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Tokyo Dialect
The Tokyo dialect () is a variety of Japanese language spoken in modern Tokyo. As a whole, it is generally considered to be Standard Japanese, though specific aspects of slang or pronunciation can vary by area and social class. Overview Traditional dialects in central Tokyo are generally classified in two groups: and . The Yamanote dialect is characteristic of the old upper class from the Yamanote area. Standard Japanese was based on the Yamanote dialect during the Meiji period. The Shitamachi dialect is a working-class dialect, and it preserves features of Edo Chōnin ( Edokko) speech, so also called . Tokyo-style rakugo is typically played in the Shitamachi dialect. Tokyo dialect dates back to Tokugawa Ieyasu's establishment of Edo. Large groups of people, speaking a range of dialects migrated across the country. The Kyoto dialect was the prestige language of the time and strongly influenced the Edo dialect in the early Edo period; the dialect grew inside the largest ci ...
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Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ...
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Language Island
A language island (a calque of German ''Sprachinsel''; also language enclave, language pocket) is an enclave of a language that is surrounded by one or more different languages. The term was introduced in 1847. Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens, Paul Kerswill. Dialect change: convergence and divergence in European languages. p. 221. "The term 'Sprachinsel' was used for the first time in 1847 to designate a Slavonic community surrounded by a German-speaking population close to Konigsberg, East Prussia cf. Mattheier 1996. 812" Examples of language islands: * Alghero * Arbëresh * Betawi * Brussels * Chipilo and Chipilo Venetian dialect * Faetar * Gorani * Griko & Grecanico * Lusatia * Monégasque * Palenquero * Pennsylvania German * Saterland * Szeklerland * Swabian Turkey * Upper Harz Gallery File:BelgieGemeenschappenkaart.svg, The predominantly French-speaking enclave of Brussels surrounded by Dutch-speaking area File:Romania harta etnica 2011.PNG, Language islands in Romania Fi ...
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Kanagawa Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagawa Prefecture borders Tokyo to the north, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northwest and Shizuoka Prefecture to the west. Yokohama is the capital and largest city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second-largest city in Japan, with other major cities including Kawasaki, Sagamihara, and Fujisawa. Kanagawa Prefecture is located on Japan's eastern Pacific coast on Tokyo Bay and Sagami Bay, separated by the Miura Peninsula, across from Chiba Prefecture on the Bōsō Peninsula. Kanagawa Prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with Yokohama and many of its cities being major commercial hubs and southern suburbs of Tokyo. Kanagawa Prefecture was the political and economic center of Japan ...
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Tōkai–Tōsan Dialect
The Tōkai–Tōsan dialect (東海東山方言 ''Tōkai–Tōsan hōgen'') is a group of the transitional Japanese dialects spoken in the southern and eastern Chūbu region. The dialects spoken in the northwest Chubu region are classified as the Hokuriku dialect of Western Japanese. The Tokai–Tosan dialect has three sub-groups: Gifu–Aichi, Echigo, and Nagano–Yamanashi–Shizuoka. These are transitional between Western and Eastern Japanese; which branch of the family they fall in depends on which isoglosses are taken as definitive. (See Eastern and Western Japanese for details.) Nagano–Yamanashi–Shizuoka The Nagano–Yamanashi–Shizuoka a.k.a. Na-Ya-Shi dialects are spoken in Nagano Prefecture, Yamanashi Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture. It is characterized by a presumptive suffix ''-zura'' or ''-ra''. * Nagano a.k.a. Shinshū dialect (Nagano Prefecture) ** Okushinano dialect ( Sakae, the northernmost village) ** Hokushin dialect (northern area) ** Tōshin dialect ...
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Honorific Speech In Japanese
The Japanese language has a system of honorific speech, referred to as , parts of speech that show respect. Their use is mandatory in many social situations. Honorifics in Japanese may be used to emphasize social distance or disparity in rank, or to emphasize social intimacy or similarity in rank. Japanese honorific titles, often simply called honorifics, consist of suffixes and prefixes when referring to others in a conversation. The system is very extensive, having its own special vocabulary and grammatical forms to express various levels of respectful, humble, and polite speech. It closely resembles other honorifics systems found in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as honorifics in Korean. Introduction Japanese uses honorific constructions to show or emphasize social rank, social intimacy or similarity in rank. The choice of pronoun used, for example, will express the social relationship between the person speaking and the person being referred to, and Japanese often ...
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Sentence-final Particle
Sentence-final particles, including modal particles, interactional particles, etc., are minimal lexemes (words) that occur at the end of a sentence and that do not carry referential meaning, but may relate to linguistic modality, register or other pragmatic effects. Sentence-final particles are common in Chinese, including particles such as Mandarin ''le'' 了, ''ne'' 呢, ''ba'' 吧, ''ou'' 哦, ''a'' 啊, ''la'' 啦, ''ya'' 呀, and ''ma'' 嗎/吗, and Cantonese ''lo'' 囉 and ''ge'' 嘅. These particles act as qualifiers of the clause or sentence they end. Sentence-final particles are also present in Japanese and many East Asian languages, such as Thai, and especially in languages that have undergone heavy Sino-Tibetan influence, such as the Monguor languages. Examples Chinese Yuen Ren Chao has described sentence-final particles as "phrase suffixes": just as a word suffix is in construction with the word preceding it, a sentence-final particle or phrase suffix is "in cons ...
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American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances is the de facto common language used in government, education and commerce. Since the 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. American English varieties include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around the world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic or cultural markers is popularly called "General" or "Standard" American, a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. and associated nationally with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not sup ...
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Japanese Particles
Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness. Orthography and diction Japanese particles are written in hiragana in modern Japanese, though some of them also have kanji forms ( or for ''te'' ; for ''ni'' ; or for ''o'' ; and for ''wa'' ). Particles follow the same rules of phonetic transcription as all Japanese words, with the exception of (written ''ha'', pronounced ''wa'' as a particle), (written ''he'', pronounced ''e'') and (written using a hiragana character with no other use in modern Japanese, originally assigned as ''wo'', now usually pronounced ''o'', though some speakers render it as ''wo''). These exceptions are a relic of historical kana usage. Types of particles There are eight types of particles, depending on what function they serve. : ...
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Japanese Grammar
Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. In language typology, it has many features different from most European languages. Distinctive aspects of modern Japanese sen ...
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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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Sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing. Appearance In both hiragana and katakana, the sokuon appears as a ''tsu'' reduced in size: Use in Japanese The main use of the sokuon is to mark a geminate consonant, which is represented in most romanization systems by the doubling of the consonant, except that Hepburn romanization writes a geminate ''ch'' as ''tch''. It denotes the gemination of the initial consonant of the symbol that follows it. Examples: The sokuon never appears at the beginning of a word or before a vowel (''a'', ''i'', ''u'', ''e'', or ''o''), and rarely appears before a syllable that begins with the consonants ''n'', ''m'', ''r'', ''w'', or ''y''. (In words and loanwords that require geminating these consonants, ''n'', ''mu'', ''ru'', ''u'', and ''i'' are usually used, respectively, instead of ...
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Trill Consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish as in , for example, is an alveolar trill. A trill is made by the articulator being held in place and the airstream causing it to vibrate. Usually a trill vibrates for 2–3 contacts, but may be up to 5, or even more if geminate. However, trills may also be produced with only one contact. While single-contact trills are similar to taps and flaps, a tap or flap differs from a trill in that it is made by a muscular contraction rather than airstream. Phonemic trills Trill consonants included in the International Phonetic Alphabet: * – Voiced alveolar trill * – Voiceless alveolar trill * – Voiced bilabial trill * – Voiceless bilabial trill * – Voiced retroflex trill * – Voiced uvular trill * – Voiceless uvular trill * – voiced epiglottal trill * – voiceless epiglottal trill In addition, * – velophar ...
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