![]() ![]() ![]() Japanese is traditionally written vertically from right to left across the page. The Ainu language resists efforts to classify it even more stringently than Japanese does! That being said, many modern Ainu do not speak their own language at all having completely assimilated into Japanese society. Hiragana seems to have come from a simplified version of Chinese Kanji, while Katakana seems to have been created by extracting part of Kanji.Īs a final point, it’s worth remembering that the Ainu, a distinct ethnic group who are the original inhabitants of the island of Hokkaido, speak a completely different language from the rest of Japan. The Hiragana and Katakana character sets ( see below) were developed around the 8th or 9th centuries to make it easier to write Japanese words using Chinese symbols. The growth from one “version” of the language to the other can broadly be said to have taken place from around 1100-1500CE. Old Japanese was quite distinct from Modern Japanese, with a completely different grammar and morphology – and, critically, the fact that it only used Kanji rather than three scripts of Modern Japanese. After this, Chinese Kanji were introduced, becoming a language known today as Old Japanese. Until around 400-500CE the Japanese language had no written form. Some modern Japanese scholars have suggested that the pair of these ideas might be true, and Japanese is a hybrid of both. However, there is also a competing idea that Japanese arises from the same roots as the Austronesian family of languages. The most popular theory relates Japanese to Korean and the wider Altaic family of languages which also features Turkish, Tungusic and Mongolian. There are at least a dozen different theories about where Japanese came from. While almost every other language on the planet has been categorically identified as being part of a certain linguistic family, Japanese remains in many ways unique. We’ll then talk briefly about the fourth script – the Romanised Romaji script – and why you might need it.Īsian Absolute provides high-class translation and interpreting services from English into Japanese and vice versa. Especially to an outside eye.In this article, we’ll learn a little about the history of the Japanese language before covering what Japanese symbols are called and the basics of the three main character sets which together form written Japanese. So, all in all, the Japanese writing system can appear beautiful. There are several thousand characters in those different character sets combined, and they’re used together in many different ways, often even in the same word… These are called Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. There are three different types of Japanese characters. ![]() MT Engine Training – Linguistic Feedback. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |