| Japanese Language |
Index for Japanese Language |
Website Links For Japanese Language |
Information AboutJapanese Language |
|
Japanese (日本語, ) 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 complex 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. Its recorded history goes back to the 8th Century , when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled. Japanese is written primarily in Chinese Character s (called '' Kanji '') and '' Hiragana '', supplemented by '' Katakana '' for certain uses. Hiragana and katakana are a pair of Syllabaries originally derived from Chinese characters. The Latin Alphabet (called '' Rōmaji '') is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for things such as company names, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. Western style Arabic Numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Chinese/Japanese numberings are also commonplace. The Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loans from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese , or created on Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th Century , Japanese has borrowed huge numbers of words from Western languages, primarily English .
Classification See Also: Japanese language classification Historical Linguists who specialize in Japanese agree that it is one of the two members of the Japonic language family, the other member being Ryukyuan . (An older view, still held by many non-specialists, is that Japanese is a Language Isolate , of which the Ryukyuan languages are dialects.) The genetic affiliation of the Japonic family is uncertain. Numerous theories have been proposed, relating it to a wide variety of other languages and families, including Extinct Language s spoken by historic cultures of the Korea n peninsula; the Korean Language ; the Altaic Languages ; and the Austronesian Languages , among many others. It is also often suggested that it may be a Creole Language combining more than one of these. The various theories are detailed in the Main Article . At this point, no one theory is generally accepted as correct, and the issue is likely to remain controversial. 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, yet 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 nearly absent among Western researchers. Geographic distribution Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and is still sometimes spoken elsewhere. 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 in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) frequently employ Japanese as their primary language. In addition to Brazil, Japanese emigrants are also to be found in large numbers in Peru , Australia (especially Sydney , Brisbane , and Melbourne ), and the United States (notably California and Hawaii ). There is also a small emigrant 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 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. Standard Japanese can also be divided into or "literary language," and or "oral language", which have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. ''Bungo'' was the main method of writing Japanese until the late 1940s, and still has relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in ''bungo'', although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). ''Kōgo'' is the predominant method of speaking and writing Japanese today, although ''bungo'' grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. Dialects See Also: Japanese 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 several dialects used in Kagoshima in southern Kyūshū are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in Kyūshū as well, probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as /kob/ or /ko?/ for Standard Japanese /kumo/ "spider"). The vocabulary of Kagoshima dialect is 84% cognate with standard Tokyo dialect. Kansai-ben , a group of dialects from west-central Japan, is spoken by many Japanese; the Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy. The Ryukyuan Languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . 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 See Also: Japanese phonology Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds, similar to their Spanish, Greek or Italian counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but Compressed instead of rounded. 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 Allophone s, 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 up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was Palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately ''chi''; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like ''paatii'' "party" and ''chi'' "ground." The syllabic structure and the s allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus /j/. However, consonant clusters across syllables are common, though limited in type. Grammar See Also: Japanese grammar Sentence structure The basic Japanese word order is Subject Object Verb . Subject, Object, and other grammatical relations are usually marked by Particles , which are suffixed to the words that they modify, and are thus properly called Postposition s. 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'' ("is"). 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 , Korean , and many other Asian languages, is often called a Topic-prominent Language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate 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, (their) noses are long". The topic is ''zō'' "elephant", and the subject is ''hana'' "nose". Japanese is a Pro-drop Language , meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. As a result, Japanese speakers tend to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with Pronoun s. In the context of the above example, ''hana-ga nagai'' would mean " noses are long," while ''nagai'' by itself would mean "[they are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: ''Yatta!'' " / we / they / etc did Another well-known example of omission is the sentence ''Watashi-wa supagetti desu''—which on its face appears to mean "I am spaghetti," but in the context of a restaurant could also be an order: "For me, [it'll be spaghetti." While the language has some words that are translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European Language s, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on verbal inflection to indicate the "direction" of an action "down" to the speaker or persons related to the speaker, or "up" to the listener or other person. For example, ''setsumei shite moratta'' (literally, " obtained explaining") means "[he/she explained it to Similarly, ''oshiete ageta'' (literally, "teach-handed up") is commonly used to mean "[I/we told [him/her]". Such "directional" auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from Indo-European pronouns in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, you cannot say in English:
But you ''can'' grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: : ''Ōkii kare-wa michi-o hashitte itta.'' (grammatically correct) This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as ''kimi'' "you" (君 "lord"), ''anata'' "you" (貴方 "that side, yonder"), and ''boku'' "I" (僕 "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns. Japanese personal nouns are generally used only in situations requiring clarity of who is doing what to whom. Once everyone knows who is involved, these words can generally be omitted. The choice of words used is correlated with the gender of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ''watashi'' or ''watakushi'', while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ''ore'' or ''boku''. Similarly, different words such as ''anata'', ''kimi'', and ''omae'' may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ''sensei'' (先生, teacher), but inappropriate to use ''anata''. This is because ''anata'' is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Inflection and conjugation 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 providing a quantity (often with a Counter Word ) or by adding a suffix (which is rare). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus ''Tanaka-san'' usually means ''Mr./Ms. Tanaka''. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as ''-tachi''. Though some words, like ''hitobito'' "people", always refer to more than one, Japanese nouns without such additions are neither singular nor plural. ''Hito'' could mean "person" or "persons", ''ki'' could be "tree" or "trees" without any implied preference for singular or plural. 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 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 (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle ''-ka'' is added. For example, ''Ii desu'' "It is OK" becomes ''Ii desu-ka'' "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ''-no'' is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: ''Dōshite konai-no?'' "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: ''Kore-wa?'' "(What about) this?"; ''Namae-wa?'' "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ''Pan-o taberu'' "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ''Pan-o tabenai'' "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". The so-called ''-te'' verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence (''Asagohan-o tabete sugu dekakeru'' "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions (''Dekakete-mo ii?'' "May I go out?"), etc. The word ''da'' (plain), ''desu'' (polite) is the Copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English ''be'', but often takes on other roles. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: ''aru'' (negative ''nai'') and ''iru'' (negative ''inai''), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, ''Neko ga iru'' "There's a cat", ''Ii kangae-ga nai'' " {Link without Title} 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 to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. ''tobidasu'' "to fly out, to flee," from ''tobu'' "to fly, to jump" + ''dasu'' "to put out, to emit"). There are three types of Adjective (see also Japanese Adjectives ): #''keiyōshi'', or ''i'' adjectives, which have a Conjugating ending ''i'' (such as ''atsui'', "to be hot") which can become past (''atsukatta'' - "it was hot"), or negative (''atsuku nai'' - "it is not hot"). Note that ''nai'' is also an ''i'' adjective, which can become past (''atsuku nakatta'' - it was not 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. Kare-wa hen da. Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs. The ''rentaishi'' in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include ''ookina'' "big" and ''onaji'' "the same" (although there is also a noun ''onaji'' that can be followed by ''da'', as in ''onaji da''). Both ''keiyōdōshi'' and ''keiyōshi'' form Adverb s, by following with ''ni'' in the case of ''keiyōdōshi'': hen ni naru and by changing ''i'' to ''ku'' in the case of ''keiyōshi'': atsuku naru The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by Postposition s, also called Particles . These include for example:
Watashi no kamera Kare ga yatta. Nani o tabemasu ka? Tanaka-san ni kiite kudasai Watashi wa tai ryōri-ga ii desu. Politeness See Also: Japanese honorifics See Also: Japanese titles 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 or ''futsuu'' 普通), 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 system, ''keigo'' often employs many special (often Irregular ) honorific and humble verb forms: ''iku'' "to go" becomes ''ikimasu'' in polite form, but is replaced by ''mairimasu'' in humble form and ''irasshaimasu'' in honorific form. 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". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context. Most Noun s 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 ''. 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. 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. 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, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ''yamato kotoba'' (大和言葉 or 大和詞, i.e. " Yamato words"）, which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ''wa-go'' (倭語 or 和語, i.e. the " Wa language"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as Kango , entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture, both directly and through Korea. According to some estimates, Chinese-based words comprise as much as seventy percent of the total vocabulary of the modern Japanese language and form as much as thirty to forty percent of words used in speech. Like Latin-derived words in English, Kango words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent. A much smaller number of words (in fact, an almost negligible number) has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu . Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called '' 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 roots and morphology 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 centuries. For example, 政治 ''seiji'' ("politics"), and 化学 ''kagaku'' ("chemistry") are words derived from Sinitic etyma that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. 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 modern European languages, although many such academic words formed from Greco-Roman etyma were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English. 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 by compounding English roots, are nonsensical in a non-Japanese context. A small number of such words 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 See Also: Japanese writing system Before the 5th Century , the Japanese had no Writing system of their own. They began to adopt the Chinese Writing script along with many other aspects of Chinese Culture after their introduction by Korea n monks and scholars during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese , or in a mixture of Chinese, used both ideographically, phonetically, and otherwise to create Japanese meanings. An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki , which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana, a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their morphophonological values in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable. Over time, a writing system was constructed. and Katakana . Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: and Katakana . The Latin Alphabet ( Romaji ) is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji characters when used in counting, but the kanji is still used when in a compound (such as 統一 (''tōitsu''), "unification"). Hiragana is the base of all texts in Japan, providing correct pronunciation and spelling. It is used for words without Kanji representation and also for when the Kanji character is not known. Katakana is the character group, with the same sounds, and similar combinations of Hiragana, which is used to create representations of foreign words in the Japanese sense. Words such as "Australia" and "Supermarket" have been shortened or changed into "Oosutoraria" and "Suupaa" respectively. "Romaji" is simply the Japanese name for Latin characters. It is used increasingly in Japanese text for especially technical abbreviations such as "CD", "DVD", etc. Japanese students begin to learn kanji characters from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of 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 junior high school, covering in total 1,945 '' Jōyō Kanji '' (common kanji) characters, which is generally considered sufficient for everyday life, although many kanji used in everyday life are not included in the list (like the one for chopstick, 箸). An appendix of 290 additional characters for names was decreed in 1951. Various semi-official bodies were set up to monitor and enforce restrictions on the use of kanji in the press, publishing, in television broadcasts, etc. Thereafter, the official list of Kyōiku Kanji was repeatedly revised, but the total number of "permitted" characters remained largely unchanged. A different list of officially approved kanji is used for purposes of registering personal names. Names containing "unapproved" characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of Kyōiku Kanji , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of "approved" characters was substantially extended. Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the "rational" views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of Romaji were considered. The Kyōiku Kanji scheme arose as a compromise solution. 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 . Japanese can be learned without studying Chinese characters. However, the Japanese have borrowed thousands upon thousands of words from the Chinese , and for various reasons, many of these Chinese-based words are Homophones (words pronounced identically) in Japanese. This may make it necessary to learn the characters if one wants to master an extended vocabulary. Nevertheless, 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. For example, "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. Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates to the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture in the 1990s and beyond. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in , 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese Universities and Japanese Language School s, 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 foreigners married to Japanese nationals. 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. See also List Of Resources For Learning Japanese . See also External links Bibliography |