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are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from
Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...
, 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 is Japanese for " loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chine ...
(), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate
Japanese sound symbolism The Japanese language has a large inventory of sound symbolic or mimetic words, known in linguistics as ideophones. Such words are found in written as well as spoken Japanese. Known popularly as ''onomatopoeia'', these words are not just imitat ...
, 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. The synonym ''wago'' is instead a kango, and hence a heterological word.


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 settlers in the mid-5th ...
) 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 expec ...
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 The , also written as ''yōon'', is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound, i.e., palatalized, or (more rarely in the modern language) with an added sound, i.e. labialized. ''Yōon'' are represented i ...
, 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 In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
(with rare exceptions, such as the verb , from the French word "sabotage," or , from "(to)
google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
"). 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 aspec ...
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 ...
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 ...
). These exceptions include , , , and .


Writing

Yamato kotoba are often written in a mixture of
kanji 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 subsequ ...
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 contras ...
. 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 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 subsequen ...
, 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 In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji use ...
, 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 subsequ ...
. 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.


See also

*
Gairaigo is Japanese for " loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chine ...
*
Sino-Japanese vocabulary Sino-Japanese vocabulary, also known as refers to Japanese vocabulary that had originated in Chinese or were created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical structures and sentence patterns can also be identified as Sino-Japanese. S ...


References

{{Japanese language Japanese language