Japanese
The Japanese language is spoken primarily by the approximately 120 million
inhabitants of Japan. The most prominent hypothesis places it in the Altaic
family of languages, which includes Turkish, Tungusic, Mongolian, and Korean.
However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with some major features of Japanese,
leading some scholars to turn to the languages of the South Pacific for clues
of genetic relationship. A hypothesis that has currency among a number of Japanese
historical linguists is a "hybrid" theory that accepts the relationship
to the Altaic family, but also hypothesizes influence from Austronesian languages
possibly through heavy lexical borrowing. There are a large number of dialects
spoken throughout the Japanese islands. Some dialects, such as those spoken
in the southern parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa), are virtually incomprehensible
to the speakers of other dialects, making the use of a standard dialect essential
for communication. The two dialect families with the largest number of speakers
are the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which is the standard or "common"
dialect, and the dialects of the Kansai region of western Japan spoken in cities
such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Due to the spread of the common dialect through
television and radio, most people outside the Tokyo region speak the common
dialect as well as the dialect of their area.
Written Japanese uses four different character sets kanji, katakana, hiragana,
and romaji. Kanji, which is based on the Chinese writing system brought
to Japan by Buddhist monks more than 1200 years ago, is not phonetic in Japanese
(the structure of the character gives no clue to its pronunciation). Katakana
and Hiragana, on the other hand, are both syllabic scripts (each character represents
a syllable) with Katakana most commonly used to express foreign names, borrowed
words and company names, and Hiragana, mostly used to express grammatical inflections
and particles of speech Romanji, is a romanized version of written Japanese,
useful for foreign learners of Japanese.
Sources:
MIT
The Japanese Writing Tutor
Information on writing system:
ontopia.net
The Japanese Writing Tutor
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Courses Available at UCSD
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
SD cultural events
International channel
Balboa Park House
of Pacific Relations
International web radio
Landmark
Theaters: foreign films
UCSD international performers
and films
UCSD Extension courses
UCSD Nikkei Student Union
UCSD Japanese Studies
Program