Hello everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus channel, and my name is Paul. Today's topic is, The Japanese language. Or ❝Nihongo (日本語)❞
as it's called in Japanese. Japanese has around 126 million
native speakers. Making it the 9th
most spoken language in the world, if we focus on native speakers alone. It's spoken mainly in the North-East
Asian nation of Japan. And also to a limited extent
in some emigrant communities and among some elderly people
living in Japan's former colonies like Korea and Taiwan. Japanese belongs to
the "Japonic" language family which also includes the endangered
"Ryukyuan" languages of Okinawa and the Amami Islands. But the early history of Japanese and its relationship to other
languages is largely unknown. There are theories that
the Japanese and Korean languages share a common ancestor. And there are theories
that Japanese and Korean are part of a wider language family called the Altaic language family. Which also includes the Turkic languages, Mongolian, and the Tungusic languages. But, the Altaic language family,
and the connection between Japanese and Korean are theoretic. They're hotly debated
and are not generally accepted. There are also theories,
that Japanese arose from contact between the language
of the Yayoi people, who migrated from
the North-East Asian mainland Into Japan 2- 3000 years go. And the language or languages
of the Jomon people who were already living there? But, the nature of the language is
that these 2 groups of people spoke is not clearly known? Japanese was not a written language in its early history, during the Yayoi period. Which leaves us very little
evidence of what it was actually like during that time. In the 3rd century CE,
the Yamato state in Japan established relations with China.
And the next 600 years would be a period of
heavy Chinese influence. During which the rulers
and the elite thought that emulates many aspects of
Chinese culture. Written Chinese was probably
introduced to Japan in the 4th Century. And since Japanese had no written form, "Classical Chinese became
the first literary language" used by the elite. Later, "Chinese characters"
began being adapted to "write Japanese." The earliest examples
we have of Japanese writing are from the 8th century and there are 2 forms.
Kanbun (漢文) Kanbun (漢文) And, Man'yōgana (万葉仮名) Man'yōgana (万葉仮名) kanbun was the writing of
Japanese in "Classical Chinese style," using Chinese characters to represent the meaning of Japanese words. these texts were essentially Chinese, but were "intended to be
readable in Japanese." Man'yōgana was a way of
writing Japanese entirely in Chinese characters, with most of the "characters representing
the phonetic sound" of the underlying Japanese syllables. For example, The Japanese word for
"mountain" - yama - was written using
these 2 Chinese characters: for their phonetic value, rather than using the Chinese character. Which means mountain,
which is the character used today? And not only one Chinese character
was used for each sound. Numerous different characters could be used to represent the same sound. For example, the syllables "ka" could be
represented by any of the following characters: Writing Japanese characters
phonetically using Chinese characters that had no connection to
the meaning, must have felt like a lot of
unnecessary hard work. So, 2 systems of simplified
phonetic characters developed from the
Man'yōgana system in the 8th and 9th centuries in order to simplify the writing process. These 2 systems were ❝Hiragana (ひらがな)❞
and ❝Katakana (カタカナ)❞ one of the main uses of these new ❝Kana (仮名)❞ systems was to
annotate ❝Kanbun (漢文)❞ text. So, that Japanese speakers
could read these classical Chinese or Chinese style texts
as though they were Japanese. Chinese characters represented
the meaning of the content words while Kana provided the pronunciation, as well as the grammatical
elements and inflections that were not present in Chinese. Some diacritic marks also indicated how to
change the word order when reading the text in Japanese. This method of annotating
Chinese texts with "Kana" was the precursor to
the Modern Japanese writing system. Through this process of
trying to make written Chinese language fit with the spoken Japanese language, a huge amount of Chinese
vocabulary entered Japanese. Chinese characters were sometimes annotated to be pronounced
with their Chinese pronunciation. Known as ❝ON-YOMI (音読み)❞ and
sometimes pronounced as a native Japanese word
with a similar meaning. These pronunciations
are known as ❝KUN-YOMI (訓読み)❞ Such Chinese words have
become an integral part of Japanese, comprising 60% of the total
vocabulary (particularly in writing). During the Late Middle Japanese period, from the year 1185 to 1600. Japanese continued to
develop and moved closer towards Modern Japanese phonologically in particular. Towards the end of this time period,
In the year 1543 the first Europeans visited Japan. And some European vocabulary,
entered Japanese through contact with traders and missionaries. This contact mostly came to a halt during the ❝period of national isolation❞ from 1603-1853. During this time, contact with foreigners
was strictly limited to a couple of specific places,
like the Dutch trading post ❝Dejima❞ in Nagasaki. A significant number of Dutch loanwords did entered Japanese during this time period, some of them common everyday words. Like; "garasu (ガラス),"
from "glas." "ranpu (ランプ),"
from "lamp." "kōhī (コーヒー),"
from "koffie." "koppu (コップ),"
from "kop" (cup). These words are examples of
❝gairaigo (外来語)❞ loanwords aside from Chinese
borrowings and compounds normally loanwords
from European languages. Which are normally written in Katakana. This period of isolation took place
during the Edo Period during which the capital moved
from Kansai to Edo. Present-day Tokyo.
And the Edo dialect became the standard variety of Japanese. After this period of isolation ended in 1853, interaction with the outside
world greatly increased. And this affected
the Japanese language as it entered the Meiji Period. The number of gairaigo began to Increase. But even more than that many new compound words
were created from Chinese characters, and pronounced using
their Chinese pronunciation, the "ON-yomi" pronunciation. These new compounds words,
were created to represent new Western concepts, as well as advanced
academic vocabulary in the arts, sciences, math, and technology. These new words that
were coined using Chinese characters are referred to as
"wasei kango (和製漢語)" Which means something like,
"Japan-made Chinese words." Since the end of World WarⅡ, Japanese has adopted
a large number of gairaigo, in particular from English. Some of these represent
everyday modern concepts, like; コンピューター (konpyūtā)
"computer." And others represent
specialized vocabulary of academia and technology. During the Meiji period,
such specialized vocabulary would have probably been
created from Chinese compounds. But in recent decades,
English has been a much bigger source of new vocabularies. Varieties of Japanese. Standard Japanese today is
based on the dialect of Tokyo. But there are also
numerous unique and colorful regional and local dialects as well. There are the distinctive
dialects of the Kansai region, which other Japanese people often
associate with comedy. Then there are the dialects of Tohoku (which a lot of people have
trouble understanding). And there are the dialects of Okinawa which retains some
"elements of" the area's old "Ryukyuan" languages.
And many more. Almost everywhere you go in Japan there is a distinctive local dialect. The dialects of today are much
closer to Standard Japanese than they were in the past. There are still some people
who speak full-on traditional dialects: in particular older people,
working class people, and people in the countryside. Basically, if someone meets
at least two of those criteria that person probably uses much more dialectal speech than a lot of other people. The majority of people speak something close to Standard Japanese. But, with some elements
from the traditional dialect. And when speaking politely to strangers or informal situations people
tend to avoid dialectal speech. So, what is Japanese like? phonology. The basics of Japanese
phonology are quite simple. There are only 5 vowels in Japanese. あ
a い
i う
u え
e お
o There are also long versions of these vowels. あー
ā いー
ī うー
ū えー
ē おー
ō The distinction between
short and long vowels is important to the meaning of words. Japanese vowels are always
fully articulated, and are not reduced like they sometimes are in English. The consonants of
Japanese are for the most part similar to those of English, and cause few problems for learners. Japanese syllables basically all end in a vowel. This makes pronunciation fairly simple. Because there are a few consonant clusters. You normally don't have to pronounce multiple consonants side by side. There are a couple of exceptions to this, one is doubled consonants. For example the word, 学校 "school"
gakkou if we pronounce these
characters separately they are ga"k"u + "k"ou But because the consonants
in these 2 syllables, is the same, they merge together, as
1 lengthened consonant. Written with a small letter, 2 between them, to indicate that you hold the consonant for twice as long. you don't say "gaku-kou" But, ga"kk"ou
が "っ" こう another exception is
having a nasal sound followed by another consonant. The nasal sound ん Functions as its own syllable without a vowel. So, we have words like, かんぱい
乾杯 (kanpai) Which means, cheers. To be completely precise, each
Japanese Kana character, represents a rhythmic unit
called a "mora", rather than a syllable. So, in the word; Ka-n-pa-i
かんぱい There are 4 distinct, mora. But if we think of it in terms of syllables, It has just 2 syllables. And in this word, ga-k-ko-u
がっこう There are 4 moras. But, in terms of syllables, it just has 2. So, there are a couple of situations, when a syllable doesn't end in a vowel. But, for the most part,
syllables end in vowels. This becomes very clear,
when you look at some of the gairaigo foreign loanwords in Japanese. in English there's "cake,"
but in Japanese it's― ケーキ (kēki)
With the vowel, "e" at the end. And notice the long vowel is
much more distinct in Japanese. Another example, in English
”hard disk" in Japanese― ハードディスク (hādodisuku) And here's a bit of a wild example, how do you say "McDonald's" in Japanese? マクドナルド (makudonarudo) This aspect of Japanese phonology,
may make it a little bewildered to use loanwords from English,
or other languages. But it makes it easier to pronounce
native Japanese words. One aspect of Japanese phonology that can be challenging for
learners is pitch accent. This is something that
a lot of learning materials don't even mention at all. Japanese moras have either
a high pitch or a low pitch. With the high pitch representing
the accent of a word. There are cases when pitch accent indicates a distinction and meaning. For example; はし
端 Meaning, "end." This word has an accent, on the second mora. はし
橋 "bridge." This word has an accent, on the first mora. And― はし
箸 Meaning, "chop-sticks." And this word has an accent, on the second mora. Pitch accent also differs depending on
the dialect of the speaker. For learners, incorrect pitch accent rarely creates problems for communication, but it does give you a distinct foreign accent. Word Order. The basic word order of Japanese is SOV. Subject - Object - Verb. With the verb coming at the end. In English we have,
Paul ate takoyaki. Or Paul ate (some) takoyaki. But let's keep it simple for now, in Japanese this sentence is― ポールがたこ焼きを食べた
Pōru ga takoyaki o tabeta Takoyaki by the way,
are fried octopus dumplings. Here's the subject, followed by
the ❝subject marker=が(ga)❞ then the object, followed by
the ❝object marker=を(o)❞ and here's the verb. but in Japanese, various elements of
the sentence can be dropped if they are obvious from the context. If you're speaking about yourself,
and you say たこ焼きを食べた
takoyaki o tabeta With no subjects,
this is understood as meaning, "I ate takoyaki." But if you're speaking
about your brother, then it would be understood
as, "He ate Takoyaki." Or if somebody asks, who ate the Takoyaki? the answer might be― 私が食べた
watashi ga tabeta Meaning, "I ate (it)." Even though the object is not mentioned. Again, the object is obvious from the context. Or let's say you ask Micky.
Where did the Takoyaki go?? たこ焼きはどこに行ったの？
takoyaki wa doko ni itta no? You'll probably say 食べた
tabeta Meaning, "(I) ate (it)." Even though there's no subject or object they're obvious from the context. There are also equation all
sentences, that contain no verb, but they end in a "verbal form." A verbal form, can be a Noun + a copula or an Adjective + a copula. イチローさんは、野球選手だ
Ichiro-san wa yakyū senshu da This means, "Ichiro is a baseball player." Here there's no verb,
just the Subject + Topic marker. Which will come back to you later, than a noun, plus the copula "だ (da)." この寿司屋さんは高いです
kono sushi ya-san wa takai desu This means,
"This sushi shop is expensive." here we have the Subject, Topic marker then an adjective,
plus a copula "です (desu)." notice that the copulas are different, "だ (da)" is the "casual form," while "です (desu)" is
the "polite form." if we want to say the second sentence casually, we take away the copula. Since だ is not used after
adjectives, only nouns. Topic marker and subject marker. Just now, we saw 2 special little words; "は (wa)" and, "が (ga)" "は (wa)" is the "topic marker," and
"が (ga)" is the "subject marker." What's the difference? They both seem to be placed after
the subject of the sentence, right? Well, the topic marker は is used when you want to
talk about something that is already part of the conversation, and make it the topic. So that everything else
in the sentence relates to it. Take this example. 田中さんは優しい人です
Tanaka-san wa yasashī hito desu This means,
❝Mr. Tanaka is a nice person.❞ The use of は in the sentence. Means that, Mr.Tanaka has already been
mentioned in the conversation. with something like the nuance of... ❝Speaking of Mr. Tanaka, he is a nice person.❞ The subject marker が, on the other hand, is used when you introduce
something new to the conversation. 今日先生が怒った
kyou sensei ga okotta This means,
"The teacher got angry today." Here, 先生 (sensei) the teacher
is new information, this is the first time the teacher has been mentioned in the conversation. By the way, in the sentence you
could add は (wa), after 今日 (kyou) to make 今日 the topic of the sentence. が also has a second important use, which is to "focus" on something. For example, if you say 私がご飯を作る
watashi ga gohan o tsukuru That means,
"I'll cook a meal." With emphasis on "I". In English, we do this by stressing
and increasing the volume of a word. Like, I'll cook a meal. To be honest, I prefer to think of
が as a focus marker because of the use I just mentioned and also because,
it can be used to mark the "object" when the object is stressed. ドーナツが食べたい
dōnatsu ga tabetai Which means.
❝I want to eat donuts.❞ With the emphasis on "Donuts." Or you could think of it like
❝Donuts are what I want to eat.❞ が is also used to mark
the object of certain stative verbs. For example, 彼は英語が出来る
kare wa eigo ga dekiru in this sentence 英語 (eigo) is the object,
and the subject is 彼 (kare) And it's also the topic. In which case, は is used instead of が There are also some other sentences
in which what seems to be the object is actually the subject
and is marked by が For example, りんごが欲しい
ringo ga hoshī which means,
❝I want an apple.❞ Word-for-word It's apple-subject marker- or focus marker want. in the sentence, " Hoshī " is actually
an adjective meaning "desirable," so the subject is "ringo." But learners would often mistake
ringo for the object. And try to use the object marker を (o) Japanese has numerous other
particles aside from は and が Particles are words that
indicate the relationship of a word, or a phrase or a clause, to the rest of the sentence. They always come after the word
they're connected to. Some show grammatical function of
the word like は (wa) が (ga) and the object marker を (o), while others function like prepositions. For example, から (kara) meaning "from"
に (ni) meaning "to" and, の (no) meaning "of"
or showing possession. Agglutination. Japanese is to a large extent
and "agglutinative" language (particularly in its verbs) In agglutinative languages,
words have a relatively high number of morphemes. Rather than expressing an additional idea
by adding an extra word, you can add an additional affix
to an existing word. Let's say, this simple verb. 怒る
okoru which means, "to get angry." "okoru" is the "stem,"
and "u" is the "dictionary form ending." Which we can take away,
we can add various suffixes to the stem to add to its core meaning. 怒られる
okorareru this is the passive form of ❝get angry.❞ And it can be translated as "to be scolded." Let's get rid of the る (ru)
and add た (ta) 怒られた
okorareta This means, "I got scolded" or, "(Someone) got angry at me." And note that this is just
a verb, with no pronouns. But who you're talking about
would be clear from the context. た (ta) indicates the past tense. Now, let's go back to the stem,
and add a different suffix "aseru" which creates the causative form. 怒らせる
okoraseru meaning, ❝to make (someone) angry.❞ Now, let's take this る (ru)
away and add this; 怒らせたい
okorase"tai" → "want to." This means,
❝(I) want to make (someone) angry.❞ Just from this word,
we don't know who someone is, but the object would be
clear from the context. Even though the meaning is weird let's say this means,
❝I want to make you angry.❞ Now, let's make this a negative, to do that we take off い (i), and
replace it with く (ku), to make a connecting form
then we add ない (nai) 怒らせたく "ない"
okorasetaku"nai" This means,
❝I "don't" want to make you angry.❞ And again, the you part depends on the context. Now let's make it past tense, 怒らせたく "なかった"
okorasetaku"nakatta" This means,
❝I "didn't" want to make you angry.❞ なかった (nakatta) is the past tense
form of ない (nai) with た (ta) indicating the past tense. So, you can see that Japanese verbs
are highly agglutinative. Vocabulary and
the writing system. As I mentioned before when
talking about the history of Japanese. Japanese vocabulary is a combination of: Native Japanese words for 和語 (wago) Chinese loanwords or words created from Chinese characters 漢語 (kango) and loanwords from
other languages or 外来語 (gairaigo) A typical Japanese sentence includes Kanji or Chinese characters,
as well as Hiragana. One of the 2 Kana syllabaries
that I mentioned earlier. The Chinese characters
sometimes represent kango. So, the Kanji are pronounced
with their ON-yomi. But they sometimes represent
native Japanese words pronounced with their KUN-yomi. Some native Japanese words
are also written in Hiragana. But Hiragana is mainly used for "writing the grammatical
elements of the sentence," such as particles, and inflections. 私は今日学校に行きたくない。
watashi wa kyou gakkou ni ikitakunai This means,
❝I don't want to go to school today.❞ Word for word is, I-topic marker- today-school- to-don't want to go. Here let's start with the verb, its dictionary form is iku (行く) ikitakunai (行きたくない)
means, don't want to go. The Chinese character here
represents the meaning "go." But phonetically it only represents
the first syllable i (い) and Ki (き) comes after the kanji. That's because this sound changes
depending on the form of the verb. The way that suffixes are added to the stem, is meant to be read in Hiragana. This use of Hiragana to show the inflections and part of a kanji's pronunciation is
called "okurigana." Moving back a little we have 学校 (gakkou) this is a kango a Chinese compound. It's followed by the particle
に (ni) meaning, "to." Then here we have 今日 (kyou)
another kango, then we have 私 (watashi) Which is a native Japanese word,
represented by a Chinese character using it kun-yomi pronunciation. Let me pause for a little sidenote here. I've been saying ❝on-yomi❞ and
❝kun-yomi❞ as though there's just one a reach for every kanji, but it's not really that simple. There are often multiple ON-yomi
readings and multiple kun-yomi readings for a single character. And some of them have additional irregular pronunciations
when used in names. Which pronunciation you use
depends on the context. For example; when you see okurigana
you know that you're using a kun-yomi,
and not an ON-yomi. And a quick sidenote about kango. Many kango can be turned into verbs by adding the word, "suru" meaning, "to do." For example, 料理
ryouri Which means, "cuisine." and 料理 "する"
ryouri "suru" Which means, "to make food" / "to cook." 協力
kyouryoku Means, cooperation. And― 協力 "する"
kyouryoku "suru" Means, "to cooperate." Some Japanese sentences
also contain "katakana," usually to represent "外来語" (gairaigo) foreign loanwords that aren't kango. "カメラ"の使い方が分からない
"kamera" no tsukaikata ga wakaranai This means,
❝ I don't know how to use the "camera" ❞ word-for-word its
camera-possessive particle- use-way-subject marker-don't know. Here we see the word
カメラ written in katakana. Then we see the kanji
meaning "use" followed by okurigana い (i) So we know it's a kun-yomi pronunciation. Then there's "方 (kata)"
which means, "way." So, tsukaikata means, "way of using." Then we see the subject marker or focus marker in this case, marking the object
then we see "wakaranai" Which means, "I don't know." Again, this is a chinese character
with okurigana. There are no kango in this sentence. The 2 syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, are more or less two versions
of the same script. Each letter in either alphabet has
an equivalent In the other. And they often look fairly similar, except that katakana
tends to be more angular, while Hiragana is rounder. "Why do some Hiragana and Katakana pairs look so similar while others don't?" Well, if you remember before, the kana syllabaries, developed from Kanji. In some cases, Hiragana and
Katakana characters developed from the same kanji. But In other cases they
developed from different kanji. The kana syllabaries are quite easy to learn. But as learners of Japanese
inevitably discovered reading a sentence written entirely in kana is actually harder than reading
a sentence that contains kanji provided that you know the kanji. That's because kanji give you
an immediate visual cue of a word. So you understand the meaning
more quickly than if you have to phonetically
pronounce all the kana. As you can see Japanese is
a fascinating multifaceted language. In fact, there are so many different
interesting aspects to the language that people feel intimidated, because they think that
they can't learn everything. Well, who cares if you learn everything? You don't need to know
2,000 kanji characters or be really good with
honorifics in order to, talk and make friends with
Japanese speakers. Or to enjoy Japanese Manga,
animation, and music. Japanese is a very rewarding language to learn even at a basic or intermediate level. And the richness of the language
will provide you with countless treasures to discover no matter how far you go with the language. Special thanks to Hiromi. Who recorded the Japanese
samples for this video. She's not only a Langfocus viewer. She is also, a special woman in my life my partner in crime, and a lovely person. Please say hi, to Hiromi,
in the comments down below. Be sure to follow langefocus on
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And once again I want to say thank you to
my amazing Patreon supporters. Especially these people right here on the screen for their monthly pledges. An exclusive bonus scene on
Japanese honorific language will be available to these people
and some other patrons on the Langfocus Patreon page. Bonus clips like this are one way of
saying thanks to my Patrons. Thank you for watching, and have a nice day!
Pretty good general overview, however some of the は/が stuff bugged me. For example stating that 彼 is the subject and 英語 is the object in「彼は英語が出来る」is pretty misleading. 英語 is the subject of the sentence; 彼 is just the topic that it relates to. While one might translate it into natural English as "he can (speak) English" a more correct literal translation would be "as for him, English is doable". Just because が marks the element that corresponds to the direct object in English does not mean that is what it's literally doing in Japanese. He even makes the distinction in the next sequence by explaining that in「りんごが欲しい」that りんご is the subject not the object so it's strange that he didn't apply the same logic to the construction preceding it.
The pitch accent for 箸 was wrong.