Talk:Japanese language

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Old discussions: Talk:Japanese language/archive001

Contents 1 I query the statistics 2 Classification 2.1 Pronouns 2.2 Retroflex sounds and Tamil 3 Learning Japanese? 4 My revert... 5 Sounds 6 Linguistic Relations 7 Adjectives 8 Pronouns 9 sentence not clear 10 Why kawa becomes gawa? 11 Writing system 12 Classification 13 Infobox 14 Should there even be a "Learning Japanese" part? 15 Japanese and cases 16 Official lanaguage or no? 17 External links 18 I need help 19 Externals links, part II 20 Japanese in Paraguay 21 Japanese in North Korea? 22 Need help translating to Japanese online, fast! 23 A recent change at Ergative-absolutive language 24 Between the noun and adjective in Japanese 25 On the subject of the "Moonspeak" Redirect... 26 no politeness level 27 Minimal pair between ti and chi? 28 Japanese in Canada 29 Japonic and Altaic 30 The double negative 31 Palau? 32 Men's Japanese vs. Women's Japanese 33 Question! 34 Ideographic? 35 Translation 36 Statistics for Studying Japanese in Japan 37 Disputed 37.1 Undue weight 38 The false map 39 Need kanji/hiragana 40 Translate 41 Recommended books for learning Japanese? 42 Need romaji at Kunitachi College of Music 43 Anata 44 Verb endings 45 Sentence Structure 46 Kesen language 47 Correction 47.1 The Baekje Korean settlers of Japan and their Koreo-Japanese descendants, who formed the ruling classes of Japan 48 Two templates 49 Communicating necessity?

[edit] I query the statistics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/japanese.shtml is a link stating that the number of Japanese speakers in the UK is approximately ~50,000 - the list given appears to be in numerical order. Surely the UK should hence feature in it? 83.104.170.115 19:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[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 (general)
• Boku- me (usually male)

—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)

These pronouns' usages are guided by the ordinary considerations of humble/honorific and polite/plain modes of speech in Japanese. Thus all may be used by or about members of either gender. To the above we can add the brusque omae (you) and ore (I), generally used by men, about men in impolite speech (although occasionally also used by women in rural areas).Vendrov 09:13, 31 May 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)

From the native speakers I know, the consonants ra, re, and ro do in fact begin with a retroflex "r". Vendrov 08:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Learning Japanese?

Wikipedia, sure Japanese language is spoken by 140 million people?? The correct number probably around 126-130 million Japanese or non- Japanese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bostonprofessor (talk • contribs) 23:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

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)

I agree. I am interested in learning the language, but do not have the time or effort to look up any literary works, so maybe instead listl inks to any websites proferring itself towards teaching Japanese User:cpettijohn93 —Preceding comment was added at 17:46, 28 February 2008 (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)

I am not a professional linguist, but I am half-Japanese and I am fluent in several languages, not only Japanese and English. I have noticed that Yamato words bear a striking similarity to Polynesian words and Japanese grammar is very similar to Korean. Phonologically, Korean is difficult for me, but Maori and Hawaiian are practically identical. Maori even has the exact same 'r' sound as Japanese, which I have only heard on Pacific islands, never in Asia. A couple of words examples that show a relationship:

Hawaiian	Maori	Japanese
Haile mai/come to me	Haire mai/come to me	Haire/Get inside; Mairu/come
Wahine, -hine -female	wahine/woman	Hina/girl -hime/princess
Kane/man	Tane, ta/man	ka/man

Another, what I think is a significant thread, is the preference for the vowel over the consonant. In Indo-European languages, the consonant is conserved over the vowel. Thus, Proto-IE is often written as strings of vowel-less consonants, e.g., 'ptr' for 'father.' In Pacific languages, where the vowel is more important, this would be absurd. In my family we often say 'shito' instead of 'hito' and 'shitenno' instead of 'shiteiruno' and are never misunderstood. So it doesn't surprise me that in Maori, 'wh' can represent an 'f' or 'h' sound. Furthermore, speakers of European languages think it's strange that in Japanese - and in Polynesian languages - you can change the meaning of a word by elongating a vowel. More importantly is the fact that in Polynesian languages and Japanese, a syllable always ends with a vowel. I don't know of any other language group where this is true, including Altaic languages.

There are a lot of other cultural similarities that put Japan squarely in the Pacific Rim too, such as eating raw fish, clothing, music based on drumbeats (the koto is a Chinese instrument but taiko are distinctly Japanese), social structure, and wearing tattoos, which later was discouraged, again because of Chinese influence, but never died off completely.

I believe that cultural prejudices have prevented people from seeing these obvious characteristics. It's always the lower classes and ethnic groups that preserve heritage, but are also repugned by the elites who do the studies. The upper classes seek foreign influences and set themselves apart by means of their acquired exoticisms. Regardless, the evidence remains. It is my adamant belief that Japanese is a patois of Korean grammar and Proto-Polynesian vocabulary upon which Chinese has been superimposed. 76.102.114.88 23:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)Steve

I'm not a linguist either, and there may indeed be a connection (I've heard it suggested before), but your list of cognates is not nearly long enough to be convincing. I can easily come up with that many false cognates with English (そう/so, 坊や/boy, 輪/ring, おこる/occur, 斬るビル). Also, I think the abbreviation 'shitenno' is extremely common and needs to be treated as a special case, like 'dunno' in English. I don't think you'd be immediately understood if you said, I dunno, 'shinasu' instead of 'shimasu'. Consonants are important. The other example interests me. Do you really say 'shito' or does it just sound close to 'shito'? The 'hi' in 'hito' has always sounded very similar to 'shi' to me. -- BenRG 21:12, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The hi in hito(人), hitotsu(一つ), and others is not the bi-dental fricative š but rather something more like an air fricative. It's all in mouth/tongue position when aspirating the h that makes it sound close to ši. I would almost say that š doesn't even exist in Japanese when listening to people utter 知っている; and many Japanese pronounce šin(心) almost like /sin/. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.102.235.23 (talk) 22:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ben, if you read what I wrote more carefully, I stated that it wasn't even a list, let alone an exhaustive compendium of "cognates." Just a few examples. You can't be serious when you compare okoru to occur. Is that really anything like hine and hina? You are comparing roman letters, not actual sounds. Haire in Maori is indistinguishable from Haire in Japanese. If you are not native to the Pacific I doubt you would be able to say it at all without careful practice. As far as the consonant-vowel think goes, again, you are confusing the forest for the trees. The idea is that in an overall linguistic sense, where there are shifts and drifts in pronunciation, they tend to happen in the consonants, e.g., hi to shi. If you go from Hokkaido to Okinawa, you will hear hundreds of different accents and variations in speech patterns. Old people pronounce words differently than young people, etc. Those changes usually - but not always - happen on the consonant, not the vowel. Thus, whether you are in Hokkaido, Shikoku, Aotearoa or the Big Island, there are 5-6 vowels and they are all pronounced more or less the same, and they are spoken and heard individually even when juxtaposed (e.g., ookii is not oki with a Southern drawl) but they are not pronounced separately like the a in the Tagalog word 'maaari'. In European languages, the changes tend to happen to the vowel. Does that mean you can't hear the difference between cat and caught? No, but it means, you attribute less importance to vowel sounds when making an alteration, such that you barely notice between "warsh" and "wash" or why you still understand when a Bostonian says he'll pock the ca (park the car). I think you should make an effort to understand what someone is saying before criticizing.

Very good point. Arabic [a western, non-pacific language], for instance, depends heavily upon consonants instead of vowels. A group of related words (e.g. desk, book, scribe, write) revolves around the consonants (in this case ktb), with shades of meaning provided by vowels (of which the short ones aren't even written). Also, a research of the history of the English language quickly reveals the many vowel shifts there have been in English (the Great Vowel Shift, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, among others). Vowels do receive the butt end of linguistic change in western languages. 0nlyth3truth 03:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Can we get around to covering the possible relationships between Japanese and the Polynesian languages? Hasn't someone studied and published about this? Badagnani (talk) 05:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I had read about the supposed relation of Japanese and Korean languages to Altaic group. As I recall the theory is supported by some Japanese linguists(I don't know about Koreans). Does anybody know about this topic better, what about evidence for this theory. 81.214.36.116 (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2008 (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.

" Perhaps this is a bit strange, but as an outsider I always noticed that the Korean language took alot 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.???"

1) Korean Peninsula: Like it or not without Korean peninsula. ( Yayoi or Ainu). It was Korean farmers that settled and intermarried with native tribe made the people and culture as modern day Japan as today. ( Blood flow, Human flow, and culture flow) Japan did received directly from Korean Peninsula.

2) Japanese Emperor: He himself announced his ancestors came from Baekje (Kudara) Kingdom.

3) Korean and Japanese grammar: Korean and Japanese grammar and language intonation is same or similiar. Is this because Chinese language or Chinese cultural influence??? I don't think so.

4) Lotte Company: Founder of this food company is Korean. Lotte company is located in Korea and Japan.

5) Kyokushinkai Karate: Founder of strongest Karate in Japan was Korean. Mas Oyama. ( Choi Bai dal)

6) The second richest person in Japan is Korean. Masayoshi Son the founder (Soft Bank company). Is this all Chinese or Japanese influence over Korea???) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 08:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

So Japan or China never copied from Koreans or Korean culture. Japan slap a Japanese name on it, and they never enjoyed payed off???? GIVE ME A BREAK GUYS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 09:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[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? ;-) Tomer^talk 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.

I'm taking the liberty of adding rendaku to the "See also" section since, in my experience, this is an extremely common question. In the future, can someone add a section about this to the article since it is an important aspect of speaking the language fluently? In the interests of keeping the article focused, I am thinking it would consist of a paragraph worth of explanation and a link to the main article for the rest; we don't need things such as "Lyman's Law" in this article. 67.174.117.133 10:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this is not uniform throughout Japan. In general, Kansai tends to get rid of the vocalizations (the dakuten). On Lake Biwa, there is a train station called Katata (with no dakuten in the hiragana on the station sign). In Kanto, this train station would be called Katada. Also, there is the place name Chigusa, which in Kansai is pronounced Chikusa. Westwind273 05:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[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.

---

The image of a table showing hiragana and katakana made a mistake - the i sound is represented as a hiragana twice（い）, without its katakana equivalent （イ）. Someone should fix that, or put up a new one. Ozarker 12:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[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)

Er no. No 'how-to' please. Keep the marketing out of the word 'encyclopedia'.192.206.151.130 (talk) 16:26, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It is very easy to learn japanese if you only want to speak and listen, with some talent it can be done in six months if you practice intensively (and preferrably live on-site). Then you learn may wish to learn how to read and write all of their four alphabetic systems and that will take many years to become near-perfect. I am pretty sure the early 1990s collapse of japanese economy was caused by lack of writing system reform. It simply bogs their minds, so they have no brain waves left to invent. If they abolished symbols and converted to romanji their goverment-sponsored hyper-ambitious 5th generation computer project would have succeeded and we would have true AI by now. 82.131.210.162 (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

As much as I'd like to ignore you as a troll, that would be doing a disservice to other readers who might believe you. 1) While you can learn the spoken language separately from the written language, it is much easier and more effective to learn them together, as they reinforce each other. 2) The collapse of the bubble had nothing to do with language reform. I dare you to find one reputable source that claims a link. 3) Ditching kanji for rōmaji is the banner agenda of people who don't actually know much about the Japanese language (usually those who dropped out of Japanese in college because it was "too hard"). Anyone with the least bit of proficiency in the native writing system (i.e. all Japanese people) find Japanese-in-rōmaji much more difficult to read. 4) The 5th generation computer project failed because it had unrealistic goals, not because the researchers' minds were "bogged down with kanji".

In short, you are the worst kind of troll: Someone grossly misinformed, but with enough basic knowledge to make a plausible-sounding argument to those who don't know better. Please refrain from spreading such BS in the future. -Amake (talk) 23:14, 18 December 2007 (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:

• Federación de Asociaciones Japonesas del Paraguay - Escuelas Japonesas (Federation of Japanese Associations of Paraguay - Japanese Schools). This site is both in Spanish and in Japanese. Bepp 21:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

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:

• 敬語

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).

• 初級日本語教育と待遇表現
• 敬語の分類

- 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)

Yeah, I think [ti] is absent from native Japanese words, only found in recent loanwords. In native speech, it would probably have been considered an allophone of [ʨi]. That is why katakana ティ and ティー are occasionally encountered, but hiragana てぃ and てぃい/てぃぃ are, to my knowledge, never encountered. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

てぃ is sometimes used for dialects and Okinawan languages. Try googling てぃーだ or てぃだ, which means the sun in Okinawan. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:04, 28 January 2008 (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)

[edit] Japonic and Altaic

theres a big similarities between those languages something would be change i think.

look here: Ainu is currently considered a language isolate with no known relation to other languages. It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a cover term for several isolates and small language families believed to have been present in Siberia prior to the arrival of Turkic and Tungusic speakers; it is not a proper language family. Most linguists believe the shared vocabulary between Ainu and Nivkh (spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing; there are also loanwords both from Ainu to Japanese and Japanese to Ainu. In recent years, the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama and others have tried to link it by both vocabulary and cultural comparisons to the Austronesian languages. Alexander Vovin (1993) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with Austroasiatic; he regards this hypothesis as preliminary. More recently, Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002) has argued that Ainu belongs to the “Eurasiatic languages”; this hypothesis remains highly controversial. Evidence from studies of the genetics of Ainu and other world populations tend to hint that the Ainu people, and therefore also their language, may have some distant connection to Japanese, Koreans, or Turkic peoples of Central Asia, but it is clear from all forms of inquiry that the Ainu people and language have a very long history of isolation and independent development. They do appear, however, to have experienced some intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history; it is not known to what extent this might have affected the Ainu language.

[edit] The double negative

Okay, I don't get the double negative. How does it work? If you put two negatives in a Japanese sentence does it become negative? --71.107.199.113 06:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

My Japanese is barely rudimentary, but I'd think using two negated words in a sentence is awkward. Anyway, I'd interpret a sentence such as "Kare wa yokunai n janai." ("He isn't no good") as meaning "He isn't that bad", i.e. "He's good". 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If someone's willing to translate, Japanese Wikipedia has a short section here. Anyway, it still strikes me as awkward, since Japanese grammar contains very few ways of negating. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't get much of it, but it does mention the only grammatical double negatives I've so far studied in Japanese (i.e. not lexical negatives like zenzen or amari). These are the obligation constructions -nakereba naranai, -nai to ikenai, etc., which are really untranslatable:

Kuruma o tomenakereba naranai.

Kuruma o tomenai to ikenai.

both meaning "[You] must stop the car." through something like "If you do not stop the car that is not OK." They look like regular conditional sentences but they're basically units in common speech. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 14:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably the best thing to do in the early stages of learning the language is simply to remember that -nakereba naranai is used in situations where in English you would use "must" or "have to", etc. If your knowledge of the language is "barely rudimentary", you're not really in a position to say what is awkward and what isn't, are you? ;) Don't overthink it, just go with the flow!

But if you have to analyse it, Pablo's explanation is best IMO. Think of naranai (won't become) as "it won't do": "It won't do if you don't stop the car." That at least is the literal (original?) meaning, and of course quite a bit weaker than what it means in actual usage.

Kare wa yoku nai (n) ja nai = Kare wa yoku nai yo ne "He's not good, is he?" The speaker is soliciting the agreement of the hearer. Omnia cum grano salis! I am not a native. ;) --RJCraig 02:45, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I learnt it some years ago, at a basic level, but I've forgotten a lot, by now. Anyway, are "ja nai" and "yo ne" really equivalents? I'd always interpreted "yo" as an "affirmative", where you make your standpoint clear to the listener, so I'd interpret that sentence as "Kare wa yokunai yo, ne", ("He's definitely not good, isn't he?"), if an impression from a barely rudimentary learner would be interesting... 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

You can relate Naranai literally to American slang. Naranai is the negative of being or becoming, and in America we say if something (that is obligatory) isn't done then it "doesn't go" "doesn't fly" "doesn't sit well" "doesn't play" or even, more closely, it "isn't becoming!" Ikenai just means dame "no good" - interestingly this word only exists in its negative form as far as I know. As far as ne is concerned, just think of the "no" in English and French as in "He's no good, no?" Yo is simply an emphasis (verbal exclamation mark): "He's no good!, no?" Vendrov 08:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Isn't "ikenai" the negative form of "ikeru" (be able to go)? 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 19:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You are right: ikeru>ikenai. Ikenai really does translate as "it can't go" just as the English colloquialism. My ignorant mistake!Vendrov 23:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late to the party, but "ja nai" (or other negative forms) and "yo ne" can be said to be similar in meaning only when the negative makes a rhetorical question, as in "isn't it?" 「これ、すごくない？」「これ、すごいよね」. -Amake (talk) 02:26, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Palau?

The CIA report is untrustworthy, or at least, too rough in some cases. For example, it says in 'background of JAPAN', (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html)

In 1603, a Tokugawa shogunate (military dictatorship) ushered in a long period of isolation from foreign influence in order to secure its power. For 250 years this policy enabled Japan to enjoy stability and a flowering of its indigenous culture. Following the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854, Japan opened its ports and began to intensively modernize and industrialize.

Actuallly, "sakoku" policy started in 1616 on a small scale, completed in 1641. It was not a sudden change but a somewhat gradual process. And even under the sakoku policy some ports were always opened, and Japan was continuously trading under the shogun's control with four countries — the Netherlands, China, Korea and Ryukyuu — and with Ainu people. So the above remark is rather lacking for the accuracy in scholarly standpoint, even if it is not wrong. Is such a report valid?

From a commonsense viewpoint, it's absurd that one of OFFICIAL languages of Angaur is Japanese, granting that there are some Japanese speakers in Palau.

I insist that the descriptions about Palau should be deleted.
CutieNakky 00:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Men's Japanese vs. Women's Japanese

Sorry, there already is a wikipage for the Gender Differences in Spoken Japanese. My bad! Yanqui9 19:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question!

There's this jpg image of the list of Hiragana and Katakana characters in the article "Writing System". I saw two unfamiliar dymbols there ('wi' and 'we'). Are there words that REALLY use these symbols in Nihongo? Zxyggrhyn 13:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Not anymore. Those symbols are obsolete. You may still encounter them e.g. when someone's trying to make a text look old, or for effect. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ideographic?

Is the Japanese language considered ideographic, logographic, or neither? Apparantly, Chinese is logographic, which makes sense, as the Chinese characters are used exclusively. Japanese, on the other hand, uses kanji only to provide meaning, and never to indicate for tense, particles, etc... Does that make Japanese an ideographic language? I ask because an argument arose on a Japanese martial arts related article as to whether kanji should be called logograms or ideograms. Bradford44 03:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

First off, languages are not ideographic, writing systems are. A language is not its writing system. Different people will answer this question different ways. The answer I like best is that kanji are morphograms, that is, represent morphemes. Others will say they are logograms. The writing system is mixed (logo|morpho)grams and syllabic characters--not the only one like it. Mayan script and Egyptian hieroglyphics were similar. adamrice 14:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for the imprecise application of the terminology; I am not a linguist, only an enthusiast trying to learn more (but I appreciate the response - the reason I am asking is because I like being exact with terms). The ideogram article is very equivocal in most of its descriptions (perhaps that can't be helped) and it is difficult to get a clear understanding of the definition of the term. At first glance, it sounded like any writing system where shapes were used to convey meaning, rather than sound, was ideographic. Kanji seem to fit that definition. However, reading further, it appears that additionally the meaning of each "shape" must be able to be derived from the shape. Obviously, many or most kanji do not fit that portion of the definition, e.g., because some where assigned a meaning on the basis of their sound alone. Is this somewhat accurate, or am I still lost in the woods? What would be a pure ideographic language? Bradford44 15:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

the meaning of each "shape" must be able to be derived from the shape--I wouldn't say that. There are no perfectly self-contained, complete, and self-explanatory ideographic systems. The ideogram article mentions airport wayfinding symbols, but you'd never be able to put those together to form complete sentences. It also mentions Blissymbols, but again, these are not entirely self-explanatory. While it is possible to come up with reasonably self-explanatory symbols for everyday objects and even some actions, abstract concepts like "justice" would require arbitrary representations, and the grammar linking everything together would be another layer of arbitrariness. Kanji don't represent meaning instead of sound, they represent both--it's a distinctive aspect of the Chinese language that kanji (err, hanzi) map very tidily onto the sounds they represent, and reveal that the shapes are, at some level, derived from the sounds. I'm not a linguist either, btw. adamrice 15:54, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Can someone please translate this phrase: "Be yourself" into casual, neutral Japanese? (Consider that the "be" is imperative, yet not aggressive. Kikiluvscheese 03:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

How about "自分らしく生きよう。 / 自分らしく生きることです。" or "本当のあなたを大切に。" ? CutieNakky 04:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Could you please write each of those phrases in romaji? Thank you very much. Kikiluvscheese 01:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, with pleasure.

自分らしく生きよう。 Jibun rashiku ikiyō.

自分らしく生きることです。 Jibun rashiku ikiru kotodesu.

本当のあなたを大切に。 Hontō no anata o taisetsuni.

CutieNakky 02:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

What does each phrase literally mean in English? Without rearranging the words or anything. Thanks! Kikiluvscheese 04:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, sorry.., I think I had a misunderstanding about the phrase. Correct translation will be

• 落ち着いて。 Ochitsuite. Calm down. / Relax.
• 自然に振る舞えばいいよ。 Shizen-ni hurumaeba iiyo. It's good to behave naturally.
• いつものきみに戻って。 Itsumono kimini modotte. Get back to your usual self.

Is this right? CutieNakky 05:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

CutieNakky's original translations were general life advice (live in a way that reflects your true self), which might be what the OP was interested in. Word by word, jibun = "oneself", rashiku = "in a way resembling", ikiyō and ikiru kotodesu are forms of ikiru="live", hontō no="the true", anata="you", o taisetsuni="cherish", shizen-ni="naturally", furumaeba="if you behave", iiyo="it's good", itsumono="the usual", kimi="you", ni modotte="go back to". -- BenRG 11:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Related to this: Tom Hanks in Savign private Ryan tells Private Ryan with his dying breaath "earn this". This is beautifully rendered into japanese as "isshokenmei ikiteru you"- "live your best". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 (talk) 21:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics for Studying Japanese in Japan

"... more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003." It reads as if there is an oversight since 77k Chinese and 15k South Koreans already exceed 90k foreign students. Surely there are a several thousand students from other countries? My son is about to study in Japan and I was particularly interested in the number of native English speakers who study in Japan each year.Robertcurrey 05:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That is an extremely difficult question to answer. How do you count it? By the numbers on courses? On what courses? By results? The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is the Japanese government run exam. It is the only exam employers take seriously, except fro the JETRO exam. Level 1 is the highest level. This high level is adequate to as a foundation to study in Japanese a subject in a Japanese Univerity. But no more than this. In the UK, last year, 92 people passed this level. No more. In the whole world, 164,436. I passed this level 5 years ago and I still can only just follow news reports and can only just manage to read Japanese newspapers without effort. Anyway, the stats are here: http://www.jees.or.jp/jlpt/pdf/result_2006_5.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.241.105 (talk) 21:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed

This edit by CutieNakky is disputed. The source provided by CutieNakky herself says "Official Angaurian languages are Angaur, English and Japanese."--Endroit 21:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

If CutieNakky does not come up with any source which actually discredits the CIA Factbook, this edit needs to be reverted.--Endroit 21:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

For example..., please see these sites.

• http://www.palau.or.jp/islands/index.html#05 (Palau government's tourist board)

※「アンガウル州立自然公園」は日本のNPO法人（OWS）によって立案され、様々なプログラムを用意し、ネイチャーツアーを開催している。

(tentative translation)

The Angaur State Nature Park is managed by Japanese NPO OWS. OWS provides many programs and holds "nature tour".

• http://www.ows-npo.org/angaur/generalinfo.html (OWS)

言語 国語：パラオ語、公用語：英語。日本の統治時代の影響で流暢な日本語を話すご年配のパラオ人も。パラオ語になった日本語も多い。

(tentative translation)

LANGUAGE national language : Palauan language, official language : English

Due to the Japanese rule, there are also some old Palauan who speak fluent Japanese. Not a few Palauan words are borrowed from Japanese. CutieNakky 06:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I just phoned Palau Visitors Authority's Japanese office (03-3354-5353) and confirmed it. (http://www.palau.or.jp/contact/index.html) CutieNakky 06:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The more elegant solution would be to say something along the lines of that while Japanese was once recognised as an official language, there are no longer any native speakers living there (according to the 2005 census I saw quoted either on this page or a related page). This would be preferable to a "yes it is"/"no it isn't" revert war. It could be that the CIA source, for whatever reason, is out of date. --DrHacky 14:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

CutieNakky, don't show irrelevant sources, such as for the "Languages" (言語) of the "Republic of Palau" (パラオ共和国) in their "Travel Information" (渡航情報) page. We're discussing the "OFFICIAL LANGUAGES OF ANGAUR" ONLY here.... Not the whole country of Palau.

Please note that the official languages within Palau are different from state to state. Now there are multiple sources, which collaborate that Japanese is an official language in Angaur:

1. The Ethnologue database says in their "Languages of Palau" page: "National or official languages: Palauan (all states except Sonsorol, Tobi, Angaur), English, Sonsorol (in Sonsorol), Tobian (in Tobi), Japanese (in Angaur)."
2. CIA's World Factbook says in their "People" section of their "Palau" page: "Languages: Palauan 64.7% official in all islands except Sonsoral (Sonsoralese and English are official), Tobi (Tobi and English are official), and Angaur (Angaur, Japanese, and English are official), Filipino 13.5%, English 9.4%, Chinese 5.7%, Carolinian 1.5%, Japanese 1.5%, other Asian 2.3%, other languages 1.5% (2000 census)"
3. Palau-visit.com says: "Official Angaurian languages are Angaur, English and Japanese."

Perhaps, this is just "old information" being circulated, like some of you believe. However, our WP:V ("Verifiability") policy tells us to only put stuff that's verifiable. Please discuss what's verifiable for the State of Angaur (not Palau).--Endroit 16:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

1) Please remember that the staff of Palau Visitors Authority clearly said that Japanese is NOT the official language of Angaur. You can ask Palau office if you want (8:00～17:00, weekday, TEL ： +680-488-2793, E-mail ： pva@palaunet.com).

2) The Ethnologue database is untrustful. e.g. Its Japanese Family Trees is inaccurate.

3) Palau-visit.com has borrowed the information from CIA's factbook, or maybe vice versa. I mailed to CIA and asked to revise the factbook.

4) My source is on "Angaur State Nature Park" page, and OWS is working in Angaur island. If Japanese is official there, annotation will be appended just like in クレジット・カード(credit card), 交通(traffic), 服装(clothes) and 食事(eating) items. CutieNakky 17:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Items 2, 3, 4 are your original research, and violates WP:NOR. For item 1, you may add your find in the article as a source. In any case, don't just delete the info from Ethnologue and The World Factbook. Rather, try to write a passage which accurately describes the information out there based on WP:V.--Endroit 18:11, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, then...

See one of Kazuko Matsumoto's treatises "The Republic of Palau"(pdf). She is an assistant professor of the University of Tokyo. She stayed in Palau for about one year in 1997 and has been studying the use of language in Palau since then. She says,

• (Palauan) is currently the only national language of the country and is an official language alongside English.
• Before the Japanese era, Palauan was an oral language and had no written form. During the Japanese and US administrations, Japanese kana (katakana and hiragana) and the Roman alphabet were adopted as phonograms for Palauan. ... change is underway from kana to the Roman alphabet. The official ballot papers for the 1992, 1997 and 2004 elections in Koror, Melekeok and Angaur States, for example, used a dual writing system for the names of Palauan candidates (Roman alphabet and katakana), with Palauan and English bilingual instructions in the Roman alphabet. However, after the 2004 elections the Palau Election Commission approved a anew regulation eliminating the use of katakana on future election ballot papers.
  

(This use of katakana here is for the convenience of the old Palauan who were educated in Japanese. That doesn't illustrate the assertion that Japanese is one of the official languages in Angaur.)

• Japanese today functions as the low language and is used mostly by the elderly as a secret language, as a lingua franca among the elderly right across Micronesia, and in the tourist economic sector, where the majority of holidaymakers are from Japan.

She doesn't tell about "Angaur language".

CutieNakky 18:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Very impressive details, indeed, about the usage of various languages in Palau (including Japanese) and katakana. However, there still appears to be no mention of the status of "official languages of Angaur" (as opposed to the "official languages of Palau" and your original research).--Endroit 18:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

For reference,

Palau Visitors Authority (English)

Palau Visitors Authority (Japanese)

Palau National Communication Corporation

Constitution of the Republic of Palau q.v. XIII section 1 (National and Official Language)

The constituion says

The Palauan traditional languages shall be the national languages. Palauan and English shall be the official languages.

Japanese is not Palauan traditional language. Is it possible that Japanese is official? If so, isn't that unconstitutional?

CutieNakky 17:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

We are discussing this issue also in Japanese Wikipedia (ノート：アンガウル州　(Talk:Angaur)). We found Constitution of Hatohobei (Tobi) State[2] (Article XII section 1. The Hatohobei traditional language shall be the official language of the state). We are looking for the Angaur constitution (1982). CutieNakky 01:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Tobian language is one of the official languages of Tobi (Hatohobei). This is also confirmed by the Ethnologue, the CIA World Factbook, and Palau-visit.com. Note that this completely shreds CutieNakky's Original Research claiming that the offical languages of any one state must be exactly the same as those of Palau.--Endroit 15:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

In Japanese talk page, they found the Angaur Constitution, albeit translated in Japanese. It seems the constitution says the state language is Angaur language (the dialect of Palauan), and the official (working) languages are Palauan, English, and Japanese. It'd be even better if we could find the constitution in English. Kzaral 23:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Angaur language

Please also join discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Angaur language. There appears to be some sort of a stalemate there.

That discussion also deals with the reliability of The World Factbook. I believe we need to get down to the bottom of this. Is the CIA information completely inaccurate? Or is the Angaur state government truly declaring Japanese as an official language, despite very few speakers of that language?--Endroit 17:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The AfD on Angaur language has closed, and the decision was "keep".--Endroit 17:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Undue weight

The whole paragraph on Anguar is giving a fairly minor topic undue weight. I think it is a subpart of the statement "… and various Pacific islands during and before World War II, …" in the preceding paragraph. It certainly is possible that Ethnologue and CIA are wrong on this, but using a blog entry as a counter-argument doesn't fulfill the reliable source requirements. I am going to attempt to move it into the previous paragraph as a footnote that mentions the disputed information. Revert and discuss if this solution is not satisfactory. ✤ JonHarder ^talk 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The false map

I removed the geographic map on this article because it lies about the Japanese speaking community and has no reference. In South Korea, only a very small minority of people can speak Japanese such as young people interested in Japanese animation, or businessmen dealing with Japanese, or people who once studied or lived in Japan. Even during the Japanese occupation, it is told that a few elite people could speak Japanese language.

In other hand, Korean students begin to learn English as a second language from elementary school and learn other language as a second foreign language, equal to call third language. In fact, the system of learning third language stays quit in formality. Anyways, most of the third language classes are focusing German and French. There are a few high schools to have student learn Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese in South Korea. Furthermore, high school students taking Japanese class are relatively minor even compared to Chinese and Spanish classes, because of the fact that top rated universities don't have Japan-related majors. For the entrance exam like SAT, students who want to get an admission from prominent schools should prepare their third language, but a few universities give an opportunity to students to have taken Japanese as their third language to take that exam.

You can say there're discrimination for choosing third language in South Korea but almost the same thing is happening in Japan. Likewise, many famous universities or high schools in Japan don't teach Korean language due to historical matters and lack of needs. Generally, high school students concentrating on science and mathematics learn German, the others learn French in South Korea. But is South Korea categorized as German or French speaking community? No. Koreans consider English class is the 3rd most important class among classes in middle or high schools but is Korea also categorized as English speaking world? No. Please don't lie and distort a simple fact.

I also highly doubt that Canada and US are referred as countries with a sizable Japanese speaking community. Japanophiles and Japanese immigrants can speak Japanese like Korean-American can speak Korean. --Appletrees` —Preceding comment was added at 02:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need kanji/hiragana

Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese harp "kugo," at Traditional Japanese musical instruments. Badagnani 07:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Y Done Oda Mari (talk) 15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Need kanji/hiragana for the Japanese gong "kane," at Kane (musical instrument). Badagnani 07:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Y Done Oda Mari (talk) 15:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translate

Can someone translate this for me? ドラゴンの天使 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.23.160.93 (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

This page is for discussing changes to the article. Translation requests should be posted at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. I suppose it translates to "dragon angel", but I have no idea what that means. -- BenRG 03:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, lets not be straitjackets, people might not want be part of this community, don't you think? ドラゴンの天使 is Angel of the Dragon.--Jondel 03:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recommended books for learning Japanese?

Does anyone here have any recommendations for teach-yourself books for learning the Japanese language, both written and verbal? Thanks for any ideas. --RisingSunWiki 02:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This really isn't the right place to ask. Talkpages are for discussing work on the article, not the subject itself. — Gwalla | Talk 22:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need romaji at Kunitachi College of Music

Need romaji at Kunitachi College of Music. Badagnani (talk) 23:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anata

May I ask a native speaker of Nihongo something? I'm currently learning Japanese and have multiple books as references. I just came across a contradiction in two of my books. In Japanese for Dummies it says that you should avoid saying "Anata" because it sounds impolite. However, in the book Easy Japanese by Jack Seward, Anata is in parenthesis as "polite." Is it really just a preference thing or what? Quietmartialartist (talk) 18:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

"Anata" is polite, or I'd say it's a neutral word and think it as "you" or "vous" in French. Is it really "Anata" in the first book? The similar word "Anta" is impolite. I think Japanese pronouns will help you. Oda Mari (talk) 18:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Even in Japanese pronouns it says,

"As a general rule, the first person pronouns (e.g. watashi, 私) and second person pronouns (e.g. anata, 貴方) are avoided, especially in formal speech." I'm still confused. Quietmartialartist (talk) 21:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The "you" and "I" pronouns tend to be avoided because they're not necessary in Japanese, because context often tells you the subject without you having to spell it out. Putting "watashi" in everywhere like "I" in English makes for very stilted and strange-sounding Japanese. "Anata" in particular is problematic because it's stereotypically used by wives to refer to their husbands (instead of calling him by name they say "anata"). Basically your choice of pronoun can make huge implications about your relationship with the listener.

This is all just something you have to get used to. For now I'd suggest trying to wrap your head around leaving pronouns out except when absolutely necessary. (Example: 私はハンバーガーが好きです。私はピザも好きです。 You don't need the pronoun in the second sentence because we already know from the first sentence that the subject is "me".)

Finally, this is really not the forum for this kind of question. Talk pages are for talking about the article, not the subject of the article. -Amake (talk) 00:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"Anata" is the polite form of "you" in Japanese, but it considered impolite to overuse "anata" or other words meaning "you," because in Japanese, it is considered more polite to just use the person's name.--Sotaru (talk) 02:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so basically I should talk to everyone like I talk to my Korean grandmaster. I always refer to him as at least, "Sir." Quietmartialartist (talk) 02:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Instead of saying 'avoided', it's better to say 'I' and 'you' are 'omitted' a lot of cases in Japanese. For instance, when you ask someone's name, to whom you are talking, just 'お名前はなんですか?'/'what is name?' is enough. You don't have to say 'you'. It's obvious that you are asking his/her name. Believe me, I'm a native speaker, it's never impolite to use 'anata', especially when a non-native speaker uses it. Maybe sometimes it sounds unnatural. It's more important and you have to be more careful when you use a person's name. You have to use appropriate Japanese titles with a person's name. Just using the name to not-so-close persons like the English way is very impolite. Oda Mari (talk) 06:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Verb endings

Hello, I have another question. None of my books or the program I'm using (Rosetta Stone) explain when to use certain verbs at the ends of sentences. At least I think they're verbs: "Desu", "Imasu", and "Arimasu" for example. With other variations: "Imasen" and "Arimasen". I've concluded, I may be incorrect, that you say "Imasu" when stating and/or observing something. That is to say: "Kono booru wa akai imasu" Whereas you'd use "Desu" when referring to an action: "Kono otokonoko keru akai na booru desu" I'm sure my less-than-great aptitude is apparent, so feel free to correct any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. I just wanted to clear this up before I got too far on this train of thought and made it an incorrect habit. Quietmartialartist (talk) 16:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Your guesses are incorrect. "Desu" is the copula. "Imasu" is used with animate objects (people and animals). In your first sentence "akai imasu" should be "akai desu". In the second sentence the "na" shouldn't be there, and if you're trying to say "this boy kicks a red ball" then the main verb is "keru" and it should come after the subject and object, not between them. I think you're jumping way ahead of yourself here. Any language tutorial that aspires to be more than a glorified phrasebook is eventually going to explain all of these things. The current fashion in language instruction seems to be to jump right in with useful phrases whose grammatical structure isn't explained until later. I don't advise you to try to guess at the grammar since it's way too easy to get it wrong. If you can't help yourself, you should probably find a different tutorial that's structured in a way that's more useful to you. -- BenRG (talk) 17:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sentence Structure

I find the section on sentence order misleading, perhaps to the point of being incorrect. Japanese sentences beyond the world of Beginner Japanese classes have no inherent order, with the stipulation that verbs come last (and again, there's a common exception). 'Steve drives car' and 'Car drives Steve' mean different things in English, while 'Suchiibu ha kuruma wo unten suru' and 'Kuruma wo Suchiibu ha unten suru' mean the same thing in Japanese. The phrase "basic word order" implies that a grammatically correct word order exists. In Japanese, "word order" is at best a convention; particles remove the need for it. The best confirming source I can think of out-of-hand is Tae Kim, but I'm pretty sure (Subject Object Verb) is not the word order of Japanese. Is there agreement? Should we remove or rephrase? Estemi (talk) 06:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Given lack of comment, I've gone ahead and rephrased the section opening (and may continue to make further changes). I've studied Japanese grammar a good amount for someone never channeled through the Japanese education system, but if anyone more knowledgable has objections, please voice them. Estemi (talk) 14:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kesen language

Can anyone please take a look at the article Kesen language?

It looks a little weird to me. I explained my concerns at the talk page there.

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Correction

Before the 5th century, when the Korean scholar Wang In introduced writing to the Japanese, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. The Baekje Korean settlers of Japan and their Koreo-Japanese descendants, who formed the ruling classes of Japan, used the Chinese writing script along with many other aspects of the Culture of Korea and Chinese culture.

It corrected it.

Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. ^[1] A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent the letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. This is the first document of a Japanese history. After ruining Baekje, Japan invited the scholar from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave the official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/袁晋卿) , and spread a Chinese character from the 7th century to the 8th century. --Princesunta (talk) 11:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Here you go again, 2channel meat/sock drama. You're speaking like User:Azukimonaka/User:Opp2/User:Nightshadow28. You alter the same content with your "special" English to erase "Korean" in the sentences. "By way of Baekje" and "After ruining Baekje", etc are not right English. Japan ruined Baekje? Who said that? I'm gonna revert yours to the last one. Besides, you better find your citation to be verified via web in order for others to check out the contents. --Appletrees (talk) 12:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe that any similarity in language is due to machine translation. For example this machine translator translates "Baekje破滅後に、" to "After ruining Baekje", whereas a more accurate translation would have been "After Baekje was ruined". In general, Japanese sentence construct allows for omission of the subject altogether, which is a very common thing in that language. When the subject is missing in the original sentence (or phrase), machine translators often insert the word "it". In this case, the machine translator appears to have chosen "Japan" to be the subject.

Also neither versions of the text (in this revert war) appears to cite a source. Please cite reliable source(s) per WP:V. And "Focus on content" per WP:DR.--Endroit (talk) 15:46, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by way of Baekje before the 5th century. ^{[citation needed]} A Japanese emperor Yūryaku sent a letter to a Chinese emperor Liu Song in 478. ^[2] This is supposed to be the first document of a Japanese history. After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China and studied Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to the Chinese scholar (続守言/薩弘格/^[3][4]袁晋卿^[5]) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.

Thank you. --Princesunta (talk) 04:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Baekje Korean settlers of Japan and their Koreo-Japanese descendants, who formed the ruling classes of Japan

Please disclose evidence and the source. --210.168.215.11 (talk) 05:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Two templates

Template:Hiragana and Template:Katakana seem pretty useless to me: typing in the text with an IME is faster and more effective. Should the templates be nominated for deletion? (212.247.11.156 (talk) 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC))

This probably isn't the best place to ask that question. This is for discussing edits to the Japanese language article. Try Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles), perhaps, or the talkpages for those templates.. — Gwalla | Talk 06:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Communicating necessity?

The section on official status contains the following sentence: "This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration … for communicating necessity." I take it that this means "to meet the needs of communication" and not "to communicate a need." If no one objects in the next few days, I'll make the change. Mrrhum (talk) 01:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)