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Writer's pictureMike Viscusi

What is Japanese? 日本語とは何ですか。

What is Japanese? Where exactly did Japanese come from? And how did it become one of the world's most formidable languages to learn?

 

 

What is Japanese?


Japanese is a language that is (obviously) spoken in Japan, with around 123 million native speakers (1), with close to 1.5 million people of Japanese descent outside of Japan being able to speak the language as well (2). According to the Japan Foundation, in 2021, there were a little over 3,700,000 Japanese language learners around the world, an almost 30-fold increase compared to when records started to be kept in 1979, when there were only around 127,000 learners (3).



As you can see from the data above, despite the small dip in learners at the start of the pandemic, Japanese is still very much an in-demand language that is relevant on the world stage today. With Japan's global influence in media, culinary, and pop culture, it will not go away any time soon. In fact, Japanese has consistently been a top 10 language in all foreign languages that people learn (5).

 

Where Did Japanese Come From?


But where did Japanese come from? Well... we aren't really sure where Japanese came from. Even though there is extensive research into many languages and their language families around the world, Japanese is one language that has been a bit of an enigma (6). There have been many attempts to place Japanese into different language families, including the Sino (Chinese), Koreanic (Korean), Altaic (involving Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages, with Korean included as well) (6), and even more outlandish claims.


What we do know is that at the beginning of the Japanese language's history, there was no native written language. Japanese was strictly an oral language (6), and much of what we know about early Japan was passed down orally (which also led to problems of consistency of stories and legends). As such, what we know about early Japanese and what sort of Japanese was spoken from prehistory up until around the 5th century (7).


At the beginning of the 5th Century, immigrants from the Chinese Mainland and the Korean Peninsula started to bring over Chinese Hanzi over to the Japanese Archipelago (8). Over time, the Japanese started to adopt Kanji (Hanzi) as the formal written medium of Japanese (granted there were some changes to using Kanji in Japan that made it strictly Japanese).


Initially, Kanji was strictly taught to the upper - echelons of Japanese society (mainly the nobility, the imperial court, and to people in the clergy). But eventually, Kanji developed two offshoots, Hiragana and Katakana.


 

Hiragana Origin Chart

More to come soon!





 

Bibliography

  1. Central Intelligence Agency. (2024, June 12). Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/japan/#people-and-society

  2. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024, May 31). Japanese language. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Japanese-language

  3. Learning Japanese changed my life-A passport to the future gained through Japanese language learning. 国際交流基金50周年記念サイト. (2022, December 16). https://jf50.jpf.go.jp/en/story/learning_japanese_changed_my_life/#:~:text=The%20latest%20survey%20revealed%20that,increased%20by%20about%2030%2Dfold.

  4. Nippon.com. (2022). Japanese Language Educational Institutions and Students. Nippon.com - Your Doorway to Japan. Retrieved June 19, 2024, from https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01521/.

  5. What are the most popular languages in the world?. Middlebury Language Schools. (2023, November 28). https://www.middlebury.edu/language-schools/blog/what-are-most-popular-languages-world

  6. Miyagawa, S. (1999, October 13). The Japanese Language. The Japanese language. https://web.mit.edu/jpnet/articles/JapaneseLanguage.html

  7. Kanji. Japan-Guide: Japan Travel and Living Guide. (2024, May 4). https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2046.html#:~:text=Kanji%20(%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97)%2C%20one%20of,and%20corresponds%20to%20a%20word.

  8. Mathieu. (2022, February 21). The History of Kanji 漢字の歴史. It’s Japan Time. https://itsjapantime.com/the-history-of-kanji-%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2/




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