Japanese Language: Phonology, Grammar, And Writing

The Japanese language or Nihongo is the official language of Japan almost exclusively spoken by its 130 million people

. Other people who speak the language are those who belong to Japanese immigrant communities. Although the writing system of the Japanese language has some similarities with Chinese, the pronunciation of the former has a relatively smaller sound inventory with easily noticeable pitch-accent system. The language is further characterized by the comprehensive system of honorifics, which reflect the structure of the Japanese society that places strong emphasis on hierarchy.

Sounds and Grammar

Japanese vowels are all monophthongs, that is, the vowels are articulated at both beginning and end. This pure vowel articulation is relatively fixed and does not glide up or down. The five vowels of the Japanese language have a phonemic length each with a long and a short version. To differentiate the short vowels from the long ones, the vowel component of the latter has a line over it or a double vowel is used.

The Japanese phonology is characterized by simple syllabic structure in addition to the five vowels. Although consonant-vowel combinations have similar pronunciations to the English language, the syllables involving the consonants r and g are particularly different. Syllables containing the consonant r are pronounced something between the l and the r. Those syllables containing g, on the other hand, are pronounced like ng in sing.

The sentence structure of the language follows a subject-object-verb pattern. In other structures, the first two elements may be interchanged or omitted depending on emphasis but the last verb component of the sentence must strictly be placed always at the end of the sentence.

Writing system

The writing system of the Japanese language comprises hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana characters are of purely Japanese origin used for words that have no kanji equivalent. Articles in the sentence are also written using hiragana. Katakana characters, on the other hand, are used for words that are borrowed from other languages. Katakana has the same set of syllabary as the hiragana. Finally, kanjis are used for words borrowed particularly from Chinese. Native Japanese morphemes are also written using kanji. Proper nouns such as names of places and people are written using kanji characters.

The Japanese language is one of the most interesting languages in the world to learn since it connects anybody to the fascinating culture of Japan. Learning the Japanese language has great benefits too since Japan is the third largest economy in the world and many businesspeople speak the language.

by: Cedric Welsch

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