Japanese, The Spoken Language – Part 1 (Yale Language Series)

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The Japanese government provides standardized tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features five levels of exams. The JLPT is offered twice a year.

Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語, bungo, "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語, kōgo). The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese, which remained in common use until the early 20th century. A study of macaque monkeys suggests that languages may have evolved to replace grooming as a better way of forging social ties amongst our ancestors The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 26th edition edition of Ethnologue published in 2023. [7] Entries Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section. Languages with at least 50 million first-language speakers [7] Language How the language developed before that is truly a mystery! 2. There are other countries outside of Japan where Japanese is spokenDuring the 8th century, Chinese characters were used to represent Japanese sounds. However, this wasn’t a perfect system: not all Japanese sounds or words could be sufficiently expressed through a foreign alphabet. Katakana was heavily used to transmit coded messages during World War II, though it was used for that same purpose much earlier. In case you’re interested in the Japanese ciphers that the country utilized in the wars it fought throughout the modern period, here’s an article for you. 10. Women helped develop hiragana

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Ryukyuan languages, the indigenous dialects of the Ryukyu islands off mainland Japan, were brought in by travelers from Asia and nearby Pacific Islands during the 弥生時代 Around 75% of the world's population don’t speak a word of English and a grasp of a different language improves your abilities to use your first language and explore other cultures more successfully In fact, Japanese is considered one of the most unique languages in the world with no direct derivative language that birthed it. Other such languages include Sumerian, Korean and many Native American languages. 15. ローマ字

Etiquette

Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人, hitobito, usually written with an iteration mark as 人々). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi, but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). [7] (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before the end of the period.

In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture). [25] The survey was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region. [25] Intelligibility to students from Tokyo and Kanto region (Date: 1967) [25] Dialect FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

Part 3, Supplement: Japanese Typescript

Watashi wa sushi ga ii desu. (literally) " As for me, sushi is good." The nominative marker ga after watashi is hidden under wa. The World Factbook, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages ( L1 + L2) in 2022 as follows: [46] Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022 [46] Language