Nihongo(Japanese)
Nihongo(Japanese)
There is no established theory as to which language family Nihongo linguistically belongs to. Its structure is completely different from that of the Indo-European languages, to which English and French belong, so as seen from the West it is a language difficult to acquire.
Nihongo was formed within a comparatively stable community for a long time. Thus, the Japanese, as members of the community, could have understood each other without utterance, on matters already well-known to them; so the form of abbreviating certain part of utterance was developed. In addition, because it is expected that the other person will realize what one wants to say, strong assertions are avoided. On this point, Western people sometimes are tied into the misunderstanding that Japanese do not clearly express their opinions.
Moji(Characters)
Modern Japanese consists of three kinds of moji: the ideographic Chinese characters known as kanji and the phonetic characters known as hiragana and katakana. Originally, Japanese had no moji, but in the fifth century documents came to be recorded using Chinese characters. The Japanese devised the way of reading those Chinese characters in a Japanese way and, based on Chinese characters, created the phonetic characters. The basis for phonetic moji was established in the Heian Period(794-1185), and it is with such moji that MURASAKI Shikibu completed the world's oldest novel, "Genji Monogatari"(The Tale of Genji). Today, katakana is mainly used for foreign words, and Chinese characters and hiragana for composing sentences. In addition, it is possible to write only in phonetic characters, including Roman letters.
Nihongo-kyoiku(Japanese-language education)
At present in many countries around the world, especially in Pacific rim regions, Japanese-language education is flourishing. The reason is nothing but the increased necessity to contact and converse with the Japanese.
Because in the late 1980s students of Japanese language increased abruptly, the number of instructors and the amount of instructional material are insufficient. Thus, Japan, for its part, has put into effect various kinds of support in a number of countries , such as donating Japanese-language textbooks and dispatching instructors. Foreigners coming to Japan have also increased, and domestic institutions for Japanese-language education also keep on increasing. In 1984, a Japanese-ability examination was held for the first time. It can be taken in Japan as well as many other countries around the world. The number of people who took the exam in 1994 was 82,327.
Keigo(Honorific language)
In Japanese, keigo is remarkably developed and is counted as a key characteristic of the language. However, keigo has developed not only in Japanese but also in most Asian languages, such as Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese and Javanese. Common among these is using exalted terms for others and humble terms for oneself. This requires attention, because if keigo is used wrongly in social settings it is rude to the other person and, in addition, one is regarded as lacking education. The reason why Japanese keigo requires attention is that respect or humility change depending on the person to whom one speaks. For example, in speaking about the president of one's own company inside the company, exalted terms are used, but to people outside the company humble terms are used.
Hogen(Dialects)
Various regions in Japan are separated by mountains, so communities, unable to come and go easily, developed their own respective hogen. Among Latin-based languages, for example, French and Spanish are quite similar and it is possible to call them hogen of Latin; similarly Japanese dialects in some cases also have close differences. There was even a time when it was extremely difficult for people Tohoku and people Kyushu to communicate with each other. Therefore, in the modern era a common language was gradually formed, principally taking the language of Tokyo as standard. However, because dialects are part of a region's culture, recently a movement to emphasize their importance has arisen.
