History and Origins of the Japanese Language

Japanese is the only major language the origins of which are not clearly known. This is also to some extent true of the origins of the Japanese people, an issue that is not easy to discuss for various reasons. This article is not necessary for an understanding of the language, but is just for information. It uses some long words at places.

At one point it was common to regard Japanese as a member of a "Ural-Altaic" superfamily of languages. However, most linguists have decided that this superfamily does not exist or at best is unproven. Consequently it is usually split into two families, the Uralic and Altaic. Altaic includes three main subfamilies (Turkic, Mongolian and Manchu-Tungus), while Uralic includes the Finn-Ugric languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, etc.) and the Samoyedic tongues (spoken in parts of Russia). Japanese is often regarded as a possible member of the Altaic group, but the relationship is generally considered tentative or unproven.

A more recent line of enquiry, rather than trying to establish the origins of the language by comparing it to existing language groups, has given rise to (among linguists) the most popular theory of today. Examining the characteristics of Japanese, linguists have suggested a theory that explains two confusing traits: while Japanese grammar is very similar to Korean (which is why many have considered Japanese one of the Altaic languages), Japanese also has some features in common with the Austronesian languages (a language group including most of the Southeast Asia and the Central and South Pacific islands, Malaysia and several other areas of Indochina and Taiwan but excluding Australia and most of New Guinea).

The theory suggests that a Austronesian language base had an Altaic grammatical structure superimposed on it. This fits with what is known about the origins of the Japanese race. It seems that the original inhabitants of the islands may have been Caucasian in origin (the Ainu and perhaps other peoples). They probably lived over all of the four major islands of the archipelago. Later, peoples probably came from the south by boat and settled initially in Kyushu, later moving up through the country. These peoples would have spoken an Austronesian tongue, and spread throughout the country during the Jomon era (7500 BC to c. 250 BC) displacing the earlier arrivals who moved norhtwards to Hokkaido and perhaps Sakhalin. Following this phase, small groups of Korean settlers arrived from the Korean peninsula during the Yayoi era (from around 250 BC) bringing with them a south Korean dialect and technology including bronze and iron tools and rice cultivation. According to this theory, because this was a gradual migration on a small scale, there was insufficient influence to completely change the language, but rather a slow merging of the tongues took place (not unlike the origins of the English language where successive waves of invaders and settlers brought new words and grammatical structures to the British Isles).

Dialects

The geography of Japan predisposes to the development of dialects. Plenty of mountains and valleys and thousands of islands (about four thousand make up the Japanese archipelago) mean that separate communities rapidly developed their own dialects. The result is two main dialect groups: those of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawan dialects) and the mainland of Japan. The mainland group is divided into three main dialects: Eastern, Western and Kyushu groups. The Kyushu dialects are sometimes included in the Western group.

In general, the further apart dialects are geographically, the less likely that they are mutually intelligible. The dialects of northern Honshu and Kyushu, for example, are not mutually intelligible at all. (Hokkaido is an exception since it was settled by the Japanese fairly recently, largely from central Japan, so most speakers use the standard Tokyo dialect.)

During the twentieth century, national mass media and compulsory education were all available in standard (Tokyo dialect) Japanese. This has served to unite the country linguistically, and while most people still speak or know the dialect of the region where they were brought up, they also know and use regularly the standard form. Thus, for the student of Japanese, it is not a problem to study anywhere in the country - you will still learn the same, standard form of the language at any school and be able to use the language in your daily life.

Modern Influences

Japanese seems to have one thing in common with English: both languages are composites of many other tongues that met and merged for one reason or another. Japanese has constantly imported new words from other languages; the most important two being Chinese and English. As mentioned above, when the Chinese writing system was imported, with it came many words. These are now an essential part of the language - virtually every word made up of two or more kanji is of Chinese origin, while all those with one kanji and hiragana are generally of Japanese origin.

It is easier to spot the more recent additions to the language: they are written in katakana. However, their origin is more diverse: most of the European languages are represented, as are many other Asian languages. Words were imported when Europeans (initially the Dutch and Portuguese) arrived to trade. Some of the things they brought had no words in Japanese, so the foreign word was adapted to suit the Japanese phonology (that is, adapted to fit the sounds that can be written in katakana). So, from the Portuguese "pão" for bread, Japanese "pan". "Garasu" is from Dutch "glas" meaning "glass", "kappa" from the Portuguese "capo" meaning raincoat, and so on. Some of these older words now have kanji attached to them.

The newer imports are dominated by English words. From slightly before the Meiji Restoration, Japan was exposed to many foreign cultures, and after the restoration of the monarchy in 1867, emulated and tried to incorporate the best aspects of many of them. Great Britain, Germany, the United States and France were perhaps the main models, and words were appropriated from these languages and others too. However, there was a period just before and during the Second World War when some political groups tried to purify the language of foreign influences. At this particularly nationalistic time, many foreign words were replaced with Japanized versions - that is, words based on kanji were invented and their use enforced. Thus baseball became "yakyuu" from the more western "beesubooru", and so on. However, with the end of the war and the American occupation of Japan, English became a huge influence and many words were imported. From that point on, and with the continuing deep links between the two countries until today, English has became the main source of foreign loan words ("gairaigo") for Japanese.