Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no) is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence. (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). As in other texts from this period, the Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana, which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values.īased on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun, and Old Japanese. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese, although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The Chinese writing system was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. Main article: Old Japanese A page from the Man'yōshū, the oldest anthology of classical Japanese poetry The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals. Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字) is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters, known as kanji ( 漢字, ' Han characters'), with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名, 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名, 'partial characters'). Japanese has a complex system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. It has around 128 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. Japanese ( 日本語, Nihongo, ⓘ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Nucl1643 excluding Hachijo, Tsugaru, and Kagoshima
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