Japanese Dialects

There are dozens of dialects spoken in Japan. The plurality is due to the mountainous island terrain and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, morphology of the verb and adjectives, particle usage, vocabulary and in some cases pronunciation. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon. From the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern islands of Okinawa, Japan is rich in various regional dialects. The Japanese dialects can be divided into the Eastern and Western dialects. While the Easterners say "yano-assatte" (the day after tomorrow), "shoppai" (salty) and "-nai" (not), the Westerners use "shi-asatte," "karai" and "-n" or "-nu." The consonants are more emphasized in the East, whereas the vowels are more carefully pronounced in the West. And the Japanese high-low tonal accents sometimes take different forms between the eastern and western dialects. The dialects of Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto and the eastern part of Chubu are the Eastern Dialects, while those of the western part of Chubu (including Nagoya City), Kansai (including Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe Cities), Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa are the Western Dialects. The Japanese common language used to be based on the dialects of the Kansai region, but since the 17th century is based on the dialect of Tokyo in the Kanto region, as Japan's political and economic centre moved from Kyoto and Osaka to Edo, present-day Tokyo. Extremely geographically separated dialects such as Tohoku-ben and Tsushima-ben may not be intelligible to other dialect speakers. The dialect used in Kagoshima in southern Kyushu is famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects in northern Kyushu as well. The Ryukyuan languages used in and around Okinawa bilingually mostly by the elderly are related to Japanese, but the two are mutually unintelligible. Due to the close relationship they are still sometimes said to be only dialects of Japanese, but linguists consider them to be separate languages. However, recently, Standard Japanese have been prevalent nationwide some because of TV. Young generation usually speak mixed language of standard and local dialects.

Japanese Grammar
Certain aspects of Japanese grammar are highly controversial. Japanese grammar can be characterized by the following prominent features: The basic sentence structure of a Japanese sentence is topic-comment. For example, consider the sentence "kochira wa, Sanga san desu". Kochira is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa; this means "as for this person". The verb is desu ("be"). As a phrase, Sanga san desu is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr Sanger". So

Japanese, like Korean and somewhat like Chinese, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it marks topic separately from subject, and the two do not always coincide. Japanese nouns in general have neither number nor gender. Thus hon (book) can be used for the singular or plural. However, in the case of a small number of native words (of proto-Japanese rather than Chinese origin) plurality may be indicated by reduplication. For example, hito means "person" while hitobito means "people"; ware is a form of "I" while wareware means "we" (although the kun'yomi "ware" may also be of Chinese origin, just more ancient than the Chinese on'yomi readings). Sometimes suffixes may also indicate plurality. Examples include the suffixes -tachi and -ra: watashi, a form of "I", becomes watashitachi, meaning "we", and kare (him) becomes karera (them). With some exceptions Japanese is SOV (with the verb at the end of the sentence.) It also has an unmarked phrase order of Time Manner Place (the reverse of English order). Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (also called non-past tense, since the same form is used for the present and the future). The present tense in Japanese serves the function of the simple present and the future tense, while the past tense (or perfect tense) in Japanese serves the function of the simple past tense. The distinction is between actions which are completed (perfect) or are not yet completed (imperfect). The present perfect, present continuous, present perfect continuous, future perfect, future continuous, and future perfect continuous are usually expressed as a gerund (-te form) plus the auxiliary form imasu/iru. Similarly, the past perfect, past continuous, and past perfect continuous are usually expressed with the gerund plus the past tense of imasu/iru. For some verbs, that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form regularly indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others, that represent a change of state, the -te iru form regularly indicates a perfect tense. For example, kite imasu regularly means "I have come", and not "I am coming", but tabete imasu regularly means "I am eating", and not "I have eaten". Note that in this form the initial i of imasu/iru is often not voiced, especially in casual speech and the speech of young people. The exact meaning is determined from the context, as Japanese tenses do not always map one-to-one to English tenses. In addition, Japanese verbs are also conjugated to show various moods. There are three types of words that correspond to adjectives in English: stative verbs (also called iadjectives), copular nouns (na-adjectives), and the limited set of true adjectives in Japanese. Both copular nouns and stative verbs may predicate sentences, and both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in other verbs. There is a regular way to turn the stative verbs into adverbs. The true adjectives are limited to modifying nouns. The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions. These include possession (no), subject (ga), direct object (o), indirect object (ni) and others. The topic is also marked by a postposed particle (wa). These particles play an extremely important function in Japanese. Japanese has many ways to express different levels of politeness, including a different conjugation for verbs, special verbs and pronouns, verbs indicating relative status, use of different nouns, etc., as shown above.

The verb desu/da is the copula verb, though it doesn't play all the roles of the English "to be" and often takes on other roles. In the sentences above, it has played the copulative function of equality, that is: A = B. However a separate function of "to be" is to indicate existence, for which the verbs arimasu/aru and imasu/iru are used for inanimate and animate things respectively. Strictly speaking, desu is a contraction of -de, the particle indicating subject complement, (see copula) and su, an elision of gozaimasu (a polite copula). So an alternative, more accurate (though seldom seen) parsing of Kochira-wa, Sumisu-san desu is Kochira-wa, Sumisu-san-de su: Kochira-wa This person, subject Sumisu-san-de Mr Smith, subject complement su (=gozaimasu) is, (animate) The verb "to do" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns of action and state (aisuru "to love", benkyosuru "to study", etc.). Japanese also employs regular compounding of verbs (e. g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee" from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to go out"). There are many derivative forms of words that may turn one part of speech into another. Nouns can be made into verbs, adjectives into nouns, gerunds, and other forms, and so on. Verbs, in addition to other derived forms, have one (the -tai form) which is an adjective meaning "want(ing) to do X"; e.g., tabetai desu means "I want to eat". Japanese has a lot of pronouns for use in different occasions, and different pronouns for men and women, younger or older, etc. These pronouns are not used all the time, but often elided when the reference has been established and is obvious from context. Japanese is therefore called a pro-drop language. For example, instead of saying "Watashi wa byoki desu" ("I am sick"), one would simply say "Byoki desu" ("Am sick"). A single verb can often constitute a complete sentence.

History of Japanese Language

Historical linguists agree that Japanese is a Japonic language, but do not agree further about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several competing theories: 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 less-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related, because of all these cultures' historic ties. Japanese is a relative of other Asian languages. This theory maintains that Japanese split from - or had large influences from - other East Asian languages such as Korean (and possibly the SinoTibetan languages). Japanese is a relative of the Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and sometimes, Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Japanese also has (phonologically distinctive) pitch (called pitch accent in linguistics), similar to Serbian/Croatian.

Additionally, there are a suggestive number of apparently regular correspondences in basic vocabulary, such as ishi "stone" to Turkic das, yo "four" to Turkic drt. Phonological and lexical similarities to Austronesian languages have been noted. Japanese is a kind of Creole, with an Altaic grammatical substructure, and core Austronesian vocabulary. Japanese is related to southern Asian languages. Some researchers have suggested a possible relationship between Japanese and Tamil, a member of the Dravidian language family spoken in southern India. Specialists in Japanese historical linguistics all agree that Japanese is related to the Ryukyuan languages (including Okinawan); together, Japanese and Ryukyuan are grouped in the Japonic languages. Among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to Korean is considered plausible but not demonstrated; the Altaic hypothesis has somewhat less currency. Almost all specialists reject the idea that Japanese could be related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages or Sino-Tibetan languages, and the idea that Japanese could be related to Tamil is given no credence at all. It should be noted that linguistic studies, like all fields, can be strongly affected by national politics and other non-academic factors. For example, some linguists would say that Dutch is a dialect of German but is known as a language for political reasons. Japan's long-standing rivalries and enmities with virtually all of its neighbours make the study of linguistic connection particularly fraught with such political tensions.

Japanese Sign Language

Japanese Sign Language is a distinct sign language with unique vocabulary and grammar. It is related to Taiwanese and Korean sign languages. Temane is the former name. Over 95% of the deaf understand Japanese Sign Language, 80% understand finger spelling and TV. There are 107 deaf schools. The first school was in Kyoto in 1878. Similarly to the Pidgin Signed English and Signed English languages in the US, there are Pidgin Japanese and Manually Signed Japanese languages in Japan. The Pidgin Signed Japanese is different; Pidgin Signed Japanese is used often in formal situations, lectures, speeches. There are two kinds of sign language in Japan, a fact little known to most Japanese. One is called SimCom (Simultaneous Communication), used on formal occasions for interpreting or broadcasting purposes, while the other is called Japanese Sign Language (JSL), used for daily communication among the deaf. SimCom, developed by a person without hearing disabilities, translates ordinary Japanese grammar into sign language. JSL, however, is based on a different grammatical structure and employs the eyes, eyebrows and jaw as well as the hands and arms. Japanese Sign Language is not standardized at all. There are minor variations of signs and grammar from region to region and island to island.

Only a minority of schools have sign language and most of time they use the Manual Sign Language over the preferred JSL. Recent changes in the Ministry of Education's policy are beginning to encourage more sign language use in the future. Finger spelling was only introduced this century and is not used much. Instead, for place names and personal names, many deaf write the corresponding "Kanji" in the air. "Kanji" signs are a standardized set of signs that spell out personal or place names. Japanese Sign Language is becoming more popular with hearing people in Japan. There is a weekly television show that teaches JSL, and some news casts are open-captioned. There are plans for a new satellite TV station that will be dedicated to the deaf and hearing impaired.

Japanese Slang
Slang is the non-standard use of words in a language of a particular social group, and sometimes the creation of new words or importation of words from another language. Slang is a type of sociodialect aimed at excluding certain people from the conversation. But that's not all. It develops with ordinary interaction in a subset of ordinary language development. Slang initially functions as encryption, so that the non-initiate cannot understand the conversation, or as a further way to communicate with. Below you will find some words of Japanese slang: - Ano: Informal word which can mean "that thing over there", but the slang meaning is more commonly "Uhhh..." or "Well..." and is used a lot in colloquial speech at the start of a sentence or between sentences just like in English "Uhhh.." to slow down the conversation so we can think. - Apo: Informal term referring to "an appointment for a date". - Baito: Informal slang for someone who is working part-time. - Betsu ni: Informal phrase meaning "nothing" or "nothing really". Normally used in response to a question. - Buru hairu: An expression used when things aren't going right. - Dame: Informal term with many meanings. I can mean "no" or "it's bad" or "it's not possible" or "you can't do that" etc. It is word that signals a "no" answer. - Do Kashiteiru: Informal phrase which means "Are you o.k.? - Gachoon: It means nothing, but you can say it to express surprise. - Gu-tara suru: To do nothing. To be lazy. Parents may tell their children, "Gu-tara suru na! (Don't be lazy). - Hazui: Embarassing, short form of "hazukashi" - Hara Heta: Informal phrase which means "To be hungry" and literally translates as "My/your belly is in a bad condition". - Ichio: Informal term meaning "anyway..." or "well..." and can replace a direct answer with the meaning "Uhhh...kinda sorta...". - Junbi O.K. Desu: This is a very modern way of saying, "I'm ready!" And it really does use O.K. as in English. - Kochi Kochi: Slang meaning "this way!" or "over here!". It is short for Kochira which is a polite way of saying "this way". - Kora: Informal term meaning "hey!" or close to "listen here!" and is used to get someone's

attention in a rough tone. - Mama: Informal phrase meaning "calm down" or "there there". It is also used to refer to something that is "same as usual" - Muri Shinai de: loosely translates as "take it easy!" or "don't kill yourself!" - Nandake: This expression is used when someone mentions something that you might have been told before but you forgot. Or, it is used to express " Um yeah, what about that (thing you're talking about)?" - Ne: Informal interjection with many uses. It can mean "right?" or "isn't it" or "hey!" - Oha: Exclamatory phrase for "good morning". Very short for Ohayo Gozaimasu. - Rakki: Slang term that comes from the English word "lucky" and is used to express that something really "cool" just happened that makes you feel "lucky". - Sugee!!: A different way of saying, "sugoi (super, extra-ordinary, or great)." - uccho--n: It basically means "kidding." You can use this to tease someone. - Yoseyo!: If someone is bothering you, you can say this. It means, "Quit it!!"