dying breaath "earn this". This is beautifully rendered into japanese as "isshokenmei ikiteru you"- "live your best". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 ( talk) 21:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
"... more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003." It reads as if there is an oversight since 77k Chinese and 15k South Koreans already exceed 90k foreign students. Surely there are a several thousand students from other countries? My son is about to study in Japan and I was particularly interested in the number of native English speakers who study in Japan each year. Robertcurrey 05:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
That is an extremely difficult question to answer. How do you count it? By the numbers on courses? On what courses? By results? The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is the Japanese government run exam. It is the only exam employers take seriously, except fro the JETRO exam. Level 1 is the highest level. This high level is adequate to as a foundation to study in Japanese a subject in a Japanese Univerity. But no more than this. In the UK, last year, 92 people passed this level. No more. In the whole world, 164,436. I passed this level 5 years ago and I still can only just follow news reports and can only just manage to read Japanese newspapers without effort. Anyway, the stats are here: http://www.jees.or.jp/jlpt/pdf/result_2006_5.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 ( talk) 21:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
This edit by CutieNakky is disputed. The source provided by CutieNakky herself says "Official Angaurian languages are Angaur, English and Japanese."-- Endroit 21:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
CutieNakky, don't show irrelevant sources, such as for the "Languages" (言語) of the "Republic of Palau" (パラオ共和国) in their "Travel Information" (渡航情報) page. We're discussing the "OFFICIAL LANGUAGES OF ANGAUR" ONLY here.... Not the whole country of Palau.
Please note that the official languages within Palau are different from state to state. Now there are multiple sources, which collaborate that Japanese is an official language in Angaur:
Perhaps, this is just "old information" being circulated, like some of you believe. However, our WP:V ("Verifiability") policy tells us to only put stuff that's verifiable. Please discuss what's verifiable for the State of Angaur (not Palau).-- Endroit 16:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
For reference,
CutieNakky 17:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Please also join discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Angaur language. There appears to be some sort of a stalemate there.
That discussion also deals with the reliability of The World Factbook. I believe we need to get down to the bottom of this. Is the CIA information completely inaccurate? Or is the Angaur state government truly declaring Japanese as an official language, despite very few speakers of that language?-- Endroit 17:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
The whole paragraph on Anguar is giving a fairly minor topic undue weight. I think it is a subpart of the statement "… and various Pacific islands during and before World War II, …" in the preceding paragraph. It certainly is possible that Ethnologue and CIA are wrong on this, but using a blog entry as a counter-argument doesn't fulfill the reliable source requirements. I am going to attempt to move it into the previous paragraph as a footnote that mentions the disputed information. Revert and discuss if this solution is not satisfactory. ✤ JonHarder talk 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I removed the geographic map on this article because it lies about the Japanese speaking community and has no reference. In South Korea, only a very small minority of people can speak Japanese such as young people interested in Japanese animation, or businessmen dealing with Japanese, or people who once studied or lived in Japan. Even during the Japanese occupation, it is told that a few elite people could speak Japanese language.
In other hand, Korean students begin to learn English as a second language from elementary school and learn other language as a second foreign language, equal to call third language. In fact, the system of learning third language stays quit in formality. Anyways, most of the third language classes are focusing German and French. There are a few high schools to have student learn Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese in South Korea. Furthermore, high school students taking Japanese class are relatively minor even compared to Chinese and Spanish classes, because of the fact that top rated universities don't have Japan-related majors. For the entrance exam like SAT, students who want to get an admission from prominent schools should prepare their third language, but a few universities give an opportunity to students to have taken Japanese as their third language to take that exam.
You can say there're discrimination for choosing third language in South Korea but almost the same thing is happening in Japan. Likewise, many famous universities or high schools in Japan don't teach Korean language due to historical matters and lack of needs. Generally, high school students concentrating on science and mathematics learn German, the others learn French in South Korea. But is South Korea categorized as German or French speaking community? No. Koreans consider English class is the 3rd most important class among classes in middle or high schools but is Korea also categorized as English speaking world? No. Please don't lie and distort a simple fact.
I also highly doubt that Canada and US are referred as countries with a sizable Japanese speaking community. Japanophiles and Japanese immigrants can speak Japanese like Korean-American can speak Korean. -- Appletrees` —Preceding comment was added at 02:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese harp "kugo," at Traditional Japanese musical instruments. Badagnani 07:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Done
Oda Mari (
talk)
15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese gong "kane," at Kane (musical instrument). Badagnani 07:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Done
Oda Mari (
talk)
15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Can someone translate this for me? ドラゴンの天使 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.23.160.93 ( talk) 23:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hey, lets not be straitjackets, people might not want be part of this community, don't you think? ドラゴンの天使 is Angel of the Dragon.-- Jondel 03:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone here have any recommendations for teach-yourself books for learning the Japanese language, both written and verbal? Thanks for any ideas. -- RisingSunWiki 02:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Need romaji at Kunitachi College of Music. Badagnani ( talk) 23:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
May I ask a native speaker of Nihongo something? I'm currently learning Japanese and have multiple books as references. I just came across a contradiction in two of my books. In Japanese for Dummies it says that you should avoid saying "Anata" because it sounds impolite. However, in the book Easy Japanese by Jack Seward, Anata is in parenthesis as "polite." Is it really just a preference thing or what? Quietmartialartist ( talk) 18:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Even in Japanese pronouns it says,
"As a general rule, the first person pronouns (e.g. watashi, 私) and second person pronouns (e.g. anata, 貴方) are avoided, especially in formal speech." I'm still confused. Quietmartialartist ( talk) 21:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, so basically I should talk to everyone like I talk to my Korean grandmaster. I always refer to him as at least, "Sir." Quietmartialartist ( talk) 02:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I have another question. None of my books or the program I'm using (Rosetta Stone) explain when to use certain verbs at the ends of sentences. At least I think they're verbs: "Desu", "Imasu", and "Arimasu" for example. With other variations: "Imasen" and "Arimasen". I've concluded, I may be incorrect, that you say "Imasu" when stating and/or observing something. That is to say: "Kono booru wa akai imasu" Whereas you'd use "Desu" when referring to an action: "Kono otokonoko keru akai na booru desu" I'm sure my less-than-great aptitude is apparent, so feel free to correct any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. I just wanted to clear this up before I got too far on this train of thought and made it an incorrect habit. Quietmartialartist ( talk) 16:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I find the section on sentence order misleading, perhaps to the point of being incorrect. Japanese sentences beyond the world of Beginner Japanese classes have no inherent order, with the stipulation that verbs come last (and again, there's a common exception). 'Steve drives car' and 'Car drives Steve' mean different things in English, while 'Suchiibu ha kuruma wo unten suru' and 'Kuruma wo Suchiibu ha unten suru' mean the same thing in Japanese. The phrase "basic word order" implies that a grammatically correct word order exists. In Japanese, "word order" is at best a convention; particles remove the need for it. The best confirming source I can think of out-of-hand is Tae Kim, but I'm pretty sure (Subject Object Verb) is not the word order of Japanese. Is there agreement? Should we remove or rephrase? Estemi ( talk) 06:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Can anyone please take a look at the article Kesen language?
It looks a little weird to me. I explained my concerns at the talk page there.
Thanks in advance. -- Amir E. Aharoni ( talk) 21:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Before the 5th century, when the Korean scholar Wang In introduced writing to the Japanese, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. The Baekje Korean settlers of Japan and their Koreo-Japanese descendants, who formed the ruling classes of Japan, used the Chinese writing script along with many other aspects of the Culture of Korea and Chinese culture.
It corrected it.
Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. [1] A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent the letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. This is the first document of a Japanese history. After ruining Baekje, Japan invited the scholar from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave the official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/袁晋卿) , and spread a Chinese character from the 7th century to the 8th century. -- Princesunta ( talk) 11:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. citation needed A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent a letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. [2] This is supposed to be the first document of a Japanese history. After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/ [3] [4]袁晋卿 [5]) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
Please disclose evidence and the source. -- 210.168.215.11 ( talk) 05:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Template:Hiragana and Template:Katakana seem pretty useless to me: typing in the text with an IME is faster and more effective. Should the templates be nominated for deletion? ( 212.247.11.156 ( talk) 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC))
The section on official status contains the following sentence: "This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration … for communicating necessity." I take it that this means "to meet the needs of communication" and not "to communicate a need." If no one objects in the next few days, I'll make the change. Mrrhum ( talk) 01:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
People without Japanese language support may be wondering how they cannot see the characters. Perhaps a note at the top of the page with appropriate link?-- 207.67.115.158 ( talk) 13:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
こんにちは Demonofjapan ( talk) 15:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
What does the phonology section mean when it says that Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds? If it means that none of them are diphthongs, then it should say that. I'll change the wording to reflect that if no one gives a different explanation. A. Parrot ( talk) 23:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that “Nihongo” is pronounced [ɲihoŋɡo]? That is what is currently posted but I am not sure if this is correct. Is there a need for the G since the “ŋ” is already present? Thanks. -- No3- ( talk) 22:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Am I mistaken or doesn't the もんぶかがくしょ (monbukagakusho) regulate Japanese language to a degree? Right now it says "None (Influenced heavily by Japanese Government") but I'm pretty sure the monbusho has a very significant role. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.131.6 ( talk) 16:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Need Japanese name in the box at Kowtow. Is the kanji that's there now accurate or are there other terms as well? Badagnani ( talk) 18:36, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Dictionary entries:
the forehead touches the ground).
that the forehead touches the ground); to prostrate oneself; to give a deep, reverent bow. Anatoli ( talk) 20:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
At the part of the 3 adjectives called Keiyōshi the example ‘あつくない atsuku nai’ is given with translation "it is not hot" later on with the explication of using inflection the example ‘熱くなる atsuku naru’ with translation "become hot" is given. Shouldn’t the first example then better be translated as, ‘it has not become hot’ ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomvasseur ( talk • contribs) 19:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Compare: 'atsui' "it is hot", 'atsukunai' "it is not hot" -- 'atsuku naru' "it becomes hot", 'atsukunaku naru' "it becomes not hot" - 'naru' meaning "become" in both cases; contrast with 'it has not become hot': "atsuku naranai". It may be a bit confusing, but the examples are correct as given. The concept of 'to not become' is distinct and represented by 'naranai'. But 'atsuku nai' hasn't got 'naru' at all, so there's no becoming. ArlenCuss ( talk) 02:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/japanese.shtml is a link stating that the number of Japanese speakers in the UK is approximately ~50,000 - the list given appears to be in numerical order. Surely the UK should hence feature in it? 83.104.170.115 19:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Made new page and moved content: see Japanese language classification. Justification: this main article is too long, and some of the finer points were not appropriate for a general article. Godfrey Daniel 20:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Older comments:
I am a Western researcher doing work on the possible relationship of Japanese to other languages, and I know all the leading Western researchers in the field, as well as many of the Japanese ones. While it is well-known that some work has been "fraught with [...] political tensions," I know no one who allows politics to interfere in their linguistics. Please leave the qualifying statement "However, these tensions are nearly absent among Western researchers" in the article. Godfrey Daniel 19:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I have edited Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English: to modern Indo-European pronouns as Latin pronouns can be used in a similar way.-- Darthanakin 11:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Want pronouns? Okay, pronouns:
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.8.196.195 ( talk • contribs) 01:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Removed from the article:
Japanese has only one liquid, commonly written /r/. The Japanese liquid is not a retroflex sound. Furthermore, no Japanese dialect has any retroflex sounds, liquid or otherwise. Check Vance, Shibatani, Miller, Bloch, Tsujimura, or any of the myriad Japanese textbooks out there.
It might also be interesting to note that in general, neither the presence nor the absence of a certain sound has any bearing on the genetic relationship of languages. For example, English and Mandarin both have retroflex /r/, but they are not related. English and Burmese both have /θ/, but they are not related. On the other hand, French, German, Italian, Russian, Swedish, and many other European languages have neither /ɻ/ nor /θ/, yet all of these languages (and many more without /ɻ/ or /θ/) are all related to English.
While it's important to note that Ono et al. have posited a relationship with Tamil, retroflexion, being absent from Japanese, is not a relevant criterion for making the comparison. Godfrey Daniel 18:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia, sure Japanese language is spoken by 140 million people?? The correct number probably around 126-130 million Japanese or non- Japanese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bostonprofessor ( talk • contribs) 23:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Should we add a section to the article that has names of the best books and software that help teach Japanese? I'd do this myself but I'm interested in learning the language myself so I'm not sure which books or computer software would help me read or understand Japanese. -- AS Artimour 15:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I am interested in learning the language, but do not have the time or effort to look up any literary works, so maybe instead listl inks to any websites proferring itself towards teaching Japanese User:cpettijohn93 —Preceding comment was added at 17:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
While the initial removal may have been grossly inaccurate and poorly solicited, it is indeed true that very few, if any Irish secondary schools provide Japanese. (Indeed, most universities, except most foul Trinity >:( , seem to do it.) I myself currently do it after school two days a week after practically petitioning to get my school to provide it, and they still didn't fit it into the regular timetable. Certainly, even if it is a Leaving Certificate subject, it is almost never provided in regular schools and, even then, Ireland doesn't deserve mention in such a miniscule list of states that do it in lower level schools. elvenscout742 00:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
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 of the first half of the twentieth century, /ti/ was palatalized to [tɕi], approximately chi; however, now /ti/ and /tɕi/ are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii [paatii] "party" and chi [chi] "ground."
Is there any other example that can be given to demonstrate how ti and chi are different phonemes? Since party is a loanword and chi is a native word is it really a natural phonemic difference? Or more of a foreign sound being transposed on native language. My question is whether ti and chi, specifically in the sample given, are considered seperate japanese phonemes or are still just allophones?
A couple of notes, I added two links but I would like to add that in the language learning section it should be noted that most japanese universities require a contract for a bachelor degree after language courses (yes even the junior colleges). I didn't add it but if anyone finds it worthwhile they can add it.
Tzu7
06:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Korean and Japanese ( Grammar) is same. Only difference is Koreans do not rely on Chinese characters even though Koreans language does have many borrowed words from Chinese. Like English and Latin/Greek relationship between Korean and Chinese. Japanese language do rely on Chinese characters on daily life. Percentage wise Korean and Japanese grammar relationship is about 90 percent same ( 10 percent difference). Chinese relationship between Korean and Japanese ( Vocabulary percentage) Korean: Korean native words 40 percent, Korean-Chinese vocabulary 60 percent. Japanese: Japanese native words 20 percent, Japanese-Chinese vocabulary and character usage 80 percent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.63.207.12 ( talk) 15:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
The
Classification section in the article notes that "among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to
Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to
Korean is considered plausible but is still up to debate". I find this somewhat confusing, as the
Korean language page itself notes:
So if Korean is considered to be based at least in part on Goguryeo, and Japanese is considered to be related to Goguryeo, then it sounds to me an awful lot like splitting hairs to say that Japanese and Goguryeo are genetically related but Japanese and Korean might not be. It's a bit like saying that I'm related to my great grandfather, but maybe not to my second cousin once removed. ??? Can anyone clear this up?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sekicho. Yep, also a bit like suggesting that Dutch and German are dialects of each other, or that Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are besically the same thing. I'm aware of the political reasons for this particular issue, and given the history in Asia they're fully understandable.
To rephrase my initial thoughts, what I'm wondering is whether we could re-word the statements in the Classification section to be a bit clearer. As it stands, the text suggests that Goguryeo and modern Korean are not related, which stands in contrast to what is said in the actual Korean language article.
In addition to this disagreement between the two articles, the statement I quoted at the top of this subsection is also confusing in that it mixes what is apparently objective fact (" Goguryeo has the most evidence") with subjective specialist opinion ("relationship to Korean ... is still up to debate"). Perhaps changing "evidence" here to "currency" or "credence" would suffice? Should we also add a parenthetic comment to the effect that Goguryeo is considered an ancestor of modern Korean, to further avoid confusion and make the text more clearly consistent with the Korean language article?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I am not a professional linguist, but I am half-Japanese and I am fluent in several languages, not only Japanese and English. I have noticed that Yamato words bear a striking similarity to Polynesian words and Japanese grammar is very similar to Korean. Phonologically, Korean is difficult for me, but Maori and Hawaiian are practically identical. Maori even has the exact same 'r' sound as Japanese, which I have only heard on Pacific islands, never in Asia. A couple of words examples that show a relationship:
Hawaiian | Maori | Japanese |
---|---|---|
Haile mai/come to me | Haire mai/come to me | Haire/Get inside; Mairu/come |
Wahine, -hine -female | wahine/woman | Hina/girl -hime/princess |
Kane/man | Tane, ta/man | ka/man |
Another, what I think is a significant thread, is the preference for the vowel over the consonant. In Indo-European languages, the consonant is conserved over the vowel. Thus, Proto-IE is often written as strings of vowel-less consonants, e.g., 'ptr' for 'father.' In Pacific languages, where the vowel is more important, this would be absurd. In my family we often say 'shito' instead of 'hito' and 'shitenno' instead of 'shiteiruno' and are never misunderstood. So it doesn't surprise me that in Maori, 'wh' can represent an 'f' or 'h' sound. Furthermore, speakers of European languages think it's strange that in Japanese - and in Polynesian languages - you can change the meaning of a word by elongating a vowel. More importantly is the fact that in Polynesian languages and Japanese, a syllable always ends with a vowel. I don't know of any other language group where this is true, including Altaic languages.
There are a lot of other cultural similarities that put Japan squarely in the Pacific Rim too, such as eating raw fish, clothing, music based on drumbeats (the koto is a Chinese instrument but taiko are distinctly Japanese), social structure, and wearing tattoos, which later was discouraged, again because of Chinese influence, but never died off completely.
I believe that cultural prejudices have prevented people from seeing these obvious characteristics. It's always the lower classes and ethnic groups that preserve heritage, but are also repugned by the elites who do the studies. The upper classes seek foreign influences and set themselves apart by means of their acquired exoticisms. Regardless, the evidence remains. It is my adamant belief that Japanese is a patois of Korean grammar and Proto-Polynesian vocabulary upon which Chinese has been superimposed. 76.102.114.88 23:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)Steve
I had read about the supposed relation of Japanese and Korean languages to Altaic group. As I recall the theory is supported by some Japanese linguists(I don't know about Koreans). Does anybody know about this topic better, what about evidence for this theory. 81.214.36.116 ( talk) 12:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I have a question about the rentaishi class of adjective. I just looked back at the old talk page entry for this, and there's no mention of rentaishi. The Kōjien examples of rentaishi include ano, aru, saru, iwayuru, and interestingly ōkina (which I'd always considered as simply a variant of ōkii). The definition of rentaishi is given as:
I take "only to modify nouns" to mean that rentaishi cannot end a phrase nor stand on their own, hence the mention in the article that these are "also called true adjectives". In contrast, i adjectives look a lot like stative verbs, in that they can form predicates and even complete utterances in and of themselves, and also conjugate for tense.
However, it looks like onaji might be a bad example of rentaishi. The Kōjien gives two entries for onaji, with one classified as an irregular i adjective, as evidenced by the adverbial form onajiku. The other entry mentions its use as a meishi and as a rentaishi, but with the note that this is from the keiyōshi ("形容詞「おなじ」が体言化したもの").
Given that onaji can in fact serve as a predicate (followed by the copula, like any other na adjective), and given its adverbial form, it looks a lot less like a regular rentaishi and a lot more like an i adjective that has become rather irregular, a kind of keiyōshi / keiyōdōshi hybrid. As such, could we use some other word as an example for rentaishi?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 06:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
" Perhaps this is a bit strange, but as an outsider I always noticed that the Korean language took alot from the Japanese system. Furthermore, Korean culture itself seems to take whatever is popular in Japan and slap a Korean name on it, and then enjoy the payoff.???"
1) Korean Peninsula: Like it or not without Korean peninsula. ( Yayoi or Ainu). It was Korean farmers that settled and intermarried with native tribe made the people and culture as modern day Japan as today. ( Blood flow, Human flow, and culture flow) Japan did received directly from Korean Peninsula.
2) Japanese Emperor: He himself announced his ancestors came from Baekje (Kudara) Kingdom.
3) Korean and Japanese grammar: Korean and Japanese grammar and language intonation is same or similiar. Is this because Chinese language or Chinese cultural influence??? I don't think so.
4) Lotte Company: Founder of this food company is Korean. Lotte company is located in Korea and Japan.
5) Kyokushinkai Karate: Founder of strongest Karate in Japan was Korean. Mas Oyama. ( Choi Bai dal)
6) The second richest person in Japan is Korean. Masayoshi Son the founder (Soft Bank company). Is this all Chinese or Japanese influence over Korea???) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one ( talk • contribs) 08:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
So Japan or China never copied from Koreans or Korean culture. Japan slap a Japanese name on it, and they never enjoyed payed off???? GIVE ME A BREAK GUYS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one ( talk • contribs) 09:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Would anybody be interested in doing a section or sub-article on Japanese pronouns (watashi, ore, omae etc.) and in particular the question of when each is used? -- Kenji Yamada 04:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
This sentence not clear enough:
If considered as a system of morae instead of syllables, (as the katakana and hiragana phonetic writing systems explicitly do) the sound structure is very simple:
It is not clear enough if they consider it the former or latter. --jidanni
One wonders e.g., why kawa becomes gawa, sawa becomes zawa, when behind some words, but not others. This simple level question should be answered. --jidanni
Keep in mind that this is not uniform throughout Japan. In general, Kansai tends to get rid of the vocalizations (the dakuten). On Lake Biwa, there is a train station called Katata (with no dakuten in the hiragana on the station sign). In Kanto, this train station would be called Katada. Also, there is the place name Chigusa, which in Kansai is pronounced Chikusa. Westwind273 05:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Sir Edgar -- you note that before the 5th century, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. But the main Japanese writing page states that Chinese characters began to show up in the 4th century. My memory's fuzzy, but which is it? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 17:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
About Chinese characters:
There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cāng Jié, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huángdì of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. A few symbols exist on pottery shards from the Neolithic period in China, but whether or not they constitute writing or are ancestral to the Chinese writing system is a topic of much controversy among scholars. Archaeological evidence, mainly the oracle bones found in the 19-20th centuries, at present only dates Chinese characters to the Shāng dynasty, specifically to the 14th to 11th centuries BC, although this fully mature script implies an earlier period of development.
The image of a table showing hiragana and katakana made a mistake - the i sound is represented as a hiragana twice(い), without its katakana equivalent (イ). Someone should fix that, or put up a new one. Ozarker 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello Nobu Sho --
Though pulled from the Japonic languages page, I must point out that your edit of 10:25, 3 February 2006 contains some inconsistencies.
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* Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory. | * Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. Japanese is related to modern Korean based primarily on near-identical grammar, but there is scarce lexical similarity between the two; supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory. |
The Buyeo languages page itself notes that the hypothetical Fuyu language was thought to be only "somewhat different from the language of Samhan and Silla". Given this and the above quote, I must ask, where is it said that "supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family"? Unfortunately, in digging through the Japonic languages page, where you found this text, I could find no source for this sweeping statement that contradicts other information elsewhere in Wikipedia. It appears that one Gilgamesh initially added this statement to that page. ( Edit diff here.) I will write this person and see if they care to add anything to this discussion.
I must note that you are involved in an ongoing dispute over on the Yayoi Talk page, wherein you stand accused of inserting unsubstantiated POV commentary. I bring this up simply to point out that your credibility is not very high right now, particularly in relation to Korean and Japanese issues. Making ultimately unsubstantiated additions that contradict other pages and that might be construed as POV is not a good way of improving one's credibility within the Wikipedia community. If you are aware of any verifiable source, please provide one. Such citations also add to Wikipedia's quality as a research tool.
For the time being, in light of the logical error and contradictory information on other pages, I am commenting out this addition -- the text will remain in the editable source, but will not be visible to the casual browser. I will also post on the Japonic languages Talk page to bring up these same concerns about sources. I thank you for bringing this page to my attention, particularly the section at issue here.
I look forward to any replies. Thank you, Eiríkr Útlendi 20:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi folks, I am a historical linguist who works on the history and origins of Japanese. Not only am I up-to-date on the scholarly work in this area, I know most of the scholars who wrote those works. We agree that as yet, there is no consensus. However, given our current state of knowledge, the "related to extinct Korean-peninsular languages" hypothesis is given the most credence. Still, that isn't definite, and some people are still hanging on to Korean & Altaic connections (which cannot be rejected the way that the silly Tamil hypothesis can). I have reordered the list to reflect this.
As for the debate above, it doesn't seem to need any comment by me. Godfrey Daniel 04:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does Japanese come from 800 A.D., while the Hangul alphabet come from 1400 A.D.? That is what I was taught in my Asiatic languages course.
Taw --
I understand that the Altaic hypothesis is considered disputed (as was duly noted in the infobox), but I was not aware that it was so apparently controversial. Though I'm admittedly not as widely read regarding Japanese linguistic theory as I'd like to be, what I have read so far consistently mentions the Altaic hypothesis as a likely, albeit incomplete or flawed, contender. Should it not then at least bear mention here in the infobox, with the "disputed" tag in plain view? I feel it's better for those browsing Wikipedia to see something that's disputed, and marked as such, than to simply have anything controversial swept under the rug and removed from public view. What does everyone think? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
To me it seems like somebody wrote a quite POV part about learning Japanese language which since the creation has been entirely rewritten NPOV-ly but keeping the basic structure. Should it even be there in the first place? I know many people have an interest in learning Japanese, largely because of the recent popularity of manga and the like (which is becoming an increasing problem when people with little knowledge of Japan outside what's portrayed in manga start "contributing" to articles on things Japanese), but I don't think that's enough to put it in an encyclopedia. I don't see similar headings on languages like Spanish, so why should Japanese have one? Some of the informatino there is relevant though but I'd like to move it all to different places. Mackan 17:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Something that I haven't undersood (or maybe misunderstood) is why in Japanese language, the grammatical particles are very empathized while grammatical cases are not mentioned. Why is, for example, the the possesive particle "no" not a counted as a genitiv suffix? In spoken Japanese "no" sounds very merged with the possesor (pronoun, noun etc), like a case ending. Not even in Encyclopædia Britannica are cases mentioned in the article on Japanese in Macropedia (or at least not that i remember. Might have to check that up though).-- Blackfield 21:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
The text of the article states that it is the official language of Japan; the infobox states it is de facto. Which is it? Peter1968 05:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Are those links to ethnologue.com really necessary? The "Ethnologue report for Japanese" link points to a dead page (Apr 26 2006), and the "Ethnologue report for language code JPN" doesn't seem to provide any additional information of any value on the subject. -- Sakurambo 16:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
on my UserPage on Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bigdowski_robert under 7 How people describe Robert Bigdowski (found on the web) I wrote a citate I found from the web in Japanese. If anyone would have time to summarize it on my site he is very welcome. Many thanks in advance, Robert
There seems to be some dispute over what constitutes spam vs. an informative link. I've noticed that there are two websites involved here that are inserted and then swapped for one another:
A page dealing with the Kansai dialect of Japanese
The Japanese Language Informative article about the Japanese language.
Note that the descriptions aren't my own, they're just whatever the wiki authors at the time used.
Having just visited both sites for myself, they both seem to have some useful, or at the very least, interesting material. The nihongoresources website does recommend that people buy a particular textbook, but not in a pushy manner. The eLanguageSchool website seems to offer free language lessons, with additional content accessible upon registration.
Instead of engaging in an edit war, could we just discuss here on the talk page why or why not these links should be included? -- Tachikoma 16:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Japanese is an established minority language in Paraguay. Please see the link below:
Emigrants from Japan to Paraguay begin in 1936, and there is a Japanese village in Paraguayan each place now. There are 10 schools only in a Japanese school, too. It was a minority race of 0.14%, but 7% of all production of the soy bean which was one of the Paraguayan main farm products were produced in a Japanese-farmhouse and occupied about 40% of the export total sum of the country now, and, as for about 7,000 Japanese immigrants in current Paraguay, judging from population, it was it with the fourth place export country in the world. http://federacion.hp.infoseek.co.jp/contenido/contenido.html
Any evidence? I think many language articles in English wikipedia are exaggerating the extent to which one language is spoken. You may say Spanish is the official language of 10+ countries, French 10+, German 3+, etc. But how to estimate the number of speakers in regions where that language is not officially endorsed? So, now this version says, Japanese IS spoken in North Korea. Are many North Koreans speaking Japanese? Who knows?--User:Fitzwilliam 15:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
If there's anybody out there that knows and can also translate to Japanese... Please send me a note ASAP!!! -- WIKISCRIPPS 07 THU OCT 5 2006 9:28 PM EDT
Recently someone changed the japanese word otoko to dansei in the article Ergative-absolutive language The changes can be seen here: otoko>dansei. Could some japanese speaker please check if this change is all well in relation to the article? Maunus 20:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Do people say "no" between the noun and adjective in Kanji where the noun precedes the adjective? Because somebody said Mononoke-hime like this: Mononoke no hime. -- PJ Pete
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Moonspeak&redirect=no
Should there be a section or at least a couple of sentences in this article mentioning that "Moonspeak" is an American colloquial term for the Japanese language? Otherwise, one might be confused as to exactly why 'Moonspeak' re-directs to this article. EvaXephon 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I've done a bit of trawling about and turned up the following:
FWIW, if anyone wants to do anything with it. -- RJCraig 08:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll delete the following paragraphs in the current edition as of 2007-01-22 19:58 because they are wrong.
They are not levels; Japanese has addressee honorifics and referent honorifics, and they are independent. The former is called teineigo (丁寧語) or polite forms. The latter is called sonkeigo (尊敬語) or honorific/respectful forms for positive out-group referent honorifics, and kenjōgo (謙譲語) or humble forms for negative in-group referent honorifics.
ex.
taberu (eat) > tabemasu (eat + addr.hon.)
meshiagaru (eat + pos.out.ref.hon.) > meshiagarimasu (eat + pos.out.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)
itadaku (eat + neg.in.ref.hon) > itadakimasu (eat + neg.in.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)
Again, they are not levels. Many keigo have dictionary forms, such as meshiagaru and itadaku.
Referent honorifics, Sonkeigo and kenjōgo, are gradually disappearing, but addressee honorifics, teineigo, are commonly used even today. Young people might try improving their skills of referent honorifics before getting a job. - TAKASUGI Shinji 03:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
From the article:
I would prefer to see an example here where "ti" and "chi" form a minimal pair. Which is generally expected to make a full claim of them being different phonetic elements. Namely, if saying [ti] instead of [tɕi], or vice-versa, does not create a distinct new word, then the two remain phonologically allophones of each other. I am aware of the difference in writing "ti" when it occurs in foreign loan words: "チィ" but this often doesn't mean that the sound itself has become phonologically different. An example, is the letter combonation in Latin: "ph", for words borrowed from Greek words, which used the "Φ" (phi) character which represented a [pʰ], an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, at the time of borrowing the word. Never-the-less this sound did not become phonologically different from [f], and Latin by consensus never considered them as different sounds. (I'm certain there were people who were language-source purists, who insisted on pronouncing it "correctly", but that is always at the risk of those using the borrowed word not understanding you.)
So, simply, I would hope that someone could find a minimal pair between these two sounds, otherwise it's a fairly uninteresting, and non-notable statement of Japanese borrowing a sound from a language only for loan words. -- Puellanivis 22:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I've edited the article under "Geographical Distribution" to include Vancouver, Canada. Although the current Japanese community is far less compared to in the 1930s, there are still quite a bit of Japanese residents here and tourists visit here frequently because of many Japanese-speaking tours, shops and such. I myself spoke Japanese as my primary language until I learned English, having lived in Japan.
If anyone objects, please comment below.
-Edwin- 06:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
theres a big similarities between those languages something would be change i think.
look here:
Ainu is currently considered a language isolate with no known relation to other languages. It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a cover term for several isolates and small language families believed to have been present in Siberia prior to the arrival of Turkic and Tungusic speakers; it is not a proper language family. Most linguists believe the shared vocabulary between Ainu and Nivkh (spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing; there are also loanwords both from Ainu to Japanese and Japanese to Ainu. In recent years, the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama and others have tried to link it by both vocabulary and cultural comparisons to the Austronesian languages. Alexander Vovin (1993) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with Austroasiatic; he regards this hypothesis as preliminary. More recently, Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002) has argued that Ainu belongs to the “Eurasiatic languages”; this hypothesis remains highly controversial. Evidence from studies of the genetics of Ainu and other world populations tend to hint that the Ainu people, and therefore also their language, may have some distant connection to Japanese, Koreans, or Turkic peoples of Central Asia, but it is clear from all forms of inquiry that the Ainu people and language have a very long history of isolation and independent development. They do appear, however, to have experienced some intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history; it is not known to what extent this might have affected the Ainu language.
Okay, I don't get the double negative. How does it work? If you put two negatives in a Japanese sentence does it become negative? -- 71.107.199.113 06:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
The CIA report is untrustworthy, or at least, too rough in some cases. For example, it says in 'background of JAPAN', ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html)
In 1603, a Tokugawa shogunate (military dictatorship) ushered in a long period of isolation from foreign influence in order to secure its power. For 250 years this policy enabled Japan to enjoy stability and a flowering of its indigenous culture. Following the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854, Japan opened its ports and began to intensively modernize and industrialize.
Actuallly, " sakoku" policy started in 1616 on a small scale, completed in 1641. It was not a sudden change but a somewhat gradual process. And even under the sakoku policy some ports were always opened, and Japan was continuously trading under the shogun's control with four countries — the Netherlands, China, Korea and Ryukyuu — and with Ainu people. So the above remark is rather lacking for the accuracy in scholarly standpoint, even if it is not wrong. Is such a report valid?
From a commonsense viewpoint, it's absurd that one of OFFICIAL languages of Angaur is Japanese, granting that there are some Japanese speakers in Palau.
I insist that the descriptions about Palau should be deleted.
CutieNakky
00:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, there already is a wikipage for the Gender Differences in Spoken Japanese. My bad! Yanqui9 19:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
There's this jpg image of the list of Hiragana and Katakana characters in the article "Writing System". I saw two unfamiliar dymbols there ('wi' and 'we'). Are there words that REALLY use these symbols in Nihongo? Zxyggrhyn 13:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Is the Japanese language considered ideographic, logographic, or neither? Apparantly, Chinese is logographic, which makes sense, as the Chinese characters are used exclusively. Japanese, on the other hand, uses kanji only to provide meaning, and never to indicate for tense, particles, etc... Does that make Japanese an ideographic language? I ask because an argument arose on a Japanese martial arts related article as to whether kanji should be called logograms or ideograms. Bradford44 03:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Can someone please translate this phrase: "Be yourself" into casual, neutral Japanese? (Consider that the "be" is imperative, yet not aggressive. Kikiluvscheese 03:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Related to this: Tom Hanks in Savign private Ryan tells Private Ryan with his dying breaath "earn this". This is beautifully rendered into japanese as "isshokenmei ikiteru you"- "live your best". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 ( talk) 21:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
"... more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003." It reads as if there is an oversight since 77k Chinese and 15k South Koreans already exceed 90k foreign students. Surely there are a several thousand students from other countries? My son is about to study in Japan and I was particularly interested in the number of native English speakers who study in Japan each year. Robertcurrey 05:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
That is an extremely difficult question to answer. How do you count it? By the numbers on courses? On what courses? By results? The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is the Japanese government run exam. It is the only exam employers take seriously, except fro the JETRO exam. Level 1 is the highest level. This high level is adequate to as a foundation to study in Japanese a subject in a Japanese Univerity. But no more than this. In the UK, last year, 92 people passed this level. No more. In the whole world, 164,436. I passed this level 5 years ago and I still can only just follow news reports and can only just manage to read Japanese newspapers without effort. Anyway, the stats are here: http://www.jees.or.jp/jlpt/pdf/result_2006_5.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 ( talk) 21:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
This edit by CutieNakky is disputed. The source provided by CutieNakky herself says "Official Angaurian languages are Angaur, English and Japanese."-- Endroit 21:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
CutieNakky, don't show irrelevant sources, such as for the "Languages" (言語) of the "Republic of Palau" (パラオ共和国) in their "Travel Information" (渡航情報) page. We're discussing the "OFFICIAL LANGUAGES OF ANGAUR" ONLY here.... Not the whole country of Palau.
Please note that the official languages within Palau are different from state to state. Now there are multiple sources, which collaborate that Japanese is an official language in Angaur:
Perhaps, this is just "old information" being circulated, like some of you believe. However, our WP:V ("Verifiability") policy tells us to only put stuff that's verifiable. Please discuss what's verifiable for the State of Angaur (not Palau).-- Endroit 16:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
For reference,
CutieNakky 17:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Please also join discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Angaur language. There appears to be some sort of a stalemate there.
That discussion also deals with the reliability of The World Factbook. I believe we need to get down to the bottom of this. Is the CIA information completely inaccurate? Or is the Angaur state government truly declaring Japanese as an official language, despite very few speakers of that language?-- Endroit 17:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
The whole paragraph on Anguar is giving a fairly minor topic undue weight. I think it is a subpart of the statement "… and various Pacific islands during and before World War II, …" in the preceding paragraph. It certainly is possible that Ethnologue and CIA are wrong on this, but using a blog entry as a counter-argument doesn't fulfill the reliable source requirements. I am going to attempt to move it into the previous paragraph as a footnote that mentions the disputed information. Revert and discuss if this solution is not satisfactory. ✤ JonHarder talk 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I removed the geographic map on this article because it lies about the Japanese speaking community and has no reference. In South Korea, only a very small minority of people can speak Japanese such as young people interested in Japanese animation, or businessmen dealing with Japanese, or people who once studied or lived in Japan. Even during the Japanese occupation, it is told that a few elite people could speak Japanese language.
In other hand, Korean students begin to learn English as a second language from elementary school and learn other language as a second foreign language, equal to call third language. In fact, the system of learning third language stays quit in formality. Anyways, most of the third language classes are focusing German and French. There are a few high schools to have student learn Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese in South Korea. Furthermore, high school students taking Japanese class are relatively minor even compared to Chinese and Spanish classes, because of the fact that top rated universities don't have Japan-related majors. For the entrance exam like SAT, students who want to get an admission from prominent schools should prepare their third language, but a few universities give an opportunity to students to have taken Japanese as their third language to take that exam.
You can say there're discrimination for choosing third language in South Korea but almost the same thing is happening in Japan. Likewise, many famous universities or high schools in Japan don't teach Korean language due to historical matters and lack of needs. Generally, high school students concentrating on science and mathematics learn German, the others learn French in South Korea. But is South Korea categorized as German or French speaking community? No. Koreans consider English class is the 3rd most important class among classes in middle or high schools but is Korea also categorized as English speaking world? No. Please don't lie and distort a simple fact.
I also highly doubt that Canada and US are referred as countries with a sizable Japanese speaking community. Japanophiles and Japanese immigrants can speak Japanese like Korean-American can speak Korean. -- Appletrees` —Preceding comment was added at 02:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese harp "kugo," at Traditional Japanese musical instruments. Badagnani 07:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Done
Oda Mari (
talk)
15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese gong "kane," at Kane (musical instrument). Badagnani 07:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Done
Oda Mari (
talk)
15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Can someone translate this for me? ドラゴンの天使 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.23.160.93 ( talk) 23:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hey, lets not be straitjackets, people might not want be part of this community, don't you think? ドラゴンの天使 is Angel of the Dragon.-- Jondel 03:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone here have any recommendations for teach-yourself books for learning the Japanese language, both written and verbal? Thanks for any ideas. -- RisingSunWiki 02:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Need romaji at Kunitachi College of Music. Badagnani ( talk) 23:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
May I ask a native speaker of Nihongo something? I'm currently learning Japanese and have multiple books as references. I just came across a contradiction in two of my books. In Japanese for Dummies it says that you should avoid saying "Anata" because it sounds impolite. However, in the book Easy Japanese by Jack Seward, Anata is in parenthesis as "polite." Is it really just a preference thing or what? Quietmartialartist ( talk) 18:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Even in Japanese pronouns it says,
"As a general rule, the first person pronouns (e.g. watashi, 私) and second person pronouns (e.g. anata, 貴方) are avoided, especially in formal speech." I'm still confused. Quietmartialartist ( talk) 21:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, so basically I should talk to everyone like I talk to my Korean grandmaster. I always refer to him as at least, "Sir." Quietmartialartist ( talk) 02:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I have another question. None of my books or the program I'm using (Rosetta Stone) explain when to use certain verbs at the ends of sentences. At least I think they're verbs: "Desu", "Imasu", and "Arimasu" for example. With other variations: "Imasen" and "Arimasen". I've concluded, I may be incorrect, that you say "Imasu" when stating and/or observing something. That is to say: "Kono booru wa akai imasu" Whereas you'd use "Desu" when referring to an action: "Kono otokonoko keru akai na booru desu" I'm sure my less-than-great aptitude is apparent, so feel free to correct any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. I just wanted to clear this up before I got too far on this train of thought and made it an incorrect habit. Quietmartialartist ( talk) 16:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I find the section on sentence order misleading, perhaps to the point of being incorrect. Japanese sentences beyond the world of Beginner Japanese classes have no inherent order, with the stipulation that verbs come last (and again, there's a common exception). 'Steve drives car' and 'Car drives Steve' mean different things in English, while 'Suchiibu ha kuruma wo unten suru' and 'Kuruma wo Suchiibu ha unten suru' mean the same thing in Japanese. The phrase "basic word order" implies that a grammatically correct word order exists. In Japanese, "word order" is at best a convention; particles remove the need for it. The best confirming source I can think of out-of-hand is Tae Kim, but I'm pretty sure (Subject Object Verb) is not the word order of Japanese. Is there agreement? Should we remove or rephrase? Estemi ( talk) 06:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Can anyone please take a look at the article Kesen language?
It looks a little weird to me. I explained my concerns at the talk page there.
Thanks in advance. -- Amir E. Aharoni ( talk) 21:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Before the 5th century, when the Korean scholar Wang In introduced writing to the Japanese, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. The Baekje Korean settlers of Japan and their Koreo-Japanese descendants, who formed the ruling classes of Japan, used the Chinese writing script along with many other aspects of the Culture of Korea and Chinese culture.
It corrected it.
Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. [1] A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent the letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. This is the first document of a Japanese history. After ruining Baekje, Japan invited the scholar from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave the official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/袁晋卿) , and spread a Chinese character from the 7th century to the 8th century. -- Princesunta ( talk) 11:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. citation needed A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent a letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. [2] This is supposed to be the first document of a Japanese history. After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/ [3] [4]袁晋卿 [5]) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
Please disclose evidence and the source. -- 210.168.215.11 ( talk) 05:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Template:Hiragana and Template:Katakana seem pretty useless to me: typing in the text with an IME is faster and more effective. Should the templates be nominated for deletion? ( 212.247.11.156 ( talk) 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC))
The section on official status contains the following sentence: "This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration … for communicating necessity." I take it that this means "to meet the needs of communication" and not "to communicate a need." If no one objects in the next few days, I'll make the change. Mrrhum ( talk) 01:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
People without Japanese language support may be wondering how they cannot see the characters. Perhaps a note at the top of the page with appropriate link?-- 207.67.115.158 ( talk) 13:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
こんにちは Demonofjapan ( talk) 15:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
What does the phonology section mean when it says that Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds? If it means that none of them are diphthongs, then it should say that. I'll change the wording to reflect that if no one gives a different explanation. A. Parrot ( talk) 23:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that “Nihongo” is pronounced [ɲihoŋɡo]? That is what is currently posted but I am not sure if this is correct. Is there a need for the G since the “ŋ” is already present? Thanks. -- No3- ( talk) 22:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Am I mistaken or doesn't the もんぶかがくしょ (monbukagakusho) regulate Japanese language to a degree? Right now it says "None (Influenced heavily by Japanese Government") but I'm pretty sure the monbusho has a very significant role. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.131.6 ( talk) 16:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Need Japanese name in the box at Kowtow. Is the kanji that's there now accurate or are there other terms as well? Badagnani ( talk) 18:36, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Dictionary entries:
the forehead touches the ground).
that the forehead touches the ground); to prostrate oneself; to give a deep, reverent bow. Anatoli ( talk) 20:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)