Language and literature

The Japanese language occupies a special position in modern classification of languages. It does not belong to any of the large families of languages spoken by the peoples of Eastern Asia. Recently, however, searchers have found distant cognation of the Japanese language with the languages of the Altai family. Other language families, for example, the Austronesian or the Palaeoasian ones, may have also participated in its formation. In the syntax of the Japanese language some parallels with the Korean language can be found; and the lexical composition has similarities with the languages of the Malay-Polynesian family.

There are many local dialects of the Japanese language, but in fact all Japanese people speak the “standard Japanese” (Tokyo dialect) and master the classical literary language (Kyoto tradition). The formation of the Japanese business language was largely influenced by the Osaka dialect. The modern spoken language (which contains a large number of Americanisms) was formed after the Second World War. The Japanese language has several independent styles: the neutral polite, “modest”, colloquial, business, literary (classical literary language formed in the 10th century AD) styles; there are also separate male and female styles.

The hieroglyphic script was adopted from China in the 5th – 6th centuries, but it did not correspond to the actual phonetic system of the Japanese language, so the Japanese turned to syllabary. Its two variations (hiragana used to fix grammatical forms and classical poems and katakana used to fix adopted words, some proper names and scientific terms) are united under the common name kana. The total number of hieroglyphs exceeds 20,000, but only 6000 of them are actively used. The official minimum defined by the state is 2000 hieroglyphs. The creation of the Japanese writing language played an important part in the formation of the common national language.

Women reading a letter. Japan. The Japanese. Late 19th cent.		Fragment of calligraphic scroll. Japan. The Japanese. Mid-to-late 19th cent.		Women at reading. Japan. The Japanese. Late 19th cent.
Portrait of man at desk. Japan. The Japanese. By 1886.