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Kanji

Kanji

:This article is about a form of writing; for the Australian shrub, see Kanji bush. Kanji (, literally "Han characters") is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. Kanji are one of the three main forms of Japanese writing, the other two being hiragana and katakana, the kana. This article focuses on the Japanese use of these characters; see Chinese character for a general discussion of Chinese characters, which are also used in several other languages.

History

Chinese character There is some disagreement about how Chinese characters came to Japan, but it is generally accepted that Buddhist monks brought Chinese texts back to Japan in about the 5th century. These texts were in the Chinese language and would have been read as such at first. Over time, however, a system known as kanbun (漢文) emerged; it essentially used Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read it in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time. A writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a limited set of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in curvilinear style became hiragana, a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are actually forms of kanji. In modern Japanese, kanji is used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, while hiragana is used to write inflected verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, and words where the kanji is too difficult to read or remember. Katakana is used for representing onomatopoeia and non-Chinese loanwords. The usage of katakana to write loan words is a very recent phenomenon dating to after World War II. Originally loanwords were written using kanji, either used for their meaning (煙草 or 莨 tabako; "tobacco") or to spell the word phonetically (天婦羅 or 天麩羅 tempura). For example, many Japanese words of Portuguese origin borrowed from the 16th century onwards, have kanji forms.

Types of kanji: categorized by history

Kokuji

While some kanji and Chinese hanzi are mutually readable, many more are not. In addition to characters that have different meanings in Japanese, and characters that have identical meanings but are written differently, there are also characters peculiar to Japan known as kokuji (国字; literally "national characters"). Kokuji are also known as wasei kanji (和製漢字; lit. "Chinese characters made in Japan"). There are hundreds of kokuji (see the [http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/kokuji-list.html sci.lang.japan AFAQ list]), and although some are rarely used, many others have become important additions to the written Japanese language. These include:
- 峠 tōge (mountain pass)
- 榊 sakaki (sakaki tree, genus Camellia)
- 畑 hatake (field of crops)
- 辻 tsuji (crossroads, street)
- 働 dō, hatara(ku) (work)

Kokkun

In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These kanji are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters such as:
- 沖 oki (offing, open sea; Ch. chōng rinse)
- 森 mori (forest; Ch. sēn gloomy, majestic, luxuriant growth)
- 椿 tsubaki (Camellia japonicus; Ch. chūn Ailantus)

Old characters and new characters

The same kanji character can sometimes be written in two different ways, 旧字体 (kyū-jitai; lit. "old character") (舊字體 in kyū-jitai) and 新字体 (shin-jitai; "new character"). The following are some examples of kyū-jitai followed by the corresponding shin-jitai:
- 國国 kuni (country)
- 號号 gō (number)
- 變変 hen, ka(waru) (change) Kyū-jitai were used before the end of World War II, and are mostly, if not completely, the same as the Traditional Chinese characters. After the war the government introduced the simplified shin-jitai. Some of the new characters are similar to simplified characters used in the People's Republic of China. Also, like the simplification process in China, some of the shinjitai were once abbreviated forms (略字 ryakuji) used in handwriting, but in contrast with the "proper" unsimplified characters (正字 seiji) were only acceptable in colloquial contexts. This page [http://kan-chan.stbbs.net/word/ryakuji.html] shows examples of these handwritten abbreviations, identical to their modern shinjitai forms, from the postwar era. There are also handwritten simplifications today that are significantly simpler than their standard forms (either untouched or received only minor simplification in the post-war reforms), examples of which can be seen here [http://hac.cside.com/bunsho/1shou/39setu.html], but despite their wide usage and popularity, they, like their postwar counterparts, are not considered socially acceptable and are only used in handwriting. Some Chinese characters are only used phonetically in Japanese (当て字 ateji), and many Chinese characters are not used in Japanese at all. Theoretically, however, any Chinese character can also be a Japanese character—the Daikanwa Jiten, one of the largest dictionaries of kanji ever compiled, has about 50,000 entries, even though most of the entries have never been used in Japanese.

Readings

A kanji character may have several possible pronunciations, or "readings", depending on its context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings. These readings are categorized as either Chinese derived (on'yomi or on) or native (kun'yomi or kun).

On'yomi (Chinese reading)

The on'yomi (音読み), the Chinese reading, is a Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were multiply introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi, and often multiple meanings. The kanji invented in Japan typically have no on'yomi. For example, the kanji 込 is Japanese, in origin, and thus lacks any on'yomi. Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types:
- Go-on (呉音; literally Wu sound) readings, from the pronunciation of the Wu region (in the vicinity of modern Shanghai), during the 5th and 6th centuries.
- Kan-on (漢音; literally Han sound) readings, from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an.
- Tō-on (唐音；literally Tang sound) readings, from the pronunciations of later dynasties, such as the Song and Ming, covers all readings adopted from the Heian era to the Edo period
- Kan'yō-on (慣用音) readings, which are mistaken readings of the kanji which have become accepted into the language. Examples The most common form of readings is the kan-on one. The tō-on readings occur in some words such as isu "chair" or futon. The go-on readings are especially common in Buddhist terminology such as gokuraku 極楽 "paradise". Due to trade and navigation patterns, a great volume of Chinese vocabulary was introduced to Japan by natives of southern China, thus many common pronunciations more closely mirror those of Southern Chinese languages ("dialects") than Northern pronunciations. Chinese languages have changed over time and pronunciations used at the time of introduction of vocabulary from China to Japan may no longer be used in a recognizable form by contemporary Chinese. On'yomi are usually single-syllable readings, since each character expresses a single Chinese syllable. However, tonality aside, most Chinese syllables (especially in Middle Chinese, in which final stop consonants were more prevalent than in most modern dialects) did not fit the largely-CV (consonant-vowel) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most on'yomi are composed of two moras (syllables or beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (this being i in the case of e and u in the case of o, due to linguistic drift in the centuries since), or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or syllabic n, chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. In fact, palatalized consonants before vowels other than i, as well as syllabic n, were probably added to Japanese to better simulate Chinese; none of these features occur in words of native Japanese origin. On'yomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words (熟語 jukugo), many of which are the result of the adoption (along with the kanji themselves) of Chinese words for concepts that either didn't exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the English borrowings from Latin and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts. The major exception to this rule is surnames, in which the native kun'yomi reading is usually used (see below).

Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)

The kun'yomi (訓読み), Japanese reading, or somewhat misleadingly native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamatokotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. Again, there can be multiple kun readings for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all. For instance, the kanji for east, 東, has the on reading tō. However, Japanese already had two words for east, higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji character 東 had the latter pronunciations added as kun'yomi. However, the kanji 寸, denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (slightly over an inch), had no native Japanese equivalent; thus it only has an on'yomi, sun. Kun'yomi are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of yamatokotoba. Most noun or adjective kun'yomi are two to three syllables long, while verb kun'yomi are more often one or two syllables in length (not counting trailing hiragana called okurigana, although those are usually considered part of the reading). In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji have different meanings. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written 治す, means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix or correct something" (e.g. a bicycle or a badly written Wikipedia article). Sometimes the differences are very clear, other times they are quite subtle. Sometimes there are differences of opinion in different reference works -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use between them. Because of this confusion, Japanese people have trouble knowing which kanji to use in some cases. One workaround is simply to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと moto, which has five different kanji, 元, 基, 本, 下, 素, three of which have only very subtle differences.

When to use which reading

Words for similar concepts, such as "east" (東), "north" (北) and "northeast" (東北), can have completely different pronunciations: the kun readings higashi and kita are used for the first two, while the on reading tōhoku is used for the third. To complicate the matter, there are two basic guidelines for determining the pronunciation of a particular kanji in a given context. First, and most simply, kanji occurring in compounds are usually read using on'yomi. These sorts of words are sometimes called jukugo (熟語). For example, 情報 jōhō "information", 学校 gakkō "school", and 新幹線 shinkansen "bullet train" all follow this pattern. Secondly, kanji occurring in isolation -- that is, written adjacent only to kana, not to other kanji -- are typically read using their kun'yomi. Together with their okurigana, if any, they generally function either as a noun or as an inflected adjective or verb: e.g. 月 tsuki "moon", 情け nasake "sympathy", 赤い akai "red" (adj), 新しい atarashii "new ", 見る miru "(to) see". Kanji compounds that also have okurigana, such as 空揚げ (also written 唐揚げ) karaage "fried food" and 折り紙 origami "artistic paper folding", also fall into this category. It should be noted, however, that many of the latter category of compounds can be written alternatively with the okurigana omitted (e.g. 空揚 or 折紙). There are numerous exceptions to both rules. 手紙 tegami "letter", 日傘 higasa "parasol", and the famous 神風 kamikaze "divine wind" all use kun'yomi despite being simple kanji compounds. Fortunately, most exceptions to the second rule are simple nouns: 愛 ai "love", 禅 Zen, 点 ten "mark, dot" -- most of these cases involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one on'yomi: witness 先生 sensei "teacher" versus 一生 isshō "one's whole life". There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jūbako (重箱) or yutō (湯桶) words. The words jūbako and yutō themselves are examples: the first character of jūbako is read using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi, while it is the other way around with yutō. Other examples include 金色 kin'iro "golden" (on-kun) and 合気道 aikidō "the martial art Aikido" (kun-on-on). There are also several words that can be read multiple ways, like English words like "live" or "read" -- in some cases the words have different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is 上手, which can be read in three different ways -- jōzu (skilled), uwate (upper part), or kamite (upper part). In addition, 上手い has the reading umai (skilled). Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō) and Japan itself (日本 Nihon or sometimes Nippon) are read with on'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with kun'yomi (e.g. 大阪 Ōsaka, 青森 Aomori, 箱根 Hakone). Family names are also usually read with kun'yomi (e.g., 山田 Yamada, 田中 Tanaka, 鈴木 Suzuki). Personal names, although they are not typically considered jūbako/yutō, often contain mixtures of kun'yomi, on'yomi, and nanori, and are generally only readable with some experience (e.g., 大助 Daisuke [on-kun], 夏美 Natsumi [kun-on]).

Pronunciation assistance

Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as furigana (small kana written above or to the right of the character) or kumimoji (small kana written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners and manga (comics). It is also used in newspapers for rare or unusual readings and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji (see below).

Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called 新字体 (shinjitai). The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used.

Kyōiku kanji

:Main article: Kyōiku kanji The Kyōiku kanji 教育漢字 are 1006 characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school. The number was 881 until 1981. The grade-level breakdown of the education kanji is known as the Gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō 学年別漢字配当表), or the gakushū kanji.

Jōyō kanji

:Main article: Jōyō kanji The Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 are 1,945 characters consisting of all the kyōiku kanji, plus an additional 939 kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana. The Jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981. They replaced an older list of 1850 characters known as the General-use kanji (tōyō kanji 当用漢字) introduced in 1946.
Jinmeiyō kanji
:Main article: Jinmeiyō kanji The Jinmeiyō kanji 人名用漢字 are 2,928 characters consisting of the Jōyō kanji, plus an additional 983 kanji found in people's names. Over the years, the Minister of Justice has on several occasions added to this list. Sometimes the phrase Jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2928, and sometimes it only refers to the 983 that are only used for names.
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji
The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as arabic numerals, for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
- [http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanji90 JIS X 0208:1997], the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
- [http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanjisup JIS X 0212:1990], a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete;
- [http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanji00 JIS X 0213:2000], a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,625 additional kanji, of which 2,741 were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding;
- JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.
Gaiji
Gaiji (外字), literally meaning "external characters", are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as well. Gaiji can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters. Both are a problem for information interchange, as the code-point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another. Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997, and JIS X 0213-2000 used the range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT DoCoMo's "iMode" service, where they are used for pictorial characters. Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas.
Total number of kanji characters
The number of possible characters is disputed. The "Daikanwa Jiten" contains about 50,000 characters, and this was thought to be comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries contain 80,000 or more characters, many consisting of obscure variants. Most of these are not in common use in either Japan or China.
Types of Kanji: by Category
:Main article: Chinese character classification The Buddhist scholar Xu Shen, in the Shuowen jiezi ca. 100 CE, classified Chinese characters into six categories (Japanese: 六書 rikusho). The classification is open to interpretation, and some characters belong to more than one category. The first four categories refer to the structure of characters; the last two refer to functions of the characters. (For a table of all the 教育漢字 broken down by category see [http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjitypes.html this page], from which the above description has been extracted.)

象形文字 (shōkeimoji)

These characters are sketches of the object they represent. For example, 目 is an eye, 木 is a tree, etc. The current forms of the characters are very different from the original, and it is now hard to see the origin in many of these characters. It is somewhat easier to see in seal script. This kind of character is often called a "pictograph" in English (象形 is also the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs).

指事文字 (shijimoji)

These are called "logograms", "simple ideographs" and sometimes just "symbols" in English. They are usually simple and represent an abstract concept such as a direction: 上: up/above, 下: down/below, etc.

会意文字 (kaiimoji)

Often called "compound ideographs", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine to present an overall meaning. An example is 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down). Another is 休 (rest) from 人 (person) and 木 (tree).

形声文字 (keiseimoji)

These are called "semasio-phonetic" or "phonetic-ideographic" characters in English. They are by far the largest category, making up about 85% of characters. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which indicates the meaning or semantic context, and the other the pronunciation. (The pronunciation really relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese ON reading of the kanji. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Japanese to Chinese.) As examples of this, consider the kanji with the 言 shape: 語, 記, 訳, 説, etc. All are related to word/language/meaning. Similarly kanji with the 雨 (rain) shape (雲, 電, 雷, 雪, 霜, etc.) are almost invariably related to weather. Kanji with the 寺 (temple) shape on the right (詩, 持, 時, 侍, etc.) usually have an ON reading of SHI or JI. Sometimes one can guess the meaning and/or reading simply from the components. However, exceptions do exist -- for example, neither 需 nor 霊 have anything to do with weather (at least in their modern usage), and 待 has an ON reading of TAI.

転注文字 (tenchūmoji)

This group are sometimes called "derivative characters", and is rather vaguely defined. It refers to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, 楽 is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in Sino-Japanese gaku 'music' and raku 'pleasure'.

仮借文字 (kashamoji)

These are called "phonetic loan characters." Historically, they were the predecessors of the "phonetic-ideographic" characters. For example, 来 in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for 'wheat'. Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning 'to come' and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached.
Related symbols
The ideographic iteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example 色々 (iroiro "various") and 時々 (tokidoki "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the surname Sasaki (佐々木). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji 仝. Another frequently used symbol is ヶ (a small katakana "ke"), pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as 六ヶ月, rokkagetsu "six months") or "ga" in place names like Kasumigaseki (霞ヶ関). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji 箇.
Kanji Kentei
:Main article: Kanji Kentei The Japanese government provides the Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude") which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests about 6000 kanji.
See also

- Four-character idiom
- Shotai
- Han unification
- Learning kanji
- List of kanji by concept
- List of kanji by stroke count
- Sino-Japanese
References

- DeFrancis, John (1990). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686.
- Hannas, William. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover).
- Kaiser, Stephen (1991). Introduction to the Japanese Writing System. In Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-1553-4.
- Mitamura, Joyce Yumi and Mitamura, Yasuko Kosaka (1997). Let's Learn Kanji. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-2068-6.
- Unger, J. Marshall (1996). Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines. ISBN 0195101669
External links

- [http://homepage2.nifty.com/TAB01645 Dictionary of Kokuji] in Japanese
- [http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2005/Tomoda.html Change in Script Usage in Japanese: A Longitudinal Study of Japanese Government White Papers on Labor], discussion paper by Takako Tomoda in the [http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies], 19 August 2005.
- Category:Japanese terms ko:간지 (한자) ms:Kanji ja:日本における漢字 th:คันจิ

Kanji bush
Acacia inaequilatera, commonly known as kanji bush or baderi, is a tree in the family Fabaceae. Endemic to Australia, it is widely distributed in the semi-arid spinifex country eastwards from Karratha, Western Australia into the Northern Territory. Kanji bush is a gnarled tree with corky bark and spiny foliage and stems. It grows to a height of between two and five metres. Like most Acacia species, it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. These are a blue-grey colour, with a curved midrib and a short spine at the tip. There is also a pair of curved spines at the base of each leaf. Unusually for Acacia species, the flowers are not pure yellow, but rather yellow with a reddish purple centre. These are held in spherical clusters about five millimetres in diameter. The pods are flat and curved, up to ten centimetres long and one centimetre wide. Kanji bush is very fire tolerant and colonises rapidly after a bushfire. It is short-lived, lasting less than ten years.
References

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- Category:Acacia Category:Australian plants Category:Flora of Western Australia

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty (; 206 BC - AD 220) followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. The dynasty was founded by the Liu family. The Chinese people consider the Han Dynasty to be one of the greatest periods in the entire history of China. As a result, the members of the ethnic majority of Chinese people to this day still call themselves "people of Han," in honor of the Liu family and the dynasty they created. During the Han Dynasty, China officially became a Confucian state and prospered domestically: agriculture, handicrafts and commerce flourished, and the population reached 50 million. Meanwhile, the empire extended its political and cultural influence over Vietnam, Central Asia, Mongolia, and Korea before it finally collapsed under a combination of domestic and external pressures. The first of the two periods of the dynasty, namely the Former Han Dynasty (Qian Han 前漢) or the Western Han Dynasty (Xi Han 西漢) 206 BC - AD 9 seated at Chang'an. The Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han 後漢) or the Eastern Han Dynasty (Dong Han 東漢) 25 - 220 seated at Luoyang. The western-eastern Han convention is used nowadays to avoid confusion with the Later Han Dynasty of the Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms although the former-later nomenclature was used in history texts including Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian. Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished during the Han Dynasty. The Han period produced China's most famous historian, Sima Qian (145 -87 BC?), whose Records of the Grand Historian provides a detailed chronicle from the time of legendary Xia emperor to that of the Emperor Wu ( 141- 87 BC). Technological advances also marked this period. One of the great Chinese inventions, paper, dates from Han times. It is fair enough to state that contemporary empires of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire were the two superpowers of the known world. Several Roman embassies to China are recounted in Chinese history, starting with a Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han) account of a Roman convoy set out by emperor Antoninus Pius that reached the Chinese capital Luoyang in 166 and was greeted by Emperor Huan. The Han dynasty was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the "Silk Road" because the route was used to export Chinese silk. Chinese armies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea (Wiman Joseon) toward the end of the second century BC. Han control of peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system." Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.

The Emergence

Within the first three months after Qin Dynasty emperor Qin Shi Huang's death at Shaqiu, widespread revolts by peasants, prisoners, soldiers and descendants of the nobles of the six Warring States sprang up all over China. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, two in a group of about 900 soldiers assigned to defend against the Xiongnu, were the leaders of the first rebellion. Continuous insurgence finally toppled the Qin dynasty in 206 BC. The leader of the insurgents was Xiang Yu, an outstanding military commander without political expertise, who divided the country into 19 feudal states to his own satisfaction. The ensuing war among those states signified the 5 years of Chu Han Contention with Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, as the eventual winner. Initially, "Han" (the principality as created by Xiang Yu's division) consisted merely of modern Sichuan, Chongqing, and southern Shaanxi and was a minor humble principality, but eventually grew into an empire; Han Dynasty was named after the principality, which was itself named after Hanzhong (漢中) -- modern southern Shaanxi, the region centering the modern city of Hanzhong. The beginning of the Han Dynasty can be dated either from 206 BC when the Qin dynasty crumbled and the Principality of Han was established or 202 BC when Xiang Yu committed suicide. __NOTOC__

Taoism and Feudal System

The new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Gao (Liu Bang) divided the country into several "feudal states" to satisfy some of his wartime allies - but planned to get rid of them once he had consolidated his power. After his death, his successors from Emperor Hui to Emperor Jing tried to rule China combining Legalist methods with the Taoist philosophic ideals. During this "pseudo-Taoism era", a stable centralized government over China was established through revival of the agriculture sectors and fragmentations of "feudal states" after the suppression of the Rebellion of the seven states.

Emperor Wu and Confucianism

During the "Taoism era", China was able to maintain peace with Xiongnu by paying tribute and marrying princesses to them. During this time, the dynasty's goal was to relieve the society of harsh laws, wars, and conditions from both the Qin, external threats from nomads, and early internal conflicts within the Han court. The government reduced taxation and assumed a subservient status to neighboring nomadic tribes. This policy of the government's reduced role over civilian lives (與民休息) started a period of stability, which was called the Rule of Wen and Jing (文景之治), named after the two emperors of this particular era. However, Under Emperor Wu's leadership, the most prosperous period (140-87 BC)of the Han Dynasty, the Empire was able to fight back. At its height, China incorporated the present-day Qinghai, Gansu, and northern Vietnam into its territories. Emperor Wu decided that Taoism was no longer suitable for China, and officially declared China to be a Confucian state; however, like the emperors before him, he combined Legalist methods with the Confucian ideal. This official adoption of Confucianism led to not only a civil service nomination system, but also the compulsory knowledge of Confucian classics of candidates for the imperial bureaucracy, a requirement that lasted up to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service.

Beginning of the Silk Road

1912 travels of Zhang Qian to the West, Mogao Caves, 618-712 AD mural.]] From 138 BC, Emperor Wu also dispatched Zhang Qian twice as his envoy to the Western Regions, and in the process pioneered the route known as the Silk Road from Chang'an (today's Xi'an, Shaanxi Province), through Xinjiang and Central Asia, and on to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Following Zhang Qian' embassy and report, commercial relations between China and Central as well as Western Asia flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the 1st century BC, initiating the development of the Silk Road: :"The largest of these embassies to foreign states numbered several hundred persons, while even the smaller parties included over 100 members... In the course of one year anywhere from five to six to over ten parties would be sent out." (Shiji, trans. Burton Watson). China also sent missions to Parthia, which were followed up by reciprocal missions from Parthian envoys around 100 BC: :"When the Han envoy first visited the kingdom of Anxi (Parthia), the king of Anxi dispatched a party of 20,000 horsemen to meet them on the eastern border of the kingdom... When the Han envoys set out again to return to China, the king of Anxi dispatched envoys of his own to accompany them... The emperor was delighted at this." (Shiji, 123, trans. Burton Watson). The Roman historian Florus describes the visit of numerous envoys, included Seres (Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BC and 14 AD: :"Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours." ("Cathey and the way thither", Henry Yule). Henry Yule In 97 AD the Chinese general Ban Chao went as far west as the Caspian Sea with 70,000 men and established direct military contacts with the Parthian Empire, also dispatching an envoy to Rome in the person of Gan Ying. Several Roman embassies to China soon followed from 166 AD, and are officially recorded in Chinese historical chronicles. Good exchanges such as Chinese silk, African ivory, and Roman incense increase the contacts between the East and West. Contacts with the Kushan Empire led to the introduction of Buddhism to China from India in the first century. See also: Silk Road, Silk Road transmission of Buddhism

Rise of landholding class

To draw funds for his triumphant campaigns against the Xiongnu, Emperor Wu relinquished land control to merchants and the riches, and in effect legalized the privatization of lands. Land taxes were then drawn based on the sizes of fields. It was no longer on their income(harvest), which could not guarantee to pay their taxes completely. Incomes from selling harvest were often market-driven - a stable amount could not be guaranteed especially after harvest-reducing natural disasters. Merchant and prominent families then lured peasants to sell their lands since land accumulation guaranteed living standards of theirs and their descendants' in the agricultural society of China. Lands were hence accumulating into a new class of landholding families. The Han government in turn imposed more taxes on the remaining independent servants in order to make up the tax losses, therefore encouraging more peasants to come under the landholding elite or the landlords. Xiongnu Ideally the peasants pay the landlords certain periodic (usually annual) amount of income, who in turn provide protection against crimes and other hazards. In fact an increasing number of peasant population in the prosperous Han society and limited amount of lands provided the elite to elevate their standards for any new subordinate peasants. The inadequate education and often complete illiteracy of peasants forced them into a living of providing physical services, which were mostly farming in an agricultural society. The peasants, without other professions for their better living, compromised to the lowered standard and sold their harvest to pay their landlords. In fact they often had to delay the payment or borrow money from their landlords in the aftermath of natural disasters that reduced harvests. To make the situation worse, some Han rulers double-taxed the peasants. Eventually the living conditions of the peasants worsened as they solely depended on the harvest of the land they once owned. The landholding elite and landlords, for their part, provided inaccurate information of subordinate peasants and lands to avoid paying taxes; to this very end corruption and incompetence of the Confucian scholar gentry on economics would play a vital part. Han court officials who attempted to strip lands out of the landlords faced such enormous resistance that their policies would never be put in to place. In fact only a member of the landholding families, for instance Wang Mang, was able to put his reforming ideals into effect despite failures of his "turning the clock back" policies.

Interruption of Han rule

After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly during AD 9–24 by Wang Mang, a reformer and a member of the landholding families. The economic situation deteriorated at the end of Western Han Dynasty. Wang Mang, believing the Liu family had lost the Mandate of Heaven, took power and turned the clock back with vigorous monetary and land reforms, which damaged the economy even further.

Rise and Fall of Eastern Han Dynasty

A distant relative of Liu royalty, Liu Xiu, led the revolt against Wang Mang with the support of the landholding families and merchants. He "re-established" the Han Dynasty at Luoyang, which would rule for another 200 years, and became Emperor Guangwu. In 105, During Eastern Han Dynasty, an official and inventor named Cai Lun invented the technique for making fine paper. The invention of paper is considered a revolution in communication and learning, dramatically lowering the cost of education. Cai Lun).]] Nevertheless the Eastern Han emperors failed to put forward any groundbreaking land reforms after the failure of its precedent dynasty. Rife bureaucratic corruption and bribery contributed into lingering adverse consequences of land privatizations throughout the dynasty. Prestige of a newly founded dynasty during the reigns of the first three emperors was barely able to hinder the corruption; however Confucian scholar gentry turned against eunuchs for their corrupted authorities, while consort clans and eunuchs struggled for power in subsequent reigns. None of these three parties was able to improve the harsh livelihood of peasants under the landholding families. Land privatizations and accumulations on the hands of the elite affected the societies of the Three Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the landholding elite held the actual driving and ruling power of the country. Successful ruling entities worked with these families, and consequently their policies favored the elite. Adverse effects of the Nine grade controller system or the Nine rank system were brilliant examples. Taiping Taoist ideals of equal rights and equal land distribution quickly spread throughout the peasantry. As a result, the peasant insurgents of the Yellow Turban Rebellion swarmed the North China Plain, the main agricultural sector of the country. Power of the Liu royalty then fell into the hands of local governors and warlords, despite suppression of the main upraising of Zhang Jiao and his brothers. Three overlords eventually succeeded in control of the whole of China proper, ushering in the period of the Three Kingdoms. The figurehead Emperor Xian reigned until 220 when Cao Pi forced his abdication. In 311, around one hundred years after the fall of the Eastern Han, its capital Luoyang was sacked by Huns.

Sovereigns of Han Dynasty

External links

- [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/early_imperial_china/han.html Han Dynasty by Minnesota State University] Category:History of China Category:Iron Age
- ko:한나라 ja:漢

Japanese language

Japanese (Japanese: 日本語（にほんご Nihongo, ) is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. It is considered an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary which indicate the relative status of speaker and listener. The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically-distinctive pitch accent system. Though the two languages are completely unrelated, Japanese has been heavily influenced by Chinese over a period of at least 1,500 years. Japanese is written with a mix of Chinese characters (kanji) and a modified syllabary, kana, also originally based on Chinese characters. Much vocabulary has been imported from Chinese, or created on Chinese models.

Classification

Historical linguists who specialize in Japanese agree that it is one of the two members of the Japonic language family, but remain divided as to the origins of the Japonic languages. An older view, still widely held by some linguists and many non-linguists, is that Japanese is a language isolate. As for its relation to other languages, there are several theories (presented roughly in descending order of certainty):
- 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.
- Japanese is a relative of Korean. This theory is based on the high degree of similarity between Japanese and Korean grammar. Proponents of this theory have also put proposed Japanese-Korean cognates. The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory.
- Japanese is a member of the Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and (according to most proponents) Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Additionally, there are a suggestive number of apparently regular correspondences in basic vocabulary, such as ishi "stone" to Turkic daş, yon "four" to Turkic dört, kura "saddle" to Turkic kürtün, kiru "to cut" to Turkic kir-, inu "dog" to Turkic it, kumo "cloud" to Turkic köl "shadow", etc. These examples originate from [http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?root=config&basename=\data\alt\altet this database], which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and theoretical Altaic etymologies.
- Japanese is a creole language. Phonological similarities and geographical proximity to Austronesian languages have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of creole, with an Altaic substratum and an Austronesian superstratum, or vice versa.
- Japanese is a purely Austronesian language. This theory enjoys little currency, since the grammar and lexis of Japanese are vastly different from those of any known Austronesian language.
- Ono Susumu has 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 is still up to debate; the Altaic hypothesis has somewhat less currency, though it has grown significantly more respectable in recent years, primarily due to the work of Sergei Starostin, et al. Almost all specialists reject the idea that Japanese could be genetically related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages or Sino-Tibetan languages, and the idea that Japanese could be related to Tamil is almost entirely excluded. It should be noted that linguistic studies, like all fields, can be strongly affected by national politics and other non-academic factors. For example, most linguists would say that Romanian and Moldovan are essentially the same language, and that they are known as two different languages 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. However, these tensions are less prevalent among non-Japanese researchers.

Geographic distribution

Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and is still sometimes spoken in countries besides Japan. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of China, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programmes. As a result, there are still many people in these countries who speak Japanese instead of or as well as the local languages. In addition, emigrants from Japan, the majority of whom are found in Brazil, where the biggest Japanese community outside Japan is found, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne), and the United States (notably California and Hawaii), also frequently speak Japanese. There is also a small community in Davao, Philippines. Their descendants (known as nikkei 日系, literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently. There are estimated to be several million non-Japanese studying the language as well.

Official status

Japanese is the de facto official language of Japan, and Japan is the only country to have Japanese as an official working language. There are two forms of the language considered standard: or standard Japanese, and or the common language. As government policy has modernized Japanese, many of the distinctions between the two have blurred. Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.

Dialects

Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion 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, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, particle usage, and pronunciation. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon. Dialects from less central regions, such as the Tōhoku or Tsushima dialect may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The dialect used in Kagoshima in southern Kyūshū is famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in Kyūshū as well. Kagoshima dialect is 84% cognate with standard Tokyo dialect. The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the islands of Okinawa Prefecture. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryukyuan languages. Due to the close relationship of Ryukyuan and Japanese, they are still sometimes said to be only dialects of one language, but modern scholars consider them to be separate languages. Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide, due not only to television and radio, but also to increased mobility within Japan due to its system of roads, railways, and airports. Young people usually speak their local dialect and the standard language, though in most cases, the local dialect is influenced by the standard, and regional versions of "standard" Japanese have local-dialect influence.

Sounds

Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds, similar to their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but unrounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version. 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, was palatalized to , approximately chi; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii "party" and tii "tea." The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus /y/. However, consonant clusters across syllables within the word are common, though limited in type.

Grammar

The basic Japanese word order is Subject Object Verb. Subject and object are usually marked by particles which come after the word. The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, Kochira wa Tanaka san desu. Kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. The verb is desu ("be"). As a phrase, Tanaka san desu is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Ms. Tanaka". Thus Japanese, like Chinese and Korean, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it indicates the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai. literally means, "As for elephants, the nose is long." The topic is zō "elephant," and the subject is hana "nose." Japanese nouns have neither number nor gender. Thus hon may mean "book" or "books". It is possible to explicitly indicate more than one, either by using numbers, often with a counter. Words for people are usually singular. Thus Tanaka san usually means Mr/Ms Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate groups with noun suffixes that indicate groups, such as -tachi. Though some words, like hitobito "people," always refer to more than one, Japanese has no true plurals. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For some verbs, that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others, that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect tense. For example, kite iru means "He has come (and is still here)", but tabete iru means "He is eating". Questions are formed by adding a question element to the end of the verb, usually ka. For example, :Kore de ii desu. "This is OK." becomes :Kore de ii desu ka. "Is this OK?" Negatives are formed with verb endings. For example, :Pan o taberu. "I will eat bread." becomes :Pan o tabenai. "I will not eat bread." with taberu "to eat" changing to the negative form tabenai "to not eat". The word desu/da is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles. A separate function of "to be" is to indicate existence, as in "there is", for which the verbs aru and iru are used for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, :Neko ga iru. "There's a cat.", and :Ii kangae ga nai. "I haven't got a good idea." The verb "to do" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns (ai suru "to love", benkyō suru "to study", etc.). Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs (e.g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee," from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to go out"). There are three types of adjective: #keiyōshi, or i adjectives, which have a conjugating ending i which can become, for example, past, or negative. For example atsui ("to be hot") #:atsui hi "a hot day". #keiyōdōshi, or na adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually na. For example hen (strange) #:hen na hito "a strange person". #rentaishi, also called true adjectives, such as onaji "the same" #:onaji hi "the same day". Both keiyōshi and keiyōdōshi may predicate sentences. For example, :Gohan ga atsui. "The rice is hot." :Kare wa hen da. "He's strange." Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs. The rentaishi are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include ookina "big" and onaji "the same" (although there is a noun onaji that can be followed by da, as in onaji da). Both keiyōdōshi and keiyōshi form adverbs, by following with ni in the case of keiyōdōshi: :hen ni naru "become strange", and by changing i to ku in the case of keiyōshi: :atsuku naru "become hot". The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include
- no for possession, :watashi no kamera "my camera"
- ga for subject, :Kare ga yatta. "He did it."
- o for direct object :Nani o tabemasu ka? "What will (you) eat?"
- ni for indirect object, :Tanaka san ni kiite kudasai "Please ask Mr./Ms. Tanaka",
- wa for the topic and many others. Japanese has many words that are translated as pronouns in English, such as watashi or boku, both meaning "I". Which is used depends upon many factors, including the sex and status of the speaker, who is being spoken to, and the social setting. Their use is often optional, since Japanese is described as a so-called pro-drop language, i.e., one in which the subject of a sentence does not always need to be stated. For example, instead of saying :Watashi wa byōki desu. "I am sick.", if the speaker is understood to be the subject, one could simply say Byōki desu. A single verb can be a complete sentence: :yatta! "(I / we / they / etc) did (it)!".

Politeness

Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality. Broadly speaking, there are three main politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form (kudaketa 砕けた), the simple polite form (teineigo 丁寧語) and the advanced polite form (keigo 敬語). Since most relationships are not equal in Japanese society, one person typically has a higher position. This position is determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto 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) and humble (kenjōgo) language. Whereas teineigo is an inflectional system, keigo often employs many special (often irregular) honorific and humble verb forms. The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his group. For example, the -san suffix ("Mr", "Mrs" or "Ms") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of o- or go-; as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as gohan 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi 'friend,' would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a female speaker may sometimes refer to mizu 'water' as o-mizu merely to show politeness; this contrasts with the more abrupt speech of men (though men may also use very polite forms when speaking to superiors). See Gender differences in spoken Japanese. Many researchers report that since the 1990s, the use of polite forms has become rarer. Needless to say, many older people disapprove of this trend. Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender. Young people usually receive extensive training in the "proper" use of polite language when they start to work for a company.

Vocabulary

The original language of Japan was the so-called yamato kotoba. In addition to this original language, Japanese also has a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed on Chinese patterns. These words entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. Chinese based words comprise as much as seventy percent of the total vocabulary of the Japanese language and form as much as thirty to forty percent of words used in speech. A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, gairaigo. This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed. In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese patterns to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji characters in the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, 政治 seiji ("politics"), and 化学 kagaku ("chemistry"). As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greco-Roman words is shared among European languages. In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as wanpataan (< one + pattern, "to be in a rut", "to have a one-track mind") and sukinshippu (< skin + -ship, "physical contact"), although coined from English, are nonsensical in a non-Japanese context. A small number of such words, such as anime and cosplay, have been borrowed back into English. Additionally, many native Japanese words have become commonplace in English, due to the popularity of many Japanese cultural exports. Words such as sushi, judo, karate, sumo, karaoke, origami, samurai, haiku, ninja, sayonara, rickshaw (from 人力車 jinrikisha), futon, and many others have become part of the English language. See list of English words of Japanese origin for more.

Writing system

Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main scripts: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Roman alphabet (romaji) is also sometimes used.

Learning Japanese

Learning Japanese involves understanding grammar, pronunciation, the writing system, and acquiring adequate vocabulary. While the sound system is simple to master compared with those of other languages, the writing system poses a challenge for those not used to Chinese characters. On the other hand one learns a lot about Japanese culture by studying kanji characters. Japanese students begin to learn kanji characters from their first grade of an elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the kyōiku kanji, specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in a junior high school, which totally covers 1,945 jōyō kanji (common kanji) characters, which are usually considered sufficient for everyday life. Japanese can be learned without studying Chinese characters. However, Japanese borrowed thousands upon thousands of words from Chinese, and for various reasons, many of these Chinese-based words are now homophones (words pronounced identically) in Japanese. This may make it necessary to learn the characters if one wants to learn an extended vocabulary, although blind Japanese people who cannot read any characters are able to function in the spoken language without problems, since most words, even if not written down, can be understood by the context. "Nihon" (にほん) can mean "two long, thin objects" (二本) as well as "Japan" (日本). However, these two words have different accents, and are distinct even in isolation. Major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses. Moreover, South Korea, Australia, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Denmark and some states of the United States provide the language course at high schools or lower level schools. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003. 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese people, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. The Japanese government provides standard tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test, to test ability to understand Japanese in a business setting. 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. Furthermore, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreign wives married to Japanese nationals. See also List of resources for learning Japanese.

External links

- [http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/jpp/japor.html Origin of the Japanese People and Language]
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20030618070124/http%3A//www-lib.icu.ac.jp/LibShuppan/lecture/6-2-1.html North Kyushu Creole] – A hypothesis concerning the multilingual formation of Japanese
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1263 Ethnologue report for Japanese]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=jpn Ethnologue report for language code JPN]

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- Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-1264-0030-X. Graduate Level
- Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-6311-9855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-6311-9856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
- Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-6312-0504-7. Readings/Anthologies zh-min-nan:Ji̍t-pún-oē ko:일본어 ms:Bahasa Jepun ja:日本語 simple:Japanese language th:ภาษาญี่ปุ่น

Japanese writing

This article describes the modern Japanese writing system and its history. See the Japanese language article for an overview of the language. Modern Japanese uses three main scripts:
- Kanji, characters of Chinese origin,
- Hiragana, a syllabary, and
- Katakana, a syllabary. It is also possible to write Japanese in Roman letters. In Japanese, this is called rōmaji. The Japanese rarely use this system to write their own language. Here is an example of a newspaper headline that uses all four scripts (a headline from the Asahi Shimbun on April 19, 2004) (kanji red, hiragana blue, katakana green, rōmaji and Arabic numerals black): :ラドクリフ、マラソン五輪代表に１万ｍ出場にも含み :radokurifu, marason gorin daihyō ni ichi-man mētoru shutsujō ni mo fukumi :"Radcliffe, Olympic marathon contestant, will also appear in the 10,000 m" Here are some examples of words written in Japanese: Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent gojūon (fifty-sound), or the old-fashioned iroha, ordering. Chinese character dictionaries are also collated using the radical system.

Usage of scripts

The bulk of Japanese text is usually written in either kanji or hiragana, with some katakana. Kanji (漢字) are used to write, for example,
- nouns,
- stems of adjectives and verbs, and
- Japanese names. See the article kanji for full details. Hiragana (平仮名) are used to write, for example,
- inflectional endings for adjectives and verbs (okurigana 送り仮名),
- grammatical particles (joshi 助詞),
- Japanese words that have no kanji, or where the kanji are difficult to read, and
- indications of how to read kanji (furigana 振り仮名). See the article hiragana for full details. Katakana (片仮名) are used to write, for example,
- foreign words and names,
- onomatopoeia,
- emphasized words, much like italicized words in English text, and
- technical and scientific words, such as plant, animal, and mineral names. See the article katakana for full details. Rōmaji (ローマ字) are Roman characters, used to write
- acronyms and initialisms, for example NATO;
- Japanese names or other words intended for use outside of Japan (for example, Japanese names on business cards, in passports, etc.);
- company names, brand names or product names, etc. used both inside and outside of Japan; and
- foreign words and phrases that appear in an otherwise Japanese context, such as words that appear in advertising, on consumer goods intended for Japanese consumption, etc. See the article rōmaji for details. However, there are many exceptions to the above rules. For example, Japanese names may be written in kanji, hiragana or katakana. For full details, see the respective articles. In addition, Arabic numerals are commonly used to write numbers in horizontal text, and Roman letters are used for acronyms, international units of measurement, etc.

Choice of script

All words in Japanese can be written in either katakana, hiragana, or rōmaji. Most words also have a kanji form. The choice of which type of writing to use depends on lots of factors. Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the meaning of the word, and in some cases the distinction is difficult enough that an author will write the word in hiragana to avoid the possible error of choosing the wrong kanji.

Direction of writing

Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called tategaki. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom. The columns are ordered from right to left, so at the bottom of each column the reader returns to the top of the next column on the left of the preceeding one. This copies the column order of Chinese. Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called yokogaki. This writing format is identical to that of European languages such as English, with characters arranged in rows which are read from left to right, with successive rows going downwards.

Early writing system

The current Japanese writing system can be traced back to the 4th century AD, when the written Chinese language was introduced to Japan. Although several kinds of supposedly earlier writing called kamiyo moji (神代文字, lit. 'age of the gods writing') have been found, some vaguely pictographic, some runic in appearance, and some very close to Korean Hangul, none have been conclusively proven to be genuine, and no definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates the introduction of Chinese is known to exist. Some kamiyo moji examples can be found [http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/tsuzuki/sinmoji.htm here] (Japanese only). Initially, Chinese characters were not used for writing Japanese; to be literate meant the ability to read and write Classical Chinese. Eventually a system called kanbun (漢文) was developed, which used both Chinese characters (kanji) and something very similar to Chinese grammar, but often with diacritic marks placed alongside the Chinese text to give hints as to the Japanese equivalent. The earliest written history of Japan, the Kojiki (古事記), believed to have been compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Japanese schoolchildren are still taught introductory classes in kanbun. There was still no system for rendering Japanese in written form until the development of man'yōgana (万葉仮名), which used Chinese characters for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the Man'yōshū (万葉集), which was compiled sometime before 759, and from which the writing system derives its name. Hiragana and katakana were both outgrowths from man'yōgana. Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan from China which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese. This Chinese-derived reading is known as on-yomi (音読み), and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as kun-yomi (訓読み). A kanji may have none, one, or several on-yomi and kun-yomi. Okurigana are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character 行 is read i as the first syllable of iku (行く) 'to go', okona as the first three syllables of okonau (行う, "to carry out"), gyō in the compound word gyōretsu (行列, "line" or "procession"), kō in the word ginkō (銀行, "bank"), and an in the word andon (行灯, "lantern"). Linguists have sometimes compared Japan's borrowing and adaptation of Chinese words into Japanese as similar to the effect that the Norman conquest of the British Isles had on the English language. Like English, Japanese has many synonyms of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. In another similarity, words of Chinese origin are often used in more formal or intellectual contexts by Japanese speakers, just as English speakers often use latinate words to mark a higher register.

Written language reforms

Meiji period

The significant reforms of the 19th century Meiji era did not initially impact on the Japanese writing system, however the language itself was changing due to the increase in literacy resulting from education reforms, the massive influx of new words; both borrowed from other languages or newly coined, and the ultimate success of movements such as the influential 言文一致 (genbun'itchi) which resulted in written Japanese being in the colloquial form of the language instead of the wide range of historical and classical styles used previously.The difficulty of written Japanese was a topic of debate, with several proposals in the late 1800s that the number of kanji in use be limited. In addition, exposure to non-Japanese texts led to (unsuccessful) proposals that Japanese be written entirely in kana or romaji. This period saw Western-style punctuation marks introduced into Japanese writing (Twine, 1991). In 1900, the Education Ministry introduced three reforms aimed at improving the education in Japanese writing:
- standardization of the hiragana script, eliminating the range of hentaigana (変体仮名) then in use;
- restriction of the number of kanji taught in elementary schools to about 1,200;
- reform of the irregular kana representation of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji to make them conform with the pronunciation. The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by conservatives, to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908 (Seeley, 1991).

Pre-WWII

The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented further significant reform of the writing system. The period before World War II saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of furigana, however there was no official endorsement of these, and indeed much opposition.

Post-WWII

The period immediately following World War II saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of conservatives from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were:
- the alignment of all kana usage with modern pronunciation (現代仮名遣い gendaikanazukai), replacing the old historical kana usage (1946);
- the promulgation of the tōyō kanji (当用漢字), which limited the number of kanji used in schools, textbooks, etc. to 1,850 (1946);
- the promulgation of an approved set of forms of kanji to be used in schools (1949);
- the promulgation of an additional jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字) which in combination with the tōyō kanji could be used in names (1951). (At one stage there was a proposal from an advisor in the Occupation administration to change the writing system to rōmaji, however it was not supported by other specialists and did not proceed.) (Unger, 1996) In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in a right-to-left direction was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g. the station sign at Tokyo read 駅京東). This order is still seen on the right (or starboard) side of some commercial vehicles, ships, etc., where it is used so that the text runs from the front of the vehicle to the back (or from bow to stern) on both sides. The post-war reforms have remained, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the tōyō kanji in 1981 with the 1,945 jōyō kanji (常用漢字) was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in continued reform of the writing system (Gottlieb, 1996). In 2004, a large increase was made in the number of kanji in the jinmeiyō kanji (this list is the responsibility of the Justice Ministry.)

Nuances of the writing system

The Japanese writing system allows for transmitting information that is usually communicated in other languages by using different words or by adding extra descriptive words. For example, kanji watashi or watakushi 私 "I" is often used in formal writing and by both sexes. Hiragana watashi わたし tends to be used by females in informal writing such as a diary or a letter to a friend. Katakana watashi ワタシ is used only rarely. Rōmaji watashi is never used, except perhaps in an all-rōmaji context. Kanji compounds can also be given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes. For example, in Natsume Soseki's short story The Fifth Night, the author uses 接続って for tsunagatte, the gerundive -te form of the verb tsunagaru ('to connect'), which would usually be written 繋がって or つながって. See also furigana for more details.

Romanization

Main article: Romaji. There are a number of methods of rendering Japanese in Roman letters. The Hepburn method of romanization, designed for English speakers, is a de facto standard widely used inside and outside Japan (and used in the English Wikipedia). The Kunrei-shiki system has a better correspondence with kana, making it easier for the Japanese themselves to learn; it is officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, but rarely used outside Japan. Other systems of romanization include Nihon-shiki, JSL, and Wāpuro.

References

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External links

- [http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/unger2_introduction.html#modern_japanese The Modern Japanese Writing System]: an excerpt from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan, by J. Marshall Unger. ja:日本語の表記体系

Hiragana

are a Japanese syllabary, one of the three main Japanese writing systems, along with katakana and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one mora. Each kana is either a vowel (such as a あ), a consonant followed by a vowel (such as ka か), or ん, a consonant which sounds like English "m" or "n". Hiragana are used for words for which there are no kanji, for example particles such as kara から and suffixes such as ~san さん. Hiragana are also used for words for which the kanji form is not known to the writer, is not expected to be known to the readers, or is too formal for the writing purpose. Verb and adjective inflections, for example in , are written in hiragana. Hiragana are also used to give the pronunciation of kanji in a reading aid called furigana. The article Japanese writing system discusses in detail when the various systems of writing are used. There are two main systems of ordering hiragana, the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

The hiragana writing system

The hiragana consist of a basic set of characters, the gojūon , which can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ゛ an unvoiced consonant such as k or t is turned into a voiced consonant such as g or d: k→g, t→d, s→z, and h→b. Hiragana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker ゜ changing the h to a p. A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide palatalization. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. A small tsu っ called a sokuon indicates a geminate (doubled) consonant. It appears before fricatives and stops, and sometimes at the end of sentences. This is represented in rōmaji by doubling the following consonant. In informal writing small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ, ねぇ). There are a few hiragana which are rarely used. Wi ゐ and we ゑ are obsolete. Vu ゔ is a relatively modern addition and is pronounced as bwu or to approximate the "v" sound in foreign languages such as English. It is rarely seen because transliterated words are usually written in katakana.

Table of hiragana

The following table shows hiragana together with their Hepburn romanization. The obsolete kana are shown in red. Others: ti = te + small i tta = small tsu + ta tti = small tsu + ti ttsu = small tsu + tsu tte = small tsu + te kka = small tsu + ka kki = small tsu + ki kku = small tsu + ku kke = small tsu + ke kko = small tsu + ko To spell something longer (for example -kô- instead of -ko-) add a small -u- behind. (Only for the letters o and u) To make for example -kê- out of -ke- add a small -e- behind. And to make for example -kâ- out of -ka- add a small -a- behind. An -î- doesn't exist, so you can write an -ii- (or -kii-, etc.) normally.

Spelling rules

With a few exceptions for sentence particles は, を, and へ and a few other arbitrary rules, Japanese is spelled as it sounds. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage had many spelling rules; the exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system. The exact spelling rules are referred to as , "kana use". There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ). These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example chijimeru (‘to boil down’ or ‘to shrink’) is spelled ちぢめる. For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi (血 "blood") is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana (“nose”) and 血 combine to make hanaji 鼻血 "nose bleed"), the sound of 血changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled はなぢ according to ち: the basic hiragana used to transcribe 血. Similarly, Tsukau (使う; "to use") is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai (かな使い; "kana use" .. or .. "kana orthography") is spelled かなづかい in hiragana. However, this does not apply when kanji are used to make words which do not relate directly to their elemental meaning. The Japanese word for ‘lightning’, for example, is inazuma (稲妻). The ‘稲’ component means ‘rice plant’, is written いな in hiragana and is pronounced: ina. The 妻 component means ’wife’ and is pronounced tsuma (つま) when written in isolation or frequently as zuma (ずま) when it features after another syllable. Neither of these components have anything to do with ‘lightning’, but together they do when they compose the word for ‘lightning’. In this case, the default spelling in hiragana いなずま rather than いなづま is used. Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The chōon (vowel extender mark) (ー) used in katakana is also sometimes used in hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, ramen. A word cannot begin with the kana ん (n). This is at the basis of the word game shiritori. However, n is sometimes directly followed by a vowel. For example, ren'ai 恋愛 ("emotion") is written in hiragana as れんあい

Kanji

History

Types of kanji: categorized by history

Kokuji

Kokkun

Old characters and new characters

Readings

On'yomi (Chinese reading)

Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)

Other readings

When to use which reading

Pronunciation assistance

Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

Kyōiku kanji

Jōyō kanji

Jinmeiyō kanji

Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji

Gaiji

Total number of kanji characters

Types of Kanji: by Category

象形文字 (shōkeimoji)

指事文字 (shijimoji)

会意文字 (kaiimoji)

形声文字 (keiseimoji)

転注文字 (tenchūmoji)

仮借文字 (kashamoji)

Related symbols

Kanji Kentei

See also

References

External links

Kanji bush

References

Han Dynasty

The Emergence

Taoism and Feudal System

Emperor Wu and Confucianism

Beginning of the Silk Road

Rise of landholding class

Interruption of Han rule

Rise and Fall of Eastern Han Dynasty

Sovereigns of Han Dynasty

External links

Japanese language

Classification

Geographic distribution

Official status

Dialects

Sounds

Grammar

Politeness

Vocabulary

Writing system

Learning Japanese

See also

External links

Bibliography

Japanese writing

Usage of scripts

Choice of script

Direction of writing

Early writing system

Written language reforms

Meiji period

Pre-WWII

Post-WWII

Nuances of the writing system

Romanization

See also

Lettering styles

Variant writing systems

References

External links

Hiragana

The hiragana writing system

Table of hiragana

Spelling rules