History UsefulNotes / JapaneseLanguage

->'''''English sentence:''' Jane went to the school.''
->'''''Same Sentence In Japanese:''' School Jane To Went Monkey Apple Carburetor.''
-->--''[[http://www.stmoroky.com/links/sywtlj.htm So You Want To Learn Japanese]]''

The Japanese language (日本語 Nihon-go) is considered an extremely ''complicated'' language to an English speaker's ear. While certain concepts are simplified (very few real plurals, for instance), the grammar is switched around, and both the words and wording are often grounded in concepts that are either different or entirely external to the English language. And let's not even ''start'' getting into things like etiquette and connotation. Unfortunately, some of those concepts are required to understand the full depth of the original script in Japanese-language programming. Such issues are why translators and fansubbers have a "rough" and "not-often appreciated" job on their hands.

* UsefulNotes/AnimeFanSpeak

* UsefulNotes/VisualNovelFanspeak

* As in many cultures, it is widely believed in Japan that you don't have direct knowledge of what other people are really thinking and feeling (and it's very presumptuous to assume otherwise). Correspondingly, it's uncommon to describe other people's thoughts directly, such as "He likes ice cream" or "She's angry". It's far more common to say "I heard that he likes ice cream" or "It seems like/It appears to be the case that she is angry" or "She is showing signs of wanting to go to the park." It is important to distinguish between information you know firsthand and information you've heard from another source.

* Trailing off at the end of a sentence and not saying something when the listener should understand it, or [[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-apo2.htm aposiopesis]], is extremely common in (spoken) Japanese, especially following the conjunction "soshite" (which loosely means "and then").

Politeness is most commonly indicated with the form of the end of a sentence. The plain form of a verb is used for casual speech, usually among close associates (friends, co-workers, etc.). The polite form is used in more formal social situations, but not, for example, in journalistic and academic writing, hence illustrating the difference between politeness and formality. Some words and grammar constructions have an even-higher level of politeness. Keigo is usually the first form of the Japanese language taught to foreigners, primarily to avoid offending native-speakers.

* In Japanese, pitch accent can alter the meaning of the word. ''Ame'', for example, can mean either rain or (hard) candy, depending on which syllable takes the higher pitch. However, the Kanto regional accent (the Tokyo accent) uses different pitch-accent than the KansaiRegionalAccent. Context is (usually) the important key here. However, [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels not having a good grasp of the pitch system won't lead to a faux pas - 'it's raining candy outside']][[note]]incidentally, just saying "it's raining" in Japanese would sound odd, along the lines of "there's rain outside" in English - technically true, but eyebrow-raising[[/note]] is a highly unlikely phrase in real life, after all.

* KansaiRegionalAccent

* TohokuRegionalAccent

The Japanese language (日本語 Nihon-go) is considered an extremely ''complicated'' language to an English speaker's ear. While certain concepts are simplified (very few real plurals, for instance), the grammar is switched around, and both the words and wording are often grounded in concepts that are either different or entirely external to the English language. And let's not even ''start'' getting into things like [[{{Keigo}} etiquette and connotation]]. Unfortunately, some of those concepts are required to understand the full depth of the original script in Japanese-language programming. Such issues are why translators and fansubbers have a "rough" and "not-often appreciated" job on their hands.

* {{Keigo}}: In point of fact, levels of courtesy, politeness, and social rank are part of the language in almost all aspects of speaking and writing.

* Japanese ''adjectives'' ([[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} which The Other Wiki]] is ''very'' hesitant to even call them that) vary fundamentally in syntax and inflection depending on what type of adjective it is. There are three basic types of these.

The Japonic language family is traditionally considered independent although there were attempts to connect it Korean due to their grammatical similarities by placing both in the hypothetical "Altaic family" - this has been largely discredited as it is believed the languages only developed similarities as a result of areal features known as a "sprachbund" rather sharing a common ancestor. Other members of the proposed "Altaic" family include Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and sometimes Ainuic.

** Note that some words that do literally translate to cuss words, for example "kuso," which literally means "shit", don't carry the same negative social baggage as they do in the US or the UK. In fact, anime aimed at children may say "kuso," "chikushou" or "shimatta" (which tends to be translated as "dammit"). The only words that Japanese publications ''must'' bleep out are related to genitalia.
* Japanese has a good bit of reduplication; there's even a character used to indicate repetition of the previous kanji, known as the "Dōnojiten" (々). As such, you end up with words like 時々 "tokidoki" (sometimes, "time-time"), 黙々 "mokumoku" (mute, "silence-silence"), 中々 "nakanaka" (rather), 次々 "tsugitsugi" (one after another, "next-next"), or 我々 [[UsefulNotes/JapanesePronouns "wareware"]] (we, "I-I").

* UsefulNotes/JapaneseStockPhrases

The Japonic language family is traditionally considered independent although there were attempts to connect it Korean due to their grammatical similarities by placing both in the hypothetical "Altaic family" - this has been largely discredited as it is believed the languages only developed similarities as a result of areal features known as a "sprachbund" rather sharing a common ancestor. Other members of the proposed "Altaic" family include Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and sometimes Ainu.

The following is a general idea of how the sprachbund formed:
* It has been long established that Turkic people exerted massive influence on Mongolic people for centuries due to their geographical proximity hence the Mongolic languages resembling Turkic ones in many ways
* The Tungusic people were in frequent contact with both Tungusic and Mongolic people which in turn influenced their languages.
* The Koreanic languages are believed to have an urheimat or linguistic origin in Manchuria and they were gradually pushed out by Tungusic people. This influenced the Koreanic languages to display traits in common with the already Mongolic- and Turkic-influenced Tungusic languages.
* The Koreanic people settled on what would become the Korean peninsula where the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people already lived and spoke what is called by linguists the 'Peninsular Japonic' languages. The Koreanic and Japonic languages are believed to have influenced each other during this time and this influence was strongest in the southern tip of the Korean peninsula as Japonic derived place names can be found in historical records.
* The movement of Korenaic people into their homelands forced the Yayoi to head to the Japanese archipelago which itself was already settled by the Jomon people.
* The Yayoi who moved to Japan gradually intermarried with Jomon to form the modern Japanese populations of the Ryukuans and Yamato although the Ryukuans display higher amounts of Jomon ancestry than the Yamato. The Ainu and Emishi are believed to have primarily descended from the Jomon although the Ainu had mixed with people of the Okhotsk culture (who were possibly Nivkhs) while the Emishi gradually died out.

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component and many anthropologists have frequently noted that the Japanese people have more physically in common with Southeast Asians populations than most other Northeast Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do. The Southeast Asian similarities may be from the Jomon people or the assimilation of Austronesian people such as the Hayato who used to live on Japan. No one knows where the Japonic languages originated from although the popular theory is that they originated near the Yangtze River before heading to the Korean peninsula and eventually settling on the Japanese archipelago.

* Japanese has a good bit of reduplication; there's even a character used to indicate repetition of the previous kanji (々). As such, you end up with words like 時々 "tokidoki" (sometimes, "time-time"), 黙々 "mokumoku" (mute, "silence-silence"), 中々 "nakanaka" (rather), 次々 "tsugitsugi" (one after another, "next-next"), or 我々 [[UsefulNotes/JapanesePronouns "wareware"]] (we, "I-I").

* The Tungusic people were in frequent contact with both Tungusic and Mongolic people which in turn influenced their language.
* The Koreanic language is believed to have an urheimat or linguistic origin in Manchuria and they were gradually pushed out by Tungusic people influenced their languages to display traits in common with the already Mongolic- and Turkic-influenced Tungusic languages.
* The Koreanic people settled on what would become the Korean peninsula where the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people already lived and this forced the Yayoi to head to the Japanese archipelago which itself was already settled by the Jomon people. The Koreanic and Japonic languages are believed to have influenced each other during this time and this influence was strongest in the southern tip of the Korean peninsula as Japonic derived place names can be found in historical records.

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component which means the Japanese people have more genetically in common with Southeast Asians populations than most other East Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do. The Southeast Asian similarities may be from the Jomon people or the assimilation of Austronesian people such as the Hayato who used to live on Japan. No one knows where the Japonic languages originated from although the popular theory is that they originated near the Yangtze river of Eastern China's Jiangsu province before heading to the Korean peninsula and eventually settling on the Japanese archipelago. Jiangsu is geographically a part of Southern China which was dominated by numerous languages before they were pushed out by the Han Chinese (who originated from Northern china) into what is modern-day Southeast Asia.

The Japonic language family is traditionally considered independent although there were attempts to connect it Korean due to their grammatical similarities by placing both in the hypothetical "Altaic family" - this has been largely discredited as it is believed the languages only developed similarities as a result of areal features known as a "sparchbund" rather sharing a common ancestor. Other members of the proposed "Altaic" family include Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and sometimes Ainu.

To get a general idea of how this sprachbund formed:

* The Koreanic language is believed to have an urheimat or linguistic origin in Manchuria and they were gradually pushed out by Tungusic people from further north which influenced their languages to display traits in common with the already Mongolic- and Turkic-influenced Tungusic languages.

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component which means the Japanese people have more genetically in common with Southeast Asians populations than most other East Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do. The Southeast Asian similarities may be from the Jomon people or the assimilation of Austronesian people such as the Hayato who used to live on Japan. No one knows where the Japonic languages originated from although the popular theory is that they originated near the Yangtze river of Eastern China's Jiangsu province before heading to the Korean peninsula and eventually settling on the Japanese archipelago. Jiangsu is geographically a part of Southern China which was dominated by numerous languages before they were pushed out by the Han Chinese (who originated from Northern china) into what modern-say Southeast Asia.

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component which means the Japanese people have more genetically in common with Southeast Asians populations than most other East Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do. The Southeast Asian similarities may be from the Jomon people or the assimilation of Austronesian people such as the Hayato who used to live on Japan. No one knows where the Japonic languages originated from although the popular theory is that they originated near the Yangtze river of Eastern China's Jiangsu province before heading to the Korean peninsula and eventually settling on the Japanese archipelago. Jiangsu is geographically a part of Southern China which was dominated by numerous languages before they were pushed out by the Han Chinese who originated from northern China into what modern-say Southeast Asia.

* The Koreanic people settled on what would become the Korean peninsula where the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people already lived and this forced the Yayoi to head to the Japanese archipelago which itself was already settled by the Jomon people. The Koreanic and Japonic languages are believed to have influenced each other during this time and this influence was strongest in the southern tip of the Korean peninsula as Japonic derived place names can still be found in some regions of South Korea.

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component which means the Japanese people have more genetically in common with Southeast Asians populations than most other East Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do. The Southeast Asian similarities may be from the Jomon people or the assimilation of Austronesian people such as the Hayato who used to live on Japan. No one knows where the Japonic languages originated from although the popular theory is that they originated near the Yangtze river of Eastern China's Jiangsu province before heading to the Korean peninsula before eventually settling on the Japanese archipelago.

The Japanese language is a part of the Japonic family which includes the divergent Hachijō dialects (sometimes considered a separate language) and the Ryukyuan languages. The language family is traditionally considered independent although there were attempts to connect it Korean due to their grammatical similarities by placing both in the hypothetical "Altaic family" - this has been largely discredited as it is believed the languages only developed similarities as a result of areal features rather sharing a common ancestor. Some linguists have proposed that Japanese was related to the now extinct Gaya language from the Korean peninsula (which may have been Japonic instead of Koreanic like Baekje, Silla or Goguryeo were), Ainu (Ainu is generally considered a Paleo-Siberian language like Korean and the similarities are more likely due to the influence the dominant Yamato exerted on the Ainu), Sino-Tibetan (Japanese made some phonological shifts because of Chinese but the two are seen as unrelated in mainstream linguistics), and even Dravidian (as an extension of the Dravido-Korean hypothesis).

Newer research indicates that the Japanese language may actually be Southeast Asian in origin or a creole of a Northeastern Asian language superstratum imposed on a Southeast Asian substratum. A 2015 analysis using the Automated Similarity Judgment Program resulted in the Japonic languages being grouped with the Ainu and then with the Austroasiatic languages. Other Southeast Asian language families that have been suggested include the Austronesian and Kra-Dai languages. Some of this debate stems from the genetics of Yamato as they have an unidentified Southeast Asian component which means the Japanese people have more genetically in common with Southeast Asians populations than other East Asians like the Chinese or Koreans do.

* Japanese does, contrary to popular belief, have "official" swear words, that is, words that in their basic, non-mangled forms are inherently offensive. An example is くたばれ (kutabare), which can translate out to such charming things as "fuck off" and "drop dead". This is, as one might guess, an inherently offensive word. However, most Japanese "swear words" are indeed mostly contractions, corruptions or manglings of other words that aren't inherently offensive (unlike most Western swears), which has led to the myth that the Japanese language does not have any "real" swear words.

** The ''i''-adjectives, or ''keiyōshi'', basically grammatically act as verbs, except with a completely different conjugation than any verb. These adjectives end in an ''i'' hiragana[[labelnote:Except...]]嫌い ''kirai'' "to dislike or hate", which is a na-adjective and not an i-adjective[[/labelnote]], such as 悪い ''warui'' "bad" (think VideoGame/{{Wario}}), 新しい ''atarashii'' "new", and 可愛い ''[[{{UsefulNotes/{{Kawaisa}} kawaii]]'' "adorable". These adjectives literally mean "to be (insert adjective here)", hence you can stick these adjectives in front of noun phrases to more-or-less directly modify the noun, or stick it at the end of a sentence to create a predicate. Thus 新しい僕の車 ''atarashii boku no kuruma'' means "my new car", but 車は新しい ''kuruma wa atarashii'' gives "the car is new".

** The ''i''-adjectives, or ''keiyōshi'', basically grammatically act as verbs, except with a completely different conjugation than any verb. These adjectives end in an ''i'' hiragana[[labelnote:Except...]]嫌い ''kirai'' "to dislike or hate", which is a na-adjective and not an i-adjective[[/labelnote]], such as 悪い ''warui'' "bad" (think VideoGame/{{Wario}}), and 新しい ''atarashii'' "new". These adjectives literally mean "to be (insert adjective here)", hence you can stick these adjectives in front of noun phrases to more-or-less directly modify the noun, or stick it at the end of a sentence to create a predicate. Thus 新しい僕の車 ''atarashii boku no kuruma'' means "my new car", but 車は新しい ''kuruma wa atarashii'' gives "the car is new".

** The ''i''-adjectives, or ''keiyōshi'', basically grammatically act as verbs, except with a completely different conjugation than any verb. These adjectives end in an ''i'' hiragana[[labelnote:Except...]]嫌い ''kirai'' "to dislike or hate", which is a na-adjective and not an i-adjective[[/labelnote]], such as 悪い ''warui'' "bad" (think VideoGame/{{Wario}}), and 新しい ''atarashii'' "new". These adjectives literally mean "to be (insert adjective here)", hence you can stick these adjectives in front of noun phrases to more-or-less directly modify the noun, or stick it at the end of a sentence to create a predicate. Thus 新しい僕の車 ''atarashii boku no kuruma'' means "my new car", but 車が新しい ''kuruma ga atarashii'' gives "the car is new".