Japanese writing system

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The writing system modern Japan uses a combination of logographic kanji, which adopts Chinese characters, and syllables. Cana itself consists of a pair of syllables: hiragana, used primarily for native Japanese words and naturalization and grammatical elements, and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loan words, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to the large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is often regarded as the most complex used anywhere in the world.

Several thousand characters of kanji are being used regularly. Each has intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice depending on the context. Japanese elementary and junior high school students are required to study 2,136 j? Y? kanji in 2010. The total number of kanji is over 50,000, although few if any native speakers know anywhere near this number.

In modern Japanese, hiragana and katakana syllables each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. With one or two small exceptions, each sound is different in Japanese (ie, each different syllable, strictly each mora) corresponding to one character in each syllable. Unlike kanji, these characters are intrinsically representative of sound; they convey meaning only as part of the words. Hiragana and katakana characters are also originally derived from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified in such a way that their origins are no longer visually clear. The principle of the syllable script itself is allegedly borrowed from the Siddharta Sanskrit manuscript of India.

Text without rare kanji; most are children's books - because children tend to know little kanji at an early age - and early electronics such as computers, phones and videogames, which can not display complex graphemes like kanji because of the limitations of graphics and technology.

Although rare, there are several words that use the three scripts in the same word. An example of this is the term ??? ( R? Maji : kunoichi ), which uses hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters, in that order. It is said that if all three characters are placed in the same "square" kanji, they all combine to make kanji? (women). Another example is ???? (R? Maji: keshigomu ) which means "eraser", and uses kanji, hiragana, and two katakana characters, in that order.

To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses the acronyms of the Latin alphabet, for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese is most often used by Japanese foreign students who have not mastered kana, and by native speakers for computer input.

Video Japanese writing system

Use of the script

Kanji

Kanji ( ?? ) is used to write mostly original Japanese or (originally) original content words, including:

• most nouns, like? ( kawa , "river") and ?? ( gakk? , "school")
• the stem of most verbs and adjectives, like? in ?? ( mi-ru , "see") and? in ?? ( shiro-i , "white")
• the stem of many adverbs, like? in ?? ( my haya , "fast") and ?? as in ??? ( j? zu-de , "advanced")
• most of the personal names and names of Japanese places, like ?? ( Tanaka ) and ?? ( T? ky? ). (Certain names can be written in hiragana or katakana, or some combination of these and kanji.)

Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific use of the word - for example, the word naosu (to correct, or to heal) is written ? ? when referring to someone heal, and ?? when referring to fix the object.

Most kanji have more than one possible pronunciation (or "read"), and some common kanji have many. Unusual or non-standard readings can be polished using furigana. Kanji compounds are sometimes given random readings for style purposes. For example, in Natsume S's short story? Seki Fifth Night , the author uses ???? for tsunagatte , gerundive -te form of the verb tsunagaru ("connect"), which is usually written as ???? or ????? . The word ?? , which means "connection", usually pronounced setsuzoku .

There is even a kanji term that has a recitation unrelated to on'yomi or kun'yomi of the individual kanji in that term, such as ?? ( ashita , "tomorrow") and ?? ( otona, "adult" ).

Hiragana

Hiragana ( ??? ) is used to write the following:

• okurigana ( ???? ) - the inflexional tip for adjectives and verbs - such as as? in ?? ( miru , "see") and? in ?? ( shiroi , "white"), and respectively? and ??? in the past tense inflection ?? ( mita , "see") and ???? ( shirokatta , "white").
• various function words, including most grammatical particles, or postposition ( joshi ( ) ) - small , usually common words that, for example, mark the topic of a sentence, subject, and object or have a purpose similar to English prepositions such as "in", "to", "from", "by", and "for".
• various other words of various types that have no grammatical translation of kanji, or the promise is not clear, difficult to set, or considered too difficult to understand (as in children's books).
• furigana ( ???? ) - a kanji phonetic rendering placed above or next to the kanji character. Furigana can help children or non-native speakers or clarify nonstandard, rare or ambiguous readings, especially for words that use kanji not part of j? Y? kanji list.

There is also some flexibility for words with more general kanji interpretations to be written instead of in hiragana, depending on the preference of each author (all Japanese words can be spelled entirely in hiragana or katakana, even when they are usually written using kanji). Some words are written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them a more formal tone, while hiragana can give a softer or more emotional feeling. For example, the Japanese word "kawaii", the Japanese equivalent of "funny", can be written entirely in hiragana as in ????, or as a kanji term ???.

Some lexical items that are usually written using kanji have become grammatical in certain contexts, where they are instead written in hiragana. For example, the root of verbs ?? ( miru , "see") are usually written with kanji? However, when used as a suffix which means "try", the whole verb is usually written in hiragana like, as in ????? ( tabetemiru , "try eating it and see").

Katakana

Katakana ( ??? ) is used to write the following:

• transliteration of foreign words and names, such as ?????? ( konpy? ta , "computer") and ???? ( Rondon , "London"). (Some naturalized foreign loans may not be given in katakana.) See also Transcription into Japanese.
• the names of animals and plants commonly used, like ??? ( tokage , "lizard") and ?? ( bara , "roses"), and certain other technical and scientific terms, such as the mineral name
• occasionally, the names of various other objects that the kanjinya rare, like ???? ( r? soku , "candles")
• onomatopoeia, like ???? ( wan-wan , "woof-woof"), and other sound symbolism
Emphasis is
• , like italization in European languages.

Katakana can also be used to embed the idea that words are spoken with a foreign or unusual accent; for example, robot speech.

R? maji

The Latin alphabet is used to write the following:

• Latin-alphabet acronyms and initialisms, such as NATO or UFO
• Japanese personal names, corporate brands, and other words intended for international use (for example, on business cards, passports, etc.)
• foreign names, words, and phrases, often in a scientific context
• foreign words deliberately given to instill foreign flavors, for example, in a commercial context
• any other Japanese word originating or derived from a foreign language, such as J ??? ( jei r? gu , "J. League"), T ??? ( t? shatsu , "T-shirt") or B ???? ( b? -ky? gurume , "B-ranking gourmet (cheap and local cuisine)")

Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals (as opposed to traditional kanji numbers) are commonly used to write numbers in horizontal text. See also Japanese figures.

Hentaigana

Hentaigana ( ???? ) , an ancient set of obsolescence made by Meiji reforms, sometimes used to instilling the old taste, as in the food (especially buckwheat).

Additional mechanisms

Jukujikun refers to instances where words are written using kanji that reflect the meaning of the word even though the word pronunciation is entirely unrelated to the common pronunciation of the constituent > kanji . By contrast, ateji refers to the use of kanji which appears solely to represent the sound of compound words but conceptually, in no way related to word marking. Such an oddity, combined with the need for the furigana , a script component that lists other script components for non-graduate assistance, led the linguist and British diplomat Sir George Sansom to write:

One hesitates for the nickname to describe a very complex writing system that needs the help of another system to explain it. There is no doubt that it provides some interesting areas of study, but as a practical instrument, it is certainly without inferior.

Example

Here is an example of a newspaper title (from Asahi Shimbun on April 19, 2004) which uses all three Japanese script ( kanji (red) , hiragana (blue) , katakana (green) ), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals (black):

The same title, transliterated to the Latin alphabet ( r? Maji ):

Same title, translated to English:

Below is a further example of the words written in Japanese, all of which are a reasonable way to write sample words.

Statistics

The statistical analysis of the Japanese newspaper corpus Asahi Shimbun from 1993 (about 56.6 million tokens) revealed:

Maps Japanese writing system

Collation

Collation (word sequencing) in Japanese is based on kana, which expresses the pronunciation of words, not kanji. The kana can be ordered using two general order, booking goj? On (fifty votes), or ordering the ancient iroha . The Kanji dictionary is usually compiled using a radical system, although other systems, such as SKIP, also exist.

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Writing direction

Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called tategaki ( ??? ) , inspired by traditional Chinese systems. In this format, characters are written in columns from top to bottom, with columns being sorted from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one.

The modern Japanese language also uses another writing format, called yokogaki ( ??? ) . The format of this paper is horizontal and is read from left to right, as in English.

A book printed in tategaki opens with the book's back on the right, while the book printed on the yokogaki opens with the spine to the left.

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Spaces and punctuation

Japanese is usually written without spaces between words, and text is allowed to wrap from one line to the next without regard to word boundaries. This convention was originally modeled on Chinese writing, where distance is excessive because each character is essentially a word of its own (though it is a common compound). However, in kana and kana mixture/kanji text, Japanese readers should find out where the word sharing is based on an understanding of what makes sense. For example, ????????????? should be mentally divided as ??? ? ???? ? ???? ? ( Anata wa okaasan ni sokkuri ne , "You are like your mother"). In romaji, it can sometimes be ambiguous whether a thing should be transliterated as two words or one. For example, ???, "to love", consists of? ( ai , "love") and ?? ( suru , "to do", here the verb-forming endings), are variously transliterated as aisuru or ai suru .

Words in unknown foreign compounds, usually transliterated in katakana, can be separated by punctuation called nakaguro (??, "midpoint") to help Japanese readers. As an example, ?????? (Bill Gates). This punctuation is also sometimes used to separate the original Japanese words, especially in the incorporation of kanji characters in which there may be confusion or ambiguity about the interpretation, and especially for the full name of the person.

The Japanese full stop (?) And coma (?) Used for purposes similar to their equivalent English, although the use of coma can be more fluid than it does in English. Question marks (?) Not used in traditional or formal Japanese, but can be used in informal writing, or in transcription dialogs where it may not be obvious that a statement is questionable. Exclamation mark (!) Limited to informal writing. Colons and semicolons are available but not common in plain text. Quotes written as?...?, and multilevel quotes as?...? Some styles and bracket lines are available.

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History of Japanese script

Import kanji

Japan's first encounter with Chinese characters may have come as early as the 1st century with the golden seal of King Na, which was said to have been given by Emperor Guangwu of Han in 57 CE for a Japanese envoy. However, it is unlikely that Japan became literate in Chinese writing earlier than the 4th century.

Initially Chinese characters were not used to writing Japanese, because literacy means fluency in Classical Chinese, not colloquial. Finally a system called kanbun ( ?? ) developed, which, together with kanji and something very similar to the Chinese, used diacritics to hint at Japanese translations. The earliest written history of Japanese, Kojiki ( ??? ) , compiled sometime before 712, is written in canbun. Even today Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of the curriculum.

The development of man'y? gana

There is no complete written script for written Japanese that exists until the development of man'y? Gana ( ???? ) , which uses kanji for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese reading) rather than its semantic value. Man'y? Gana was originally used to record poetry, as in Man'y? Sh? ( ??? ) , compiled sometime before 759, from which the writing system gets its name. Modern kana, hiragana and katakana, is simplification and man'y systemation? Gana.

Due to the many words and concepts that enter Japan from China that do not have the original equivalent, many words come directly into Japanese, with pronunciation similar to the original Chinese. This Chinese reading is known as on'yomi ( ??? ) , and this vocabulary as a whole is called as Sino-Japanese in English and kango ( ?? ) in Japanese. At the same time, the original Japanese already had words that fit many borrowed kanji. More and more authors use kanji to represent these words. This Japanese reading is known as kun'yomi ( ??? ) . A kanji may not have one, one, or several di'yomi and kun'yomi. Okurigana is written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help differentiate certain kanji readings. The same character can be read in several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character ? read i as the first syllable iku ( ?? , "to go") , okona as the first three syllables okonau ( ?? , "to implement") , gy? in compound words gy? retsu ( ?? , "line" or "procession") , k? in the word gink? ( ?? , "bank") , and an in the word andon ( ?? , "lantern") .

Some linguists have compared the Japanese borrowing of Chinese vocabulary as a result of Roman's vocabulary entry into English during Norman's conquest of England. Like English, Japanese has many synonyms of different origins, with words from Chinese and native Japanese. Sino-Japanese are often considered more formal or literary, just as latent words in English often mark higher lists.

Script updates

Meiji Period

Significant reforms from the Meiji era of the 19th century initially had no impact on the Japanese writing system. However, the language itself changes due to the increase in literacy resulting from educational reform, the inclusion of large-scale words (borrowed from other languages ​​or newly created), and the ultimate success of movements such as those influencing genbun'itchi ( ???? ) that causes Japanese to be written in everyday language rather than the various historical and classical styles used previous. The written Japanese difficulty was a topic of debate, with some proposals in the late 1800s that the number of kanji used to be limited. In addition, non-Japanese text exposures led to failed proposals that Japan was written entirely in kana or r? Maji. This period saw Western-style punctuation introduced into Japanese writing.

In 1900, the Ministry of Education introduced three reforms aimed at improving education in Japanese writing:

• standardize hiragana, eliminating the range of hentaigana which is then used;
• the limitation of the number of kanji taught in primary school to about 1,200;
• reformed the irregular kana representation of the Sino-Japanese readings of the kanji to make it fit the pronunciation.

The first two are generally accepted, but the third is contested, especially by conservatives, so far withdrawn in 1908.

Pre-World War II

The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented the reform of a more significant writing system. The period before World War II saw many proposals to limit the number of kanji used, and some newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji use and increased the use of furigana; However, there is no official support for this, and there are many contradictions. However, one successful reform is the standardization of hiragana, which involves reducing the possibility of writing Japanese morae to only one hiragana per morae character, leading to the labeling of all hiragana previously used as a hentaigana and disposing of it in daily use.

Post World War II

The period immediately after World War II saw the rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This is partly due to the influence of the Occupying authority, but is significantly attributable to the conservative abolition of the control of the education system, which means that previously stalled revisions may continue. Major reforms are:

• gendaikanazukai ( ?????? ) - alignment of kana use with modern pronunciation, replacing use of old historical kana (1946);
• dissemination of various restricted sets of kanji:
  • t? y? kanji ( ???? ) (1946), collection of 1850 characters for use in schools, textbooks, etc.;
  • kanji used in school (1949);
  • additional collection jinmeiy? kanji ( ????? ) , which complements t? y? kanji , can be used for personal names (1951);
• simplification of various complex kanji letters shinjitai ( ??? ) .

At one stage an adviser in the Occupation Administration proposed a wholesale conversion to r? Maji; However it is not supported by other specialists and is not continued.

In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in the right-to-left direction is generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left hand is considered a special case of vertical writing, with a column of one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it is used for a single line of text on the sign, etc. (eg a station mark in Tokyo reading ??? ).

Postwar reforms are largely persistent, although some restrictions have been relaxed. Replacement of t? Y? kanji in 1981 with 1,945 j? y? kanji ( ???? ) - modified from t? y? kanji - accompanied by changes from "restrictions" to "recommendations", and in general education authorities become less active in further manuscript reform.

In 2004, jinmeiy? kanji ( ????? ) , administered by the Ministry of Justice for use in personal names, is significantly enlarged. The j? Y? the kanji list was extended to 2,136 characters in 2010.

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Romanization

Source of the article : Wikipedia