Talk:Japanese language

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Old discussions: Talk:Japanese language/archive001

Contents

[edit] Classification

Made new page and moved content: see Japanese language classification. Justification: this main article is too long, and some of the finer points were not appropriate for a general article. Godfrey Daniel 20:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Older comments:

I am a Western researcher doing work on the possible relationship of Japanese to other languages, and I know all the leading Western researchers in the field, as well as many of the Japanese ones. While it is well-known that some work has been "fraught with [...] political tensions," I know no one who allows politics to interfere in their linguistics. Please leave the qualifying statement "However, these tensions are nearly absent among Western researchers" in the article. Godfrey Daniel 19:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Upon closer reflection, I'm not sure why this paragraph is in the article at all. Other than the discredited wartime work of Kanazawa Shōzaburō, who was working under political pressure, the issue of the external relations of Japanese are highly unpolitical in academic circles. Unless there are excellent reasons to keep it, I will remove it. Godfrey Daniel 00:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Though I'm the editor who left it in when trimming the section down, I see no reason not to remove it; while I have no great expertise in the field and am therefore not in a position to comment on its accuracy or validity in general, in the context of this article I agree that it is superfluous and could reasonably be cut. — Haeleth Talk 09:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Well then, out it goes. Godfrey Daniel 22:32, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronouns

I have edited Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English: to modern Indo-European pronouns as Latin pronouns can be used in a similar way.--Darthanakin 11:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Want pronouns? Okay, pronouns:

  • Kimi- you (usually female)
  • Watashi- me (usually male)
  • Anata- you (usually male)
  • Boku- me (usually female)

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.8.196.195 (talk • contribs) 01:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I took the liberty of converting your examples into a proper list. Read the article again, please. All it's saying is that there are no grounds for distinguishing pronouns as a SYNTACTIC CLASS separate from nouns, not that there are no words equivalent to/used like pronouns. (Your gender notes are rather interesting, by the way.) --RJCraig 16:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
You wrote: Your gender notes are rather interesting, by the way. I don't think irony is a good thing on Wikipedia. There are many beginners visiting here. - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Your opinion is noted. Let me be more direct then: I'd like to see some statistical evidence supporting the assertions made regarding gender specificity in the usage of the pronouns listed, because they do not coincide with my experience. The actual usage patterns are complex and affected by factors other than gender, such as age, region, and socioeconomics. Better? --RJCraig 06:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Retroflex sounds and Tamil

Removed from the article:

though Japanese has little in common with Tamil's retroflex consonants (except for the pronounciations of r and l).

Japanese has only one liquid, commonly written /r/. The Japanese liquid is not a retroflex sound. Furthermore, no Japanese dialect has any retroflex sounds, liquid or otherwise. Check Vance, Shibatani, Miller, Bloch, Tsujimura, or any of the myriad Japanese textbooks out there.

It might also be interesting to note that in general, neither the presence nor the absence of a certain sound has any bearing on the genetic relationship of languages. For example, English and Mandarin both have retroflex /r/, but they are not related. English and Burmese both have /θ/, but they are not related. On the other hand, French, German, Italian, Russian, Swedish, and many other European languages have neither /ɻ/ nor /θ/, yet all of these languages (and many more without /ɻ/ or /θ/) are all related to English.

While it's important to note that Ono et al. have posited a relationship with Tamil, retroflexion, being absent from Japanese, is not a relevant criterion for making the comparison. Godfrey Daniel 18:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning Japanese?

Should we add a section to the article that has names of the best books and software that help teach Japanese? I'd do this myself but I'm interested in learning the language myself so I'm not sure which books or computer software would help me read or understand Japanese. -- AS Artimour 15:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be very difficult to do so in an appropriate way. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, not a howto site; we describe the state of affairs, we do not make personal judgements or recommendations. We cannot review books and software ourselves, because that would be original research; we cannot make any statements which promote a single point of view, such as claiming that Heisig's method is superior to others, and we cannot make any statements which we are unable to back up with reliable sources. The best we could do would be to say that professor so-and-so has written a review of various books in which she concludes that such-and-such is the best of the ones she looked at. But we would have to find such a review first, and establish that it was reliable and up-to-date...
Additionally, there is the problem that such sections tend to attract spam. Every student of the language who came along would want to add the textbook he was using to the list.
Finally, the question has a very simple answer in any case: the best books are the ones your course uses. If you don't have a course, you should find one, because self-teaching a language is usually not a realistic proposition.  :) — Haeleth Talk 17:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My revert...

While the initial removal may have been grossly inaccurate and poorly solicited, it is indeed true that very few, if any Irish secondary schools provide Japanese. (Indeed, most universities, except most foul Trinity >:( , seem to do it.) I myself currently do it after school two days a week after practically petitioning to get my school to provide it, and they still didn't fit it into the regular timetable. Certainly, even if it is a Leaving Certificate subject, it is almost never provided in regular schools and, even then, Ireland doesn't deserve mention in such a miniscule list of states that do it in lower level schools. elvenscout742 00:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

However if even 1 school in Ireland does it then it should be on the list. Ben W Bell 16:34, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I can't help but think that having a list of which countries offer Japanese in high schools is only marginally relevant to an article on the Japanese language itself, especially given the potential controversy about who is "worthy" for inclusion on the list. The next sentence quantifies the number of non-native speakers, which makes the dispersion of non-native Japanese speakers clearer than a list anyway. Would people object to taking out the list of countries and simplifying and generalizing in a way such as: Major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and several countries provide language courses at high schools or lower level schools. CES 13:12, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
I would prefer removing the section entirely. The only reason that we have it in such a thoroughly non-international language as Japanese is because of the online obsession by manga and anime aficionados. It's getting this kind of attention because of all the anime and manga aficionados, not because it's widely spoken outside of Japan.
Peter Isotalo 22:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
The section is better than it used to be ... but still, while personally I'd have little objection to removing the first two paragraphs, I think the information involving the number of non-native Japanese speakers is potentially valuable and interesting. Those paragraphs might best be merged with "Geographic Distribution", however. CES 13:26, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I second merging. There's just a bit too much focus on it right now, since 2.3 million foreign students seems like a very low figure compared to other languages with more than a 100 million speakers.
Peter Isotalo 11:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Sounds

Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese of the first half of the twentieth century, /ti/ was palatalized to [tɕi], approximately chi; however, now /ti/ and /tɕi/ are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii [paatii] "party" and chi [chi] "ground."

Is there any other example that can be given to demonstrate how ti and chi are different phonemes? Since party is a loanword and chi is a native word is it really a natural phonemic difference? Or more of a foreign sound being transposed on native language. My question is whether ti and chi, specifically in the sample given, are considered seperate japanese phonemes or are still just allophones?

Absolutely not allophones. Loanwords are still words, regardless of how some people may view them. While most older speakers can't say [ti], all younger ones can (in the Tokyo area, at least). Godfrey Daniel 05:11, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I doubt there's another example, or rather, I doubt there an example of non-borrowed /ti/, since the loss of phonemic contrast was brought about precisely by the palatalization of /t/ before /i/-/j/. AFAIK the only place where you can see the /t/ = [t]~[tɕ]~[ts] alternance is in the conjugation of verbs (for example, for the root mat-, you have matsu~matanai~machimasu), and the [tɕ] in those forms shows no signs of reverting to [t].
I don't know when [ti] re-appeared in Japanese, but I must point out that the borrowed words that carry it are not rare or specialized occurrences. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 20:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Today (in the 21st century), those are definitely distinctly different sounds. However, it should be noted that words using the newer [ti][ティ], [tu][トゥ], etc. are ALWAYS foreign words introduced into Japan recently. (And so, they are written EXCLUSIVELY in katakana to show that they are foreign.) Many older generation Japanese people still cannot pronounce these new sounds, and use [chi][チ], [tsu][ツ], etc. instead. There was a period when the [ti], [tu], etc. were NEVER used in Japan, say about 100 years ago.
Some examples of the uses of T and D sounds in Japanese.... [ti][ティ] (tissue paper; ja:ティッシュペーパー), [tu][トゥ] (tonight; ja:トゥナイト), [di][ディ] (cardigan; ja:カーディガン), [dyu][デュ] (Dusseldorf; ja:デュッセルドルフ), [toryu][トリュ] instead of [tryu] (truffle; ja:トリュフ from the French truffe), [chyu][チュ] instead of [tyu] (neptune; ja:ネプチューン).
Alas! The Japanese people today have trouble with [tyu], and still prefer to use [chyu][チュ] instead. But it only takes one popular TV show or a big product advertisement campaign, to transform the modern Japanese person into using [tyu]([テュ]or[トュ]?). It was not too long ago that the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) was translated into チキチキバンバン (Chiki Chiki Ban Ban) because the [ti][ティ] would have been a tongue-twister for them. The modern Japanese person is still in the process of transforming....--Endroit 16:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


A couple of notes, I added two links but I would like to add that in the language learning section it should be noted that most japanese universities require a contract for a bachelor degree after language courses (yes even the junior colleges). I didn't add it but if anyone finds it worthwhile they can add it. Tzu7 06:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistic Relations

The Classification section in the article notes that "among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to Korean is considered plausible but is still up to debate". I find this somewhat confusing, as the Korean language page itself notes:

Goguryeo and Baekje languages are considered related, likely descended from Gojoseon (see Fuyu languages). Less is known about the relationship between the languages of Gojoseon, Goguryo, and Baekje on one hand, and the Samhan and Silla on the other, although many Korean scholars believe they were mutually intelligible, and the collective basis of modern Korean. (emphasis added)

So if Korean is considered to be based at least in part on Goguryeo, and Japanese is considered to be related to Goguryeo, then it sounds to me an awful lot like splitting hairs to say that Japanese and Goguryeo are genetically related but Japanese and Korean might not be. It's a bit like saying that I'm related to my great grandfather, but maybe not to my second cousin once removed.  ??? Can anyone clear this up?

Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I can clear it up. Japanese and Korean people can't stand the idea of being related to each other. It's like telling English people their language is descended from old French. Drives 'em nuts. - Sekicho 16:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Sekicho. Yep, also a bit like suggesting that Dutch and German are dialects of each other, or that Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are besically the same thing. I'm aware of the political reasons for this particular issue, and given the history in Asia they're fully understandable.

To rephrase my initial thoughts, what I'm wondering is whether we could re-word the statements in the Classification section to be a bit clearer. As it stands, the text suggests that Goguryeo and modern Korean are not related, which stands in contrast to what is said in the actual Korean language article.

In addition to this disagreement between the two articles, the statement I quoted at the top of this subsection is also confusing in that it mixes what is apparently objective fact ("Goguryeo has the most evidence") with subjective specialist opinion ("relationship to Korean ... is still up to debate"). Perhaps changing "evidence" here to "currency" or "credence" would suffice? Should we also add a parenthetic comment to the effect that Goguryeo is considered an ancestor of modern Korean, to further avoid confusion and make the text more clearly consistent with the Korean language article?

Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

English and French or Dutch and German have marked similarities, but native words in Japanese and Korean bear no similarities at all, so I don't think that's a suitable comparison...? Anyway, in my opinion, it is quite difficult for me to believe that Korean and Japanese are related. I am studying Korean (in Japanese) and while it is popularly said that Korean and Japanese are very similar, I must say that even the similarities in grammar don't go very far... Japanese and Korean sentences tend to be quite similar when the sentences are relatively simple and tons of Chinese-borrowed words are used, but if you take them out, they don't seem to me to be similar at all besides the word order. Some more complicated native grammar structures seem to be shared by the two languages (e.g. Japanese -て いる / Korean -III + 있다 for a continuing action), and yet those are actually used by Chinese also (在做), so perhaps even those originally came from Chinese.
Of course, I am not an expert in any way and I have written this without looking at the stated evidence that Japanese and some ancestor of Korean are related, so in all possibility I could be totally wrong. The above are my observations only. -- KittySaturn 23:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I am studying Korean (in Japanese):
Oo, interesting -- something I always intended to do while living in Tokyo, but never had the time or energy to tackle in any serious way. All I had was the English-language Teach Yourself Korean book, and various online resources. I found the TYK book frustrating for all the time spent explaining structures in Korean that are analogous to Japanese; as I'm fluent in Japanese, I just wanted to get on to the meatier parts of learning the language. Any specific materials you're using? I live not too far from a Kinokuniya, and now that I have free time again I'd like to get back to my language studies.
Anyway, as to relatedness, without that I get a good bit deeper into Korean, most of what I can say is second-hand. Be that as it may, I recall reading somewhere that the nakereba naranai construction in Japanese (lit, "if there isn't X, Y won't happen") for "must" is also common to Korean and Mongolian, and possibly also Turkish, though my memory is fuzzy. Apparently this is a rather distinctive way of saying "must", and was cited as possible evidence for the Altaic language group theory.
Also have a look at the Korean Talk page, where there's been some interesting discussion about the relation between Korean and Japanese. Sure, the vocabularies might be markedly different now, but have they always been so? A lot can happen in 2,000 years (roughly as long as we have any written records for Korean and Japanese), and there's evidence that there were more words in common in the past...
Food for thought, at any rate. But seriously, if you have any recommendations for Korean study materials en japonaise, do let me know.  :) Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 06:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adjectives

I have a question about the rentaishi class of adjective. I just looked back at the old talk page entry for this, and there's no mention of rentaishi. The Kōjien examples of rentaishi include ano, aru, saru, iwayuru, and interestingly ōkina (which I'd always considered as simply a variant of ōkii). The definition of rentaishi is given as:

品詞の一。体言の修飾だけを役目とする品詞。
Part of speech. Part of speech that functions only to modify indeclinables.

I take "only to modify nouns" to mean that rentaishi cannot end a phrase nor stand on their own, hence the mention in the article that these are "also called true adjectives". In contrast, i adjectives look a lot like stative verbs, in that they can form predicates and even complete utterances in and of themselves, and also conjugate for tense.

However, it looks like onaji might be a bad example of rentaishi. The Kōjien gives two entries for onaji, with one classified as an irregular i adjective, as evidenced by the adverbial form onajiku. The other entry mentions its use as a meishi and as a rentaishi, but with the note that this is from the keiyōshi ("形容詞「おなじ」が体言化したもの").

Given that onaji can in fact serve as a predicate (followed by the copula, like any other na adjective), and given its adverbial form, it looks a lot less like a regular rentaishi and a lot more like an i adjective that has become rather irregular, a kind of keiyōshi / keiyōdōshi hybrid. As such, could we use some other word as an example for rentaishi?

Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 06:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually I find it strange that rentaishi is considered a type of adjective. I notice a lot of references at the bottom of the article, but I must say that if one of those sources says rentaishi is a type of adjective, it would be a minority opinion. Sure, some of them came from adjectives (like ookina and arishi), but calling other ones like iwayuru and aru an adjective is like calling the attributive forms of every verb adjectives.
As a side note, the Daijirin available online on many web sites simply calls onaji an adjective in classical Japanese (it was a very ordinary regular one), and a na adjective (keiyōdōshi) with two attributive forms (おなじ one used before normal nouns, おなじな one used before の, ので, のに) in modern Japanese. --KittySaturn 14:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a bit strange, but as an outsider I always noticed that the Korean langauge took a lot from the Japanese system. Furthermore, Korean culture itself seems to take whatever is popular in Japan and slap a Korean name on it, and then enjoy the payoff. (hyundai <--nissan) (mychew <--- haichew) (korean shrimp snacks <--- ebisen) etc.

[edit] Pronouns

Would anybody be interested in doing a section or sub-article on Japanese pronouns (watashi, ore, omae etc.) and in particular the question of when each is used? --Kenji Yamada 04:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you volunteering? ;-) Tomertalk 01:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a section on pronouns at Gender differences in spoken Japanese ... it seems like that is a good place to start. CES 03:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sentence not clear

This sentence not clear enough:

If considered as a system of morae instead of syllables, (as the katakana and hiragana phonetic writing systems explicitly do) the sound structure is very simple:

It is not clear enough if they consider it the former or latter. --jidanni

[edit] Why kawa becomes gawa?

One wonders e.g., why kawa becomes gawa, sawa becomes zawa, when behind some words, but not others. This simple level question should be answered. --jidanni

rendaku may answer your question. --Kusunose 10:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Simply this, in the case of preceding hard consonants, the consonant also becomes hard. Just like Kyoto's Oikawa (vowel) remains -kawa, but Kamogawa (hard cons.) becomes gawa. It is everywhere in Japanese.

[edit] Writing system

Sir Edgar -- you note that before the 5th century, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. But the main Japanese writing page states that Chinese characters began to show up in the 4th century. My memory's fuzzy, but which is it? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 17:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

About Chinese characters:

There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cāng Jié, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huángdì of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. A few symbols exist on pottery shards from the Neolithic period in China, but whether or not they constitute writing or are ancestral to the Chinese writing system is a topic of much controversy among scholars. Archaeological evidence, mainly the oracle bones found in the 19-20th centuries, at present only dates Chinese characters to the Shāng dynasty, specifically to the 14th to 11th centuries BC, although this fully mature script implies an earlier period of development.

[edit] Classification

Hello Nobu Sho --

Though pulled from the Japonic languages page, I must point out that your edit of 10:25, 3 February 2006 contains some inconsistencies.

Old New
* Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory. * Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. Japanese is related to modern Korean based primarily on near-identical grammar, but there is scarce lexical similarity between the two; supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence. This has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory.
  1. The first half of this addition hinges on a logical error. The similarities between Japanese and Korean grammars do not prove relation, but simply similarity. For relation, we have to look into the linguistics and histories of the languages, a discussion of which has been going on for some time on the Korean language Talk page, for instance.
  2. If you know of one, please give us some citation for the second half of this addition. The Korean language page itself states otherwise:
Goguryeo and Baekje languages are considered related, likely descended from Gojoseon (see Fuyu languages). Less is known about the relationship between the languages of Gojoseon, Goguryo, and Baekje on one hand, and the Samhan and Silla on the other, although many Korean scholars believe they were mutually intelligible, and the collective basis of modern Korean. (emphasis mine)

The Buyeo languages page itself notes that the hypothetical Fuyu language was thought to be only "somewhat different from the language of Samhan and Silla". Given this and the above quote, I must ask, where is it said that "supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family"? Unfortunately, in digging through the Japonic languages page, where you found this text, I could find no source for this sweeping statement that contradicts other information elsewhere in Wikipedia. It appears that one Gilgamesh initially added this statement to that page. (Edit diff here.) I will write this person and see if they care to add anything to this discussion.

I must note that you are involved in an ongoing dispute over on the Yayoi Talk page, wherein you stand accused of inserting unsubstantiated POV commentary. I bring this up simply to point out that your credibility is not very high right now, particularly in relation to Korean and Japanese issues. Making ultimately unsubstantiated additions that contradict other pages and that might be construed as POV is not a good way of improving one's credibility within the Wikipedia community. If you are aware of any verifiable source, please provide one. Such citations also add to Wikipedia's quality as a research tool.

For the time being, in light of the logical error and contradictory information on other pages, I am commenting out this addition -- the text will remain in the editable source, but will not be visible to the casual browser. I will also post on the Japonic languages Talk page to bring up these same concerns about sources. I thank you for bringing this page to my attention, particularly the section at issue here.

I look forward to any replies. Thank you, Eiríkr Útlendi 20:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

My source is from the article from the New York Times published on Published on May 6, 2003 which refered to the April 25 issue of Science. World's Farmers Sowed Languages as Well as Seeds Personaly I support the creole theory but we are now talking about the Buyeo languages so I will refer to the article.
The Science article endorses a bold suggestion for the origin of Japanese. The writers say it is derived from the language of rice farmers who arrived from Korea around 400 B.C. and spread their agriculture northward from a southern island, Kyushu. Modern Japanese is not at all like Korean. But Korea had three ancient kingdoms, each with its own language. Modern Korean derived from the ancient Sillan. Japanese may have evolved from another ancient Korean language, Koguryo, the article says.
About Japanese issues, I feel Koreans tend to politicize historical facts, showing attitudes like "Japan owes what it is today to Korea". See Talk:Korean-Japanese disputes. It is true that Buddhism and Chinese culture was introduced from the Korean peninsula, but that is only due to the geographcal location. I don't know your nationality but I believe you must be frustated if some other country claimed "We made your country".Nobu Sho 02:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for replying, Nobu Sho. Your addition is clearer than what was originally posted over on the Japonic languages page. I wonder now what to do vis-à-vis accounting for the difference of viewpoint on the other pages regarding the relatedness of the Goguryeo and Silla languages? Again, the Buyeo languages page itself states that the Buyeo group was only somewhat different from Samhan and Silla. Hmm. Sounds like time to do some more serious book-in-hand reading -- I've dug through Masayoshi Shibatani's The Languages of Japan in the Cambridge Language Survey series (ISBN 0-5213-6070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-5213-6918-5 (pbk)), but methinks it's time to read Ho-min Sohn's The Korean Language (ISBN 0-5213-6943-6 (pbk))...
I'll have to dig for that Science article. Newspapers have a long and glorious history of oversimplification. Saying that modern Māori is not at all like Russian would be fair, as they really have nothing to do with each other, but the NYT stating that modern Japanese is not at all like Korean smacks of hyperbole. Sure, they are quite different indeed, but they are also notably similar in what appear to be linguistically significant ways. Though I get your point about politicizing. Avoiding POV can be difficult for any emotional issue.
Incidentally, if you are interested in the creolization hypothesis, one good place to look is North Kyushu Creole: A Hypothesis concerning the Multilingual Formation of Japanese, a paper by John C. Maher that was originally published on the ICU website but now only available thanks to the Wayback Machine. (For each successive section of the paper, simply increment the final digit in the web address; the links at the bottom of each page point to the now-non-existent ICU address.) I don't suppose you happen to know of any other good links related to the creole theory?
Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 00:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I've read the Science article (not likely to be available online). I don't agree about everything written here and believe the term "Korean" is used inaccurately because this hypothesis claims the language of Koguryo similar to Japanese than Korean, thus meaning Koguryo is more Japanese than Korean. However, to show sources I will introduce a part of the article.
Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions, Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood, 25 April 2003 Vol300 Science
7. Japanese
Around 400 B.C., intensive rice agriculture, new pottery styles, and new tools, all based on Korean models, appeared on the southwestmost Japanese island of Kyushu near Korea and spread northeast up the Japanese archipelago. Genes and skeletons of the modern Japanese suggest that they arose as a hybrid population between arriving Korean rice farmers and a prior Japanese population simular to the modern Ainu and responsible for Japan's earlier Jommon pottery. Modern southwest-to-northeast gene clines in Japan and DNA extracted from ancient skeletons suport this interpretation (59, 60). Japanese origins would rival Bantu origins as mpst concordant and unequivocal example of an agricultual expansion, were it not for the flagrant discordance of the linguistic evidence. If Korean farmers really did become dominant in Japan as recently as 400 B.C., one might have expected the modern Japanese and Korean languages to be as closely similar as other languages that diverged at such recent date (e.g., German and Swedish), whereas their relationship is in fact much more distant.The likely explanation is language repalcement in the Korean homeland. Early Korean consisted of three kingdoms with distinct languages. The modern Korean language is derived from that of the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla, the kingdom that unified Korea. However, the now-extinct language of one of the two ancient Korean kingdoms that Silla defeated, Koguryo, was much more similar to Old Japanese than is Sillan or modern Korean (61). Thus, a Koguryo-like language may have been spoken by the Korean farmers arriving in Japan, may have evolved into modern Japanese, and may have replaced in Korea itself by Sillan that evoled into modern Korean.
59. S. Horai et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59, 579 (1996).
60. K. Omoto, N. Saito, Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 102, 437 (1997).
61. M.Hudson, Ruins of Identity, (Univ. of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999).
Page 96 on (61). says,
The arrival of Proto-Jpanese in Kyushu in the Yayio thus seems the most natural explanation for the relative uniformity of Japanese dialects. The problem here, of course, is the source of the new language, since modern Japanese and Korean are considered too differnet to have split from a common ancestor only 2000 years ago. A possible way around this problem may be fact that Old Japanese is believed to have been closer to the language of Koguryo than to that of Silla, from which modern Korean is derived. Nobu Sho 01:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi folks, I am a historical linguist who works on the history and origins of Japanese. Not only am I up-to-date on the scholarly work in this area, I know most of the scholars who wrote those works. We agree that as yet, there is no consensus. However, given our current state of knowledge, the "related to extinct Korean-peninsular languages" hypothesis is given the most credence. Still, that isn't definite, and some people are still hanging on to Korean & Altaic connections (which cannot be rejected the way that the silly Tamil hypothesis can). I have reordered the list to reflect this.

As for the debate above, it doesn't seem to need any comment by me. Godfrey Daniel 04:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does Japanese come from 800 A.D., while the Hangul alphabet come from 1400 A.D.? That is what I was taught in my Asiatic languages course.

Those dates relate to the written languages. However, the languages were spoken for a very long time before they were ever written down, so the fact that Japanese was written long before the unique Korean alphabet was developed does not tell us anything about the possible relationship between the two languages. — Haeleth Talk 22:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

Taw --

I understand that the Altaic hypothesis is considered disputed (as was duly noted in the infobox), but I was not aware that it was so apparently controversial. Though I'm admittedly not as widely read regarding Japanese linguistic theory as I'd like to be, what I have read so far consistently mentions the Altaic hypothesis as a likely, albeit incomplete or flawed, contender. Should it not then at least bear mention here in the infobox, with the "disputed" tag in plain view? I feel it's better for those browsing Wikipedia to see something that's disputed, and marked as such, than to simply have anything controversial swept under the rug and removed from public view. What does everyone think? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I support the removal of the link to Altaic from the infobox. Firstly, the Altaic family is not on that secure a footing in itself: this is not the only infobox that has (had) "Altaic (disputed)" in its infobox. However, Japanese, along with Korean, is in another class entirely: even if we all agreed that the Altaic family was a solid classification, its membership is disputed. Thus, we have a double dispute: both the family and Japanese membership of it are disputed. To show this, the infobox has been coloured grey: the colour coding for a language isolate (Altaic languages are in a pea-green shade). The double ALtaic-Japanese controversy should be dealt with further down the page rather than floated in the infobox. I admit that I am tempted to tie up the loose ends of disparate language families and language isolates, but our evidence of the world's languages is far from supporting such tidyness. --Gareth Hughes 16:47, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Thank you for the additional explanation.
On a slight tangent, how are languages of mixed genetic ancestry classified? I've been reading some rather interesting material lately about the possible origins of Japanese as a creole of continental (perhaps something similar to Goguryeo), Austronesian, and Paleosiberian languages. I've poked about some on Wikipedia, but the few creole languages I know by name don't seem to have any infoboxes on their pages. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 17:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Should there even be a "Learning Japanese" part?

To me it seems like somebody wrote a quite POV part about learning Japanese language which since the creation has been entirely rewritten NPOV-ly but keeping the basic structure. Should it even be there in the first place? I know many people have an interest in learning Japanese, largely because of the recent popularity of manga and the like (which is becoming an increasing problem when people with little knowledge of Japan outside what's portrayed in manga start "contributing" to articles on things Japanese), but I don't think that's enough to put it in an encyclopedia. I don't see similar headings on languages like Spanish, so why should Japanese have one? Some of the informatino there is relevant though but I'd like to move it all to different places.Mackan 17:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree it seems out of place, and most of the observations in the article seem to describe things that are true of learning all languages: you have to learn the writing system, the language has homophones & homonyms, etc Ashmoo 03:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Furthermore, the second paragraph was a mess of self-contradictions: "You don't need to learn kanji, but it's very difficult to understand Japanese unless you do, although in fact it's not difficult at all because blind people manage just fine". Which can be summed up as "you only need to learn to read if you're going to be doing any reading", which again should go without saying.
I've tried removing both the first two paragraphs of that section, leaving the actual encyclopedic information on the numbers and distribution of people studying the language and the standard tests. The heading probably wants tweaking to clarify that it's not a "howto" section. — Haeleth Talk 11:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese and cases

Something that I haven't undersood (or maybe misunderstood) is why in Japanese language, the grammatical particles are very empathized while grammatical cases are not mentioned. Why is, for example, the the possesive particle "no" not a counted as a genitiv suffix? In spoken Japanese "no" sounds very merged with the possesor (pronoun, noun etc), like a case ending. Not even in Encyclopædia Britannica are cases mentioned in the article on Japanese in Macropedia (or at least not that i remember. Might have to check that up though).--Blackfield 21:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Those particles are indeed phonologically part of the previous word, but they're clitics, not suffixes. Depending on what exactly you call "case", you can say the particle no marks the genitive case; but most people would find it incorrect to say that "no is a genitive case ending" because that expression suggests morphological case (like the inflected cases in Latin and Greek), which no isn't. Anyway, see also Inflection#Japanese. I think it's safe to say that no "indicates a genitive relationship". --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 21:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Official lanaguage or no?

The text of the article states that it is the official language of Japan; the infobox states it is de facto. Which is it? Peter1968 05:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It's de facto, but it is bolstered by various rules or agreements that simply declare Japanese language be used for official purposes. The constitution of Japan is written in Japanese, so it can be argued that it is official language, bt there is no explicit mention. In few area, it is determined by law to use Japanese for convenience or technical contraints.--Revth 07:45, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

Are those links to ethnologue.com really necessary? The "Ethnologue report for Japanese" link points to a dead page (Apr 26 2006), and the "Ethnologue report for language code JPN" doesn't seem to provide any additional information of any value on the subject. --Sakurambo 16:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The Ethnologue report for Japanese link shows no signs of coming back to life, so I've just removed it. I'll leave the other ethnologue link there for the time being. -- Sakurambo 11:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I need help

on my UserPage on Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bigdowski_robert under 7 How people describe Robert Bigdowski (found on the web) I wrote a citate I found from the web in Japanese. If anyone would have time to summarize it on my site he is very welcome. Many thanks in advance, Robert

That's Chinese, Robert. Rizzleboffin 21:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Externals links, part II

There seems to be some dispute over what constitutes spam vs. an informative link. I've noticed that there are two websites involved here that are inserted and then swapped for one another:

A page dealing with the Kansai dialect of Japanese

The Japanese Language Informative article about the Japanese language.

Note that the descriptions aren't my own, they're just whatever the wiki authors at the time used.

Having just visited both sites for myself, they both seem to have some useful, or at the very least, interesting material. The nihongoresources website does recommend that people buy a particular textbook, but not in a pushy manner. The eLanguageSchool website seems to offer free language lessons, with additional content accessible upon registration.

Instead of engaging in an edit war, could we just discuss here on the talk page why or why not these links should be included? --Tachikoma 16:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I am assuming the elanguageschool.net link is spam because it was added by a user who appears to be engaged in a pattern, across multiple language-related articles, of randomly removing links which have been there for a long time (describing this as "removing spam"), while simultaneously adding a link to elanguageschool.net. Additionally, in this particular case I consider it not particularly useful, as well: it is being described as an "informative article", when in fact it is merely an (acknowledged and apparently permitted) copy of [1] – except that in the elanguageschool.net context, it does not lead on to the remaining articles, which leaves it isolated and not particularly useful as a very broad introduction to a handful of concepts related to Japanese.
I am assuming the nihongoresources.com page is not spam because it has been here for a long time and nobody has ever objected to it until yesterday. Additionally, I consider it useful because it goes into more detail about Kansai grammar than most online English-language resources that I'm aware of, unlike the other page, which does not go into any detail about anything.
That sums up my behaviour here. — Haeleth Talk 16:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Additional content on the elanguageschool.net link can be accessed by clicking on the "Japanese Home" directory at the top left of the page.
After checking that page again, I've noticed that a whole lot of the material is indeed copied from another page, http://maktos.jimmyseal.net/jip.html
Perhaps it would be better to skip the elanguageschool page altogether, in favor of the source page. --Tachikoma 00:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese in Paraguay

Japanese is an established minority language in Paraguay. Please see the link below:

Emigrants from Japan to Paraguay begin in 1936, and there is a Japanese village in Paraguayan each place now. There are 10 schools only in a Japanese school, too. It was a minority race of 0.14%, but 7% of all production of the soy bean which was one of the Paraguayan main farm products were produced in a Japanese-farmhouse and occupied about 40% of the export total sum of the country now, and, as for about 7,000 Japanese immigrants in current Paraguay, judging from population, it was it with the fourth place export country in the world. http://federacion.hp.infoseek.co.jp/contenido/contenido.html

[edit] Japanese in North Korea?

Any evidence? I think many language articles in English wikipedia are exaggerating the extent to which one language is spoken. You may say Spanish is the official language of 10+ countries, French 10+, German 3+, etc. But how to estimate the number of speakers in regions where that language is not officially endorsed? So, now this version says, Japanese IS spoken in North Korea. Are many North Koreans speaking Japanese? Who knows?--User:Fitzwilliam 15:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The "Spoken in..." section of the infobox does seem to be getting a bit out of hand. It needs pruning to remove any countries where there are not verifiably significant communities that use Japanese in everyday life. It is not at all helpful to have a great long list of countries with no indication of how widespread the language actually is there. Clearly it is not "spoken in" Brazil or the Northern Marianas in the same sense that it is "spoken in" Japan! (Note that those are random examples. I'm not saying that either of those countries should necessarily be removed, merely that the list should be checked to ensure that all entries are verifiably significant.) — Haeleth Talk 12:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need help translating to Japanese online, fast!

If there's anybody out there that knows and can also translate to Japanese... Please send me a note ASAP!!! --WIKISCRIPPS 07 THU OCT 5 2006 9:28 PM EDT

[edit] A recent change at Ergative-absolutive language

Recently someone changed the japanese word otoko to dansei in the article Ergative-absolutive language The changes can be seen here: otoko>dansei. Could some japanese speaker please check if this change is all well in relation to the article?Maunus 20:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted it, as "otoko" is the simpler and commoner word - more appropriate for that kind of example sentence, I'd say. — Haeleth Talk 20:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Between the noun and adjective in Japanese

Do people say "no" between the noun and adjective in Kanji where the noun precedes the adjective? Because somebody said Mononoke-hime like this: Mononoke no hime. --PJ Pete

The usage here is not noun-adjective, but rather noun-noun. The difference is essentially that "mononoke-hime" means "Princess Mononoke", and would be appropriate for use to address her. The phrase "Mononoke no hime" would rather correspond to "Mononoke, The Princess", and would not be appropriate for address, but would rather be used to introduce her for the first time in a story, or discussion. --Puellanivis 01:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Kibitzing: Mononoke no hime could also mean "the princess of the Yōkai". ;) --RJCraig 08:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
After digging around someone linked to Hideki's Dictionary Entry for "Mononoke", which shows that "Mononoke" is a native Japanese term for spirit or ghost. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Puellanivis (talk • contribs) 16:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] On the subject of the "Moonspeak" Redirect...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moonspeak&redirect=no

Should there be a section or at least a couple of sentences in this article mentioning that "Moonspeak" is an American colloquial term for the Japanese language? Otherwise, one might be confused as to exactly why 'Moonspeak' re-directs to this article. EvaXephon 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've done a bit of trawling about and turned up the following:

  1. moonspeak - Another way of saying Japanese. It is taken from Turn-A-Gundam, in which the Moon has it's own race of people. "I can't tell wtf is going on in this doujin becuase I don't understand moonspeak" (source)
  2. Neologasm says it's a drift from "moon language" - Any text in a script that the speaker is not familiar with. Often used on 4chan to describe the Japanese language. "Nine pages of crazy moon language later, I have not found anything by the same artist." (source (same))

FWIW, if anyone wants to do anything with it. --RJCraig 08:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

With only 519 Ghits, this probably isn't worth a full entry, eh. --RJCraig 08:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] no politeness level

I'll delete the following paragraphs in the current edition as of 2007-01-22 19:58 because they are wrong.

Broadly speaking, there are three main politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form (futsūgo 普通語), the simple polite form (teineigo 丁寧語) and the advanced polite form (keigo 敬語).

They are not levels; Japanese has addressee honorifics and referent honorifics, and they are independent. The former is called teineigo (丁寧語) or polite forms. The latter is called sonkeigo (尊敬語) or honorific/respectful forms for positive out-group referent honorifics, and kenjōgo (謙譲語) or humble forms for negative in-group referent honorifics.

ex. taberu (eat) > tabemasu (eat + addr.hon.)
meshiagaru (eat + pos.out.ref.hon.) > meshiagarimasu (eat + pos.out.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)
itadaku (eat + neg.in.ref.hon) > itadakimasu (eat + neg.in.ref.hon. + addr.hon.)

The plain form in Japanese is recognized by the shorter, dictionary form of verbs, and the da form of the copula. At the teinei level, verbs end with the helping verb -masu, and the copula desu is used. The advanced polite form, keigo, actually consists of two kinds of politeness: honorific language (sonkeigo 尊敬語) and humble (kenjōgo 謙譲語) language.

Again, they are not levels. Many keigo have dictionary forms, such as meshiagaru and itadaku.

Many researchers report[citation needed] that since the 1990s, the use of polite forms has become rarer. Needless to say, many older people disapprove of this trend. Young people usually receive extensive training in the "proper" use of polite language when they start to work for a company.

Referent honorifics, Sonkeigo and kenjōgo, are gradually disappearing, but addressee honorifics, teineigo, are commonly used even today. Young people might try improving their skills of referent honorifics before getting a job. - TAKASUGI Shinji 03:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you be able to copy-edit the information you took out with the information you have above, so that this information isn't completely gone from the page? While they might not be "politeness levels" they are important forms that are important features of the Japanese language. --Puellanivis 09:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Since the main page is Japanese honorifics, I don't think this page should contain everything. I show several sources below:
話者が、文の内容に関わらず聞き手に対して敬意を表するための表現を対者敬語といい、話者が文中の人物に対して敬意を表するための表現を素材敬語という。
Expressions the speaker uses, regardless of the content of the sentence, to show deference to the addressee are called taisha keigo (addressee honorifics), and ones to show deference to the referred person are called sozai keigo (referent honorifics).
- TAKASUGI Shinji 01:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minimal pair between ti and chi?

From the article:

... [T]he Japanese up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi], approximately chi listen (help·info); however, now /ti/ and /tɕi/ are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii [paatii] "party" and chi [tɕi] "ground."

I would prefer to see an example here where "ti" and "chi" form a minimal pair. Which is generally expected to make a full claim of them being different phonetic elements. Namely, if saying [ti] instead of [tɕi], or vice-versa, does not create a distinct new word, then the two remain phonologically allophones of each other. I am aware of the difference in writing "ti" when it occurs in foreign loan words: "チィ" but this often doesn't mean that the sound itself has become phonologically different. An example, is the letter combonation in Latin: "ph", for words borrowed from Greek words, which used the "Φ" (phi) character which represented a [pʰ], an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, at the time of borrowing the word. Never-the-less this sound did not become phonologically different from [f], and Latin by consensus never considered them as different sounds. (I'm certain there were people who were language-source purists, who insisted on pronouncing it "correctly", but that is always at the risk of those using the borrowed word not understanding you.)

So, simply, I would hope that someone could find a minimal pair between these two sounds, otherwise it's a fairly uninteresting, and non-notable statement of Japanese borrowing a sound from a language only for loan words. --Puellanivis 22:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree that the difference is probably not yet fully phonemicized. Ti(i) is still heavily marked by the limitation of its occurrence to loanwords. If we ignore this, though, tii, "tea" or "T" (name of the letter), are almost minimal pairs with chi, "blood" or "ground".
(I'm also interested in your comments about Latin f and ph. I'm not conversant with the orthographic/historical details; is there evidence (Graffiti? Texts by less literate/exacting authors?) supporting non-differentiation among most/common speakers? Also, do you know when the aspirated stop became a fricative in Greek?) --RJCraig 07:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The only minimal pair of [ti] and [ʨi] I can think of now is コーティング (< coating) and コーチング (< coaching). However, /t/ and /c/ (or /ʦ/) are different anyway as in た [ta] /ta/, つぁ [ʦa] /ca/, and ちゃ [ʨa] /cja/. The pair [ti] and [ʨi] can be analysed as /ti/ and /ci/ respectively. - TAKASUGI Shinji 05:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese in Canada

I've edited the article under "Geographical Distribution" to include Vancouver, Canada. Although the current Japanese community is far less compared to in the 1930s, there are still quite a bit of Japanese residents here and tourists visit here frequently because of many Japanese-speaking tours, shops and such. I myself spoke Japanese as my primary language until I learned English, having lived in Japan.

If anyone objects, please comment below.

-Edwin- 06:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

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