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日本国
is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as Ainu, Austronesian, Koreanic, and the now discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw exte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—and List of islands of Japan, thousands of smaller islands, covering . Japan has a population of over 123 million as of 2025, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh-most populous country. The capital of Japan and List of cities in Japan, its largest city is Tokyo; the Greater Tokyo Area is the List of largest cities, largest metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37 million inhabitants as of 2024. Japan is divided into 47 Prefectures of Japan, administrative prefectures and List of regions of Japan, eight traditional regions. About three-quarters of Geography of Japan, the countr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora (linguistics), mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana wikt:あ, あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (wikt:か, か); or /N/ (wikt:ん, ん), a nasal stop, nasal sonorant which, depending on the context and dialect, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French language, French, Portuguese language, Portuguese or Polish language, Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Early Middle Japanese
is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian period (). The successor to Old Japanese (), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (, after 1185) than to Old Japanese (before 794). Background Old Japanese had borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese. In Early Middle Japanese, two new scripts emerged: the kana scripts hiragana and katakana. That development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature, with many classics such as ''The Tale of Genji'', '' The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'', and '' The Tales of Ise''. Writing system Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana (), literally "ten thousand leaves borrowed labels", in reference to the ''Man'yōshū'' poetry anthology and the "borrowing" of the kanji characters as "labels" for the sounds of Japanese. Certa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yamato People
The or David Blake Willis and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu''Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity,'' p. 272: "Wajin," which is written with Chinese characters that can also be read "Yamato no hito" (Yamato person). are an East Asian ethnic group that comprises over 98% of the population of Japan. Genetic and anthropometric studies have shown that the Yamato people predominantly descend from the Yayoi people, who migrated to Japan from the continent beginning during the 1st millennium BC, and to a lesser extent the indigenous Jōmon people who had inhabited the Japanese archipelago for millennia prior. It can also refer to the first people that settled in Yamato Province (modern-day Nara Prefecture). Generations of Japanese archeologists, historians, and linguists have debated whether the word is related to the earlier . Around the 6th century, the Yamato clan set up Japan's first and only dynasty. The clan became the ruling faction in the area, and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Diaspora
The Japanese diaspora and its individual members, known as Nikkei (, ) or as Nikkeijin (, ), comprise the Japanese people, Japanese emigration, emigrants from Japan (and their Kinship, descendants) residing in a country outside Japan. Emigration from Japan was recorded as early as the 15th century to the Philippines, but did not become a mass phenomenon until the Meiji (era), Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japanese emigrated to the Philippines and to the Americas.Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), JapanJapan-Mexico relations/ref>Palm, Hugo"Desafíos que nos acercan," ''El Comercio'' (Lima, Peru). 12 March 2008. There was significant emigration to the List of territories occupied by Imperial Japan, territories of the Empire of Japan during the period of Japanese colonial expansion (1875–1945); however, most of these emigrants repatriated to Japan after the 1945 surrender of Japan end of World War II in Asia, ended World War II in Asia. Acc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Language
'' '' A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection— de facto or de jure—with a nation. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the territory of a country may be referred to informally or designated in legislation as national languages of the country. National languages are mentioned in over 150 world constitutions. C.M.B. Brann, with particular reference to India, suggests that there are "four quite distinctive meanings" for national language in a polity: *"Territorial language" (''chthonolect'', sometimes known as ''chtonolect'') of a particular people *"Regional language" (''choralect'') *"Language-in-common or community language" (''demolect'') used throughout a country *"Central language" (''politolect'') used by government and perhaps having a symbolic value. The last is usually given the title of official language. In some cases (e.g., the Philippin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kagoshima Dialect
The , often referred to as the , is a group of dialects or dialect continuum of the Japanese language spoken mainly within the area of the former Ōsumi and Satsuma provinces now incorporated into the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima. It may also be collectively referred to as the Satsuma dialect ( or ), owing to both the prominence of the Satsuma Province and the region of the Satsuma Domain which spanned the former Japanese provinces of Satsuma, Ōsumi and the southwestern part of Hyūga. The Satsugū dialect is commonly cited for its mutual unintelligibility to even its neighboring Kyūshū variants, prompting the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to classify it as a distinct language in the Japanesic branch in its Glottolog database. It shares over three-quarters of the Standard Japanese vocabulary corpus and some areal features of Kyūshū. Distribution and subdialects The boundaries of the Satsugū dialect are traditionally defined as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tsugaru Dialect
The is a Japanese dialect spoken in western Aomori Prefecture. The Tsugaru dialect is reputed to be so divergent from standard Japanese for those who are not native speakers, that even people living in the same prefecture may have trouble understanding it.ThResearchGate mirror contains metadata about the presentation. In 1988, fans of the Tsugaru dialect proclaimed October 23 to be . October 23 is the anniversary of the death of Takagi Kyozo, a famous poet who wrote in the Tsugaru dialect. In Tsuruta, there is an annual summer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyuan Languages
The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Just as among Japanese dialects it is hard to understand each other, the Ryukyu and mainland Japanese languages are not mutually intelligible. It is not known how many speakers of these languages remain, but language shift toward the use of Standard Japanese and dialects like Okinawan Japanese has resulted in these languages becoming endangered language, endangered; Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, UNESCO labels four of the languages "definitely endangered" and two others "severely endangered". Overview Phonologically, the Ryukyuan languages have some cross-linguistically unusual features. Southern Ryukyuan languages have a number of syllabic consonants, including unvoiced syllabic fricatives (e.g. Ōgami Miyako language, Miyako ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signed Japanese
Japanese Equivalent Sign Language or Signed Japanese is a signed language that corresponds to Japanese. With this signed language, you can express Japanese correctly, and this signed language is useful to Japanese learners. Having a richer vocabulary than past signed languages can help increase communicative effectiveness in places of learning, public institutions, and public places. This signed language is not to be confused with Japanese Sign Language or JSL. Definition Japanese Equivalent Sign Language involves speaking Japanese aloud (or by simply mouthing words in Japanese) and replacing some of the words with signed words from Japanese Equivalent Sign Language to match the Japanese that you are speaking (or mouthing).斉藤道雄 (2016). ''手話を生きるー少数言語が多数派日本語と出会うところで''. みすず書房 Signed Japanese borrows words from Japanese Sign Language and expresses them using the grammatical structure of Japanese.松岡和美 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived Syllabary, syllabic scripts of and . The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as , by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the general public. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
