are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with

kango Kango is a town in the Estuaire Province of Gabon, Central Africa, lying on the Komo River and the N1 road. It has a station near the Trans-Gabon Railway, where the railway bridges the Gabon Estuary. Kango is a small town with a population of ...

() and gairaigo (), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin). They are also known as .Shibatani, Masayoshi
''The Languages of Japan (Section 7.2 "Loan words", p.142)
Cambridge University Press, 1990. The word "yamato kotoba" itself is composed of native Japanese words, and hence is an

autological word An autological word (also called homological word) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g., "word" is a word, "noun" is a noun, "English" is an English word, " pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and "writable" is writab ...

. The synonym ''wago'' is instead a kango, and hence a

heterological word An autological word (also called homological word) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g., "word" is a word, "noun" is a noun, "English" is an English word, " pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and "writable" is writab ...

Lexical function

Yamato kotoba form a fundamental part of the Japanese lexicon, similar to native words (from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

) in English – while borrowed words are used for many technical terms (particularly kango, as with Latin and Greek in English), or for modern or stylish purposes (mostly gairaigo, as with French in English), much of the core vocabulary and commonly used everyday words are of native origin. As exhibited in the synonyms yamato kotoba/wago, there are often many synonyms from different origins, usually with differences in usage. Very roughly, kango are generally more formal, often restricted to writing, while yamato kotoba are more casual and more often used in speech, but both types of words are commonly used in both speech and writing. In

Japanese name in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name, in that order. Nevertheless, when a Japanese name is written in the Roman alphabet, ever since the Meiji era, the official policy has been to cater to Western expecta ...

s, the family name is generally formed from yamato kotoba, as in (yama-shita, mountain-bottom), (oo-oka, big-hill), and (ko-bayashi, small/little-forest), while given names are quite diverse.

Phonology

Yamato kotoba are generally polysyllabic (often three or more syllables), and more closely follow the CV (consonant-vowel, CVCVCV) pattern of Old Japanese. By contrast, kango are often one or two syllables, and more often have terminal consonants, yōon, and long vowels.

Grammatical function

Yamato kotoba function differently grammatically than borrowed words. While borrowed words can be nouns, which can function as verbs via adding the auxiliary verb or attributively via ''-na'' or ''-no'', borrowed words cannot become true Japanese verbs (- or -verbs) or adjectives (-adjectives) – these are closed class (with rare exceptions, such as the verb , from the French word "sabotage," or , from "(to)

google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

"). Japanese adjectives and grammatical words (notably particles) are also Yamato kotoba. Japanese has a great many

compound verb In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a ''light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, bu ...

s, such as (machi-awaseru, to rendezvous, from + ), which are formed from native verbs, not borrowings. However, in nouns, native Japanese roots and Chinese borrowings (and in some cases more modern European borrowings) can combine.

Numbers

For most purposes, Japanese uses Chinese numbers, rather than native numbers. However, native numbers are often used for counting numbers of items up to 10 – as in hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu (one item, two items, three items), notably days on the calendar, and with other

Japanese counter word In Japanese, counter words or counters (, ) are measure words used with numbers to count things, actions, and events. Counters are added directly after numbers. There are numerous counters, and different counters are used depending on the kind or sh ...

s – and for various exceptions (

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

). These exceptions include , , , and .

Writing

Yamato kotoba are often written in a mixture of

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and 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

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

. Grammatical words are written using hiragana (there is often a traditional kanji, which is today rarely used), as are the inflectional ends of verbs and adjectives, which are known as okurigana. Content words (nouns, roots of verbs and adjectives) are generally written in kanji with kun'yomi, with the meanings of the kanji used corresponding to the meaning of the word. However, the word may be written in hiragana, particularly if the kanji are uncommon. Further, some yamato kotoba are written using unrelated kanji (used only for their sound value), which is known as ateji, or using kanji whose meaning is correct but whose sounds are not, which is known as

jukujikun are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of 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 subsequent ...

. Katakana is generally not used for yamato kotoba, but can be used for emphasis (especially for mimetic words), and for legibility when spelling out a word.

References