The Japanese Language
Shigeru Miyagawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Japanese language is spoken by the approximately 120 million
inhabitants of Japan, and by the Japanese living in Hawaii and on the
North and South American mainlands. It is also spoken as a second
language by the Chinese and the Korean people who lived under Japanese
occupation earlier this century.
Three categories of words exist in Japanese. The native Japanese
words constitute the largest category, followed by words originally
borrowed from China in earlier history, and the smallest but a rapidly
growing category of words borrowed in modern times from Western
languages such as English. This third category also contains a small
number of words that have come from other Asian languages. Studies by
the National Language Institute show that the frequency of these three
types of words varies according to the kinds of written material
examined. In magazines, native Japanese words constitute more than
half of the total words, while the Chinese borrowed words average
about 40%, and the rest drawn from the recently borrowed words from
Western languages. In newspapers, the words of Chinese origin number
greater than the Japanese native words.
Japanese has an open-syllable sound pattern, so that most syllables
end in a vowel -- the syllable may be composed solely of the vowel.
There are five vowels, /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/. Vowel length
often distinguishes words, as in to for "door" and too for "ten." The
basic consonants are: /k/, /s/, /t/, /n/, /h/, /m/, /y/, /r/, /w/, and
the syllabic nasal /N/. Many of these consonants can be palatalized
in front of the vowels /a/, /u/, and /o/, for example, /kya/, /kyu/,
/kyo/. When the two consonants, /s/ and /t/, occur with the vowel
/i/, these consonants are automatically palatalized as /shi/ and
/chi/. The consonant /t/ is pronounced as /ts/ in front of the vowel
/u/.
Unlike English, which has stress accent, Japanese has pitch accent,
which means that after an accented syllable, the pitch falls. The
word for "chopsticks," hashi, has the accent on the first syllable, so
its pitch contour is ha shi. Without the accent on the first
syllable, hashi may mean "bridge" or "edge." "Bridge" has accent on
the second syllable, which can be seen if a grammatical particle such
as the subject marker ga is attached to the word: hashi ga. "Edge"
has no accent, so it would be pronounced without any fall in the pitch
even with a grammatical marker such as ga.
Every language has a basic word order for the words in a sentence. In
English, the sentence Naomi uses a computer has the order subject
(Naomi), verb (uses), and object (a computer). In the corresponding
Japanese sentence, the subject comes first, just as in English, but
then the object appears, followed finally by the verb: Naomi-ga
(Naomi) konpyuuta-o (computer) tukau (use). The rule of thumb in
Japanese is that in a sentence, the verb comes at the end. The two
word orders, subject-verb-object for English and subject-object-verb
for Japanese, are both common among the languages of the world. If we
look again at the Japanese sentence, we see that the subject and the
object are accompanied by particles, ga with the subject "Naomi"
(Naomi-ga) and o with the object "computer" (konpyuuta-o). These are
called case markers, and a large number of the world's languages have
them. We can see a remnant of a case-marking system even in English:
the pronouns in English change shape depending on where it occurs,
he/she/they in the subject position, but him/her/them in the object
position (e.g., She saw him). If we go back in history, the older
English of five hundred to one thousand years ago had an extensive
case-marking system similar to modern Japanese. These case markers
make it possible for the words in Japanese to appear in different
orders and retain the same meaning. In the sentence we have been
looking at, it is possible to place the object where the subject
normally occurs, and the subject in the normal object position, and
not change the meaning: konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga tukau. If we do the same
thing to English, the meaning of the sentence is radically altered
(The computer uses Naomi). If we have a more complex sentence, it is
still possible to change the order of all the words as long as the
verb remains at the end. The sentence "Naomi gave a computer to Taro"
has the subject-indirect object-object- verb basic order, Naomi-ga
(Naomi) Taro-ni (to Taro) konpyuuta-o (computer) ageta (gave). This
sentence has the following word order possibilities, starting with the
basic order we just observed.
Naomi-ga Taro-ni konpyuuta-o ageta (subject-indirect object-object verb)
Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o Taro-ni ageta (subject-object-indirect object verb)
Taro-ni Naomi-ga konpyuuta-o ageta (indirect object-subject-object-verb)
konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga Taro-ni ageta (object-subject-indirect object verb)
Taro-ni konpyuuta-o Naomi-ga ageta (indirect object-object-subject verb)
konpyuuta-o Taro-ni Naomi-ga ageta (object-indirect object-subject-verb)
Although the Japanese language allows a multitude of word orders, the
one inflexible order is the verb, in that it must appear at the end of
the sentence. This is no accident. The core element in a sentence is
the verb, because the verb expresses the action or the event involving
the referents of the other words. Such a core is often referred to as
the "head" of a sentence or a clause, and Japanese always places the
head at the end of its clause. In a noun phrase, modifiers function
to modify the head, as in expensive computer, where expensive modifies
the head of the phrase, computer. In Japanese, the modifier always
precedes the head, as expected (takai (expensive) konpyuuta
(computer)). This is not only true of simple modifiers, but for
modifiers that involve an entire sentence. Note that in the English
sentence the computer [that Naomi uses], the bracketed portion
modifies the head computer, and this modifier follows the head. In
Japanese, the head-final order is invariably followed, so that this
would be expressed with the modifier preceding the head: [Naomi-ga
tukau (that Naomi uses)] konpyuuta. With few exceptions, the
languages of the world either follow the head-final order, just as in
Japanese, or the head-initial order (for example, Indonesian). Within
the same language, we might see one or the otheroption for different
types of clauses, as we saw for English simple modifiers (head-final)
and sentence modifiers (head-initial). Japanese is consistently
head-final for all types of clauses.
The Japanese verb does not indicate number or gender. The same form
for the verb is used with singular and plural subjects, and no gender
distinction is made. The verb inflects for tense, negation, aspect,
and mood. Following are some inflections for the verb "to push,"
which has the root os-.
os-u (push) present/dictionary form
os-ita (pushed) past
os-anai (not push) negation
os-ite iru (is pushing) progressive
os-e (push) imperative
os-itara (if (you) push) conditional
These forms vary depending on whether the root of the verb ends in a
consonant or a vowel. While the root of the verb "to push" above is
consonant-final, a verb such as "to eat" has a vowel-final root
(tabe-), and it takes a slightly different shape for each of the
inflections: tabe- ru (present/dictionary form), tabe-ta (past),
tabe-nakatta (negation), tabe-te iru (progressive), tabe-ro
(imperative), tabe-tara (conditional). In languages such as Italian
and Spanish, a rich verbal inflection that indicates both number and
gender often allows the speaker not to express the subject if it is
understood in the context, e.g., (Juan) vio ese film ((Juan) saw that
film) in Spanish. In Japanese, despite the lack of number and gender
inflection on the verb, it is possible not only to leave the subject
out, but any other element in the sentence except the verb, so long as
it is understood in the sentence. The Japanese counterpart of the
sentence "Naomi uses the computer" may be expressed simply by saying
the verb tukau (use), so long as it's clear to the hearer from context
that the sentence refers to Naomi and to the computer.
In Japanese, ideas often expressed in other languages with separate
clauses and sentences frequently take the shape of a word, albeit a
complex one. This is the agglutinative nature of the language. For
example, the expression in English, Naomi was made to go purchase a
more expensive computer by Mary, contains separate verbs was made, go,
and purchase. In the Japanese counterpart, these verbs together form
one complex verb (Japanese uses "come" for the English "go" in this
context) : katte-ko-sase-rare-ta (buy-come-made-was-past). Other
languages that have an agglutinative verb system include Korean,
Navaho, and Turkish.
Japanese is traditionally written vertically, with the lines starting
from the right side of the page. While this way of writing is still
predominant, there is another way that is identical to English in
starting from the top left hand side, with each line written
horizontally.
Japanese is written using two systems of orthography, Chinese
characters and syllabaries. Chinese characters, or kanji, were
brought in from China starting about 1,500 years ago. Prior to their
introduction, Japanese was strictly a spoken language. Chinese
characters are by far the more difficult system because of the sheer
number of characters and the complexity both in writing and reading
each character. Each character is associated with a meaning; for
example, the character 行 has the basic meaning "to go." There are
tens of thousands of characters attested, but in 1946, the Japanese
government identified 1,850 characters for daily use. In 1981, the
list was increased in number to 1,945 characters, and given the name
Joyo Kanji List (Kanji for Daily Use). The characters in the Daily
Use List must be learned in primary and secondary schools, and
newspapers generally limit the use of characters to this list. Most
characters are associated with at least two readings, the native
Japanese reading, and the reading that simulates the original Chinese
pronunciation of the same character. If the same character came into
Japan at different periods or from different dialect regions of China,
the character may be associated with a multitude of Chinese readings
that represent different historical periods and dialectal differences.
For example, the character 
, "to go," has four different readings,
the Japanese reading and three distinct originally Chinese readings.
The second system of wriiting are syllabaries, or kana, which were
developed by the Japanese from certain Chinese characters about 1,000
years ago. Each syllabary represents a syllable in the language, and,
unlike Chinese characters, it represents a sound but not meaning.
There are two types of syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, each
containing the same set of sounds. For example, the sound "ka" in
Japanese may be represented by the hiragana 
or the katakana 
, both of which were developed from the Chinese character 
. Hiragana
is often used in combination with a Chinese character, in such a way
that, for example, the character represents roughly the root of a
verb, and the inflection is written with hiragana. Katakana is used
to write loan words from Western languages such as English, French,
and German. It is not uncommon to find kanji, hiragana, and katakana
used in the same sentence. Along with Chinese characters and
syllabaries, Roman alphabets are sometimes employed for such things as
names of organizations. For example, companies such as Honda, Toyota,
and Sony often use Roman alphabets for their name in advertisements.
Through painstaking research, we now have conclusive evidence for the
genetic relationships of the major languages of the world. English,
along with a host of languages spoken in Europe, Russia, and India,
belong to the Indo-European family of languages. In contrast, there
is no conclusive evidence relating Japanese to a single family of
languages. The most prominent hypothesis places Japanese in the
Altaic family, which includes Turkish, Tungusic, Mongolian, and
Korean, with the closest relationship to Korean. According to Roy
Andrew Miller, the original Altaic language was spoken in the
Transcaspian steppe country, and the speakers of this language
undertook massive migrations before 2,000 B.C., spreading this
language family from Turkey in the west to Japan in the east.
However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with some major features of
Japanese, leading some scholars to turn to the languages of the South
Pacific in the Austronesian family for clues of genetic relationship.
A hypothesis that has currency among a number of Japanese historical
linguists is a "hybrid" theory that accepts the relationship to the
Altaic family, but also hypothesizes influence from Austronesian
languages possibly through heavy lexical borrowing. It is also
important to note that in the northern island of Hokkaido, the Ainu
people, who are physically and culturally different from the rest of
the Japanese, speak a language that has even more successfully escaped
attempts to relate it to a single language family.
With the introduction of the writing system from China starting about
1,500 years ago, the Japanese people began to extensively record their
language through poetry and prose. The language of that era, called
Old Japanese, had a number of features that have been lost through
time. For example, Susumu Ono has argues that Old Japanese had eight
vowels instead of the five that we see today. There were also a
number of grammatical and morphological features that no longer exist.
The transition from Old Japanese to Modern Japanese took place from
about the twelfth century, A.D., to the sixteenth century, A.D.
There are a large number of dialects throughout the four main islands
and the smaller islands of Okinawa and others. Some dialects such as
those spoken in the southern parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa) are
virtually incomprehensible to the speakers of other dialects,
requiring the use of the standard (or "common") dialect for
communication. The two dialect families with the largest number of
speakers are the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which is
equivalent to the "common" dialect, and the dialects of the Kansai
region spoken in western Japan in cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, and
Kobe. Due to the spread of the common dialect through television and
radio, most people outside the Tokyo region speak the common dialect
as well as the dialect of their area.
The Japanese language employs an extensive system of politeness and
honorific markers. It is often the case that in order to utter any
kind of expression, the speaker must keep in mind his/her social
standing to the person addressed, and the person being talked about.
These markers appear on verbs, adjectives, and even nouns. For
example, the informal form of the verb "to go," iku, is used when
speaking with someone close to the speaker, but if the person
addressed is a stranger or is older than the speaker, the politeness
marker -masu appears: iki- masu. If the person being talked about is
socially superior to the speaker, the honorific form of the verb "to
go," irassyaru, is may be employed, even if this person is not
present. In using this honorific form to talk about a
socially-superior person, if the person addressed doesn't have a close
relation to the speaker, such as a relative or a friend, or is older,
the politeness marker appears on the honorific form: irassyai-masu.
Thus, this form, irassyai-masu, simultaneously allows the speaker to
be polite to the person addressed and show respect to the person being
talked about. The prefix o- (go- in some contexts) may be used with
nouns and adjectives to show politeness or respect to the person
addressed or spoken of, as in o-tuskue (desk) and o-suki (like).
The use of pronouns varies according to social context and also often
according to gender. The first person pronoun boku is used by a male
in relatively informal situations, while watashi is used by a female
in informal situations and by both male and female in formal
situations. There are a large number of ways to expressed "you"
according to social context and gender, including using the actual
name of the person addressed. Aside from pronouns, the choice of some
sentence-final particles varies by gender in informal speech.
The use of politeness and honorific markers and the various pronouns
reflect the prominent role that in-group/out-of-group factors play in
Japanese. If the person addressed is not within the "group" of the
speaker in personal relationship or age, the speaker uses the polite
style of speech. Familial words also reflect this. The word for your
own mother is haha, but okaasan for the mother of others. We see the
same bifurcation for the terms for father, sister, brother, and so
forth.
Masayoshi, Shibatani. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge
University Press. 1990.
Miller, Roy Andrew. Origins of the Japanese
Language. University of Washington Press. 1980.
Text from Microsoft Incarta, Permission given by Microsoft
Corporation for use by JP NET.
Date last modified: 13-Oct-1999
Copyright 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology