Japanese language

From Sonic Retro

The Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. The Japanese name for the language is Nihongo (日本語).

Official status

Japanese is the only official language of Japan, and Japan is the only country to have Japanese as an official language. There are two forms of the language considered standard: hyōjungo 標準語 or standard Japanese, and kyōtsūgo 共通語 or the common language. As government policy has modernized Japan 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.

Because it is Japan's only official language and there are few foreign Japanese speakers, the language is heavily tied to Japanese culture and vice-versa. There are many Japanese words describing certain Japanese cultural ideas, traditions, and customs (e.g., wa, nemawashi, kaizen, seppuku), which do not have corresponding words in other languages. Understanding the Japanese language requires knowledge of Japanese society.

Sounds

The Japanese sound system is relatively simple, compared to most languages. Syllables generally consist of at most one consonant and one vowel. There are 5 vowel and 17 consonant phonemes (compared to 15 vowels and 22 consonants in English). Japanese syllables consist of:

• Optionally, an initial consonant, chosen from the 15 consonant phonemes not including ʔ and ɴ,
• A vowel, which may be short or long, and
• Optionally, either ɴ or ʔ, the glottal stop. (Note that the latter can only occur preceding subsequent syllables in the same word beginning with the k, s, t, and p phoneme. This is often referred to as a doubled consonant.)