Nyōbō Kotoba
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Nyōbō Kotoba
was a cant that was originally used by Japanese court ladies during the Muromachi era, and subsequently spread and came to be thought of as a general women's language. It consisted primarily of a special vocabulary of words for food, clothing, and other household items. Many of the created words were descriptions of the thing they were naming, whether that was a description of a characteristic, shape, color, or usage. Many nyōbō kotoba words were formed by adding the prefix ''o-'', which indicates politeness, or by dropping part of a word and adding ''-moji'', meaning "character, letter". Some nyōbō kotoba words passed into general usage, and are today part of the standard Japanese language. Examples See also * Gender differences in spoken Japanese * Japanese honorifics The Japanese language makes use of a system of honorific speech, called , which includes honorific suffixes and prefixes when referring to others in a conversation. Suffixes are often gender-specific ...
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Cant (language)
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot, pseudo-language, anti-language or secret language. Each term differs slightly in meaning; their use is inconsistent. Etymology There are two main schools of thought on the origin of the word ''cant'': * In linguistics, the derivation is normally seen to be from the Irish word (older spelling ), "speech, talk", or Scottish Gaelic . It is seen to have derived amongst the itinerant groups of people in Ireland and Scotland, who hailed from both Irish/Scottish Gaelic and English-speaking backgrounds, ultimately developing as various creole languages. However, the various types of cant (Scottish/Irish) are mutually unintelligible. The Irish creole variant is simply termed " the Cant". Its speakers from the Irish Traveller community know it a ...
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Japanese People
The are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Japanese archipelago."人類学上は,旧石器時代あるいは縄文時代以来,現在の北海道〜沖縄諸島(南西諸島)に住んだ集団を祖先にもつ人々。" () Japanese people constitute 97.9% of the population of the country of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 129 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 122.5 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live outside Japan are referred to as , the Japanese diaspora. Depending on the context, the term may be limited or not to mainland Japanese people, specifically the Yamato (as opposed to Ryukyuan and Ainu people). Japanese people are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world. In recent decades, there has also been an increase in the number of multiracial people with both Japanese and non-Japanese roots, including half Japanese people. History Theories of origins Archaeological evidence indi ...
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Noble Court
A royal court, often called simply a court when the royal context is clear, is an extended royal household in a monarchy, including all those who regularly attend on a monarch, or another central figure. Hence, the word "court" may also be applied to the coterie of a senior member of the nobility. Royal courts may have their seat in a designated place, several specific places, or be a mobile, itinerant court. In the largest courts, the royal households, many thousands of individuals comprised the court. These courtiers included the monarch or noble's camarilla and retinue, household, nobility, clergy, those with court appointments, bodyguards, and may also include emissaries from other kingdoms or visitors to the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court. Near Eastern and Far Eastern courts often included the harem and concubines as well as eunuchs who fulfilled a variety of functions. At times, the harem was walled off and separate ...
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Muromachi Era
The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ''shōgun'', Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kenmu Restoration (1333–1336) of imperial rule was brought to a close. The period ended in 1573 when the 15th and last shogun of this line, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, was driven out of the capital in Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga. From a cultural perspective, the period can be divided into the Kitayama and Higashiyama cultures (later 15th – early 16th centuries). The early years from 1336 to 1392 of the Muromachi period are known as the '' Nanboku-chō'' or Northern and Southern Court period. This period is marked by the continued resistance of the supporters of Emperor Go-Daigo, the emperor behind the Kenmu Restoration. The Sengoku period or Warring States period, which be ...
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Vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language. Definition and usage Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person". Productive and receptive knowledge The first major change distinction that must be made when evaluating word knowledge is whether the knowledge is productive (also called achieve or active) or receptive (also called receive or passive); even within those opposing categories, there is often no clear distinction. Words that are generally understood when heard or read or seen constitute a person's receptive vocabulary. These words may range from well known to barely known (see degree of knowledge below). A person's receptive vocabulary is usually the larger of the two. For exampl ...
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Food
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth. Different species of animals have different feeding behaviours that satisfy the needs of their unique metabolisms, often evolved to fill a specific ecological niche within specific geographical contexts. Omnivorous humans are highly adaptable and have adapted to obtain food in many different ecosystems. The majority of the food energy required is supplied by the industrial food industry, which produces food with intensive agriculture and distributes it through complex food processing and food distribution systems. This system of conventional agriculture relies heavily on fossil fuels, which means that the food and agricu ...
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Clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head. Eyewear and jewelry are not generally considered items of clothing, but play an important role in fashion and clothing as costume. Clothing serves many purposes: it can serve as protection from the elements, rough surfaces, sharp stones, rash-causing plants, insect bites, by providing a barrier between the skin and the environment. Clothing can insulate against ...
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Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can be either inflectional, creating a new form of the word with the same basic meaning and same part of speech, lexical category (but playing a different role in the sentence), or Morphological derivation, derivational, creating a new word with a new semantics, semantic meaning and sometimes also a different Part of speech, lexical category. Prefixes, like all other affixes, are usually Bound and unbound morphemes, bound morphemes. In English language, English, there are no inflectional prefixes; English uses suffixes instead for that purpose. The word ''prefix'' ...
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Politeness
Politeness is the practical application of good manners or etiquette so as not to offend others. It is a culturally defined phenomenon, and therefore what is considered polite in one culture can sometimes be quite rude or simply eccentric in another cultural context. While the goal of politeness is to refrain from behaving in an offensive way so as not to offend others and make all people feel relaxed and comfortable with one another, these culturally defined standards at times may be manipulated. Types Anthropologists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson identified two kinds of politeness, deriving from Erving Goffman's concept of face: * Negative politeness: Making a request less infringing, such as "If you don't mind..." or "If it isn't too much trouble..."; respects a person's right to act freely. In other words, ''deference''. There is a greater use of indirect speech acts. Also considered a part of being assertive. *Non-assertive politeness: when a person refrains from ma ...
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Sushi
is a Japanese cuisine, Japanese dish of prepared , usually with some sugar and salt, accompanied by a variety of , such as seafood, often raw, and vegetables. Styles of sushi and its presentation vary widely, but the one key ingredient is "sushi rice," also referred to as , or . The inventor of modern sushi is believed to be Hanaya Yohei, who invented nigiri-zushi, a type of sushi most known today, in which seafood is placed on hand-pressed vinegared rice, around 1824 in the Edo period (1603–1867). It was the fast food of the ''chōnin'' class in the Edo period. Sushi is traditionally made with white rice, medium-grain white rice, though it can be prepared with brown rice or Short grain rice, short-grain rice. It is very often prepared with seafood, such as Squid as food, squid, eel, Japanese amberjack, yellowtail, salmon, tuna or Crab stick, imitation crab meat. Many types of sushi are Vegetarian cuisine, vegetarian. It is often served with , wasabi, and soy sauce. Daiko ...
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Gender Differences In Spoken Japanese
The Japanese language has some words and some grammatical constructions associated with men or boys, while others are associated with women or girls. Such differences are sometimes called "gendered language". In Japanese, speech patterns associated with women are referred to as or , and those associated with men are referred to as . In general, the words and speech patterns associated with men are perceived as rough, vulgar, or abrupt, while those associated with women are considered more polite, more deferential, or "softer". Some linguists consider the description of "rough–soft continuum" more accurate than the description of "male–female continuum". For example, Eleanor Harz Jorden in '' Japanese: The Spoken Language'' refers to the styles as "blunt/gentle", rather than male/female. There are no gender differences in written Japanese (except in quoted speech), and almost no differences in polite speech ('' teineigo''). Conventional women's speech The word , which is usua ...
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Japanese Honorifics
The Japanese language makes use of a system of honorific speech, called , which includes honorific suffixes and prefixes when referring to others in a conversation. Suffixes are often gender-specific at the end of names, while prefixes are attached to the beginning of many nouns. Honorific suffixes also indicated the speaker's level and referred an individual's relationship and are often used alongside other components of Japanese honorific speech.Reischauer, Edwin O. (2002). Encyclopedia of Japan. Tōkyō: NetAdvance Inc. Honorific suffixes are generally used when referring to the person one is talking to or unrelated people and are not used when referring to oneself. The omission of suffixes implies a high degree of intimacy or close friendship. Usage Although honorifics are not essential to the grammar of Japanese, they are a fundamental part of its sociolinguistics, and their proper use is deemed essential to proficient and appropriate speech. The use of honorifics is ...
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