JAPAN AND ITS LANGUAGE

Japan is one of the most developed countries in the world. It has well developed economy along with efficient, educated and productive workforce. Japan is located at the west of the Pacific Ocean in the Northern Hemisphere. The neighbor countries of japan are Korea, China and Russia. The National Flag of Japan is known as Hinomaru and its National Anthem is known as Kimi ga Yo. In addition, there are three main religions in Japan including Shintoism, Buddhism and Christianity. Japanese is a national language of Japan. Japanese is spoken by approximately 130 million people around the globe. Moreover, the writing system of Japanese language contains two types of characters including hiragana and katakana and the other one is kanji and kanji is adopted Chinese characters. All characters have different purpose and usage, however, all are considered necessary part of Japanese writing. Further, Hiragana means “ordinary kana” and is used for native Japanese words and grammatical elements. It contains 46 basic characters. In addition, Katakana means “fragmentary kana”. It is mainly used for foreign words and names and loanwords. Katakana contains 5 singular vowels, 40 consonants vowels and 1 singular consonant. Therewithal, Kanji contains several thousand characters in regular use. All characters have changed meanings and most characters have more than one pronunciation and it depends on the context.

                 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE

The oldest period of Japanese history is described as Old Japanese. During this period, Buddhism spread to Japan and introduced the Chinese writing system. The earlier texts of Japanese language were similar to classical Chinese. The Old Japanese period was ended in 794. Moreover, the second period in the Japanese language history is known as Early Middle Japanese and is also called as Heian period and it was from 794 to 1185. During this period, there was a significant influence of Chinese on the Japanese language phonology. Further, after Early Middle Japanese period there was a Late Middle Japanese period that started from 1185 to 1600. This period is divided into two sections of period. One in known as Kamakura period and other is known as Muromachi period. During Muromachi period the Japanese Language was spoken by non-native speakers and in this period a better phonology of Japanese language was noticed as compared to Kamakura period, the former one. During this period, the Japanese language also started to move away from Chinese in order to have its own sound and writing system. In addition, during 18^th century, the Early Modern Japanese period was started. In 1945 after the World War II, the modern Japanese language became the standard language which is mostly now used in formal communication. During this period, in Japanese language the character based writing systems were introduced that are known as Hiragana and Katakana in which traditional Chinese characters known as Kanji were used. Moreover, then there was a start of Modern Japanese period which started with Edo period. There was increased in loanwords from European languages that were used in Japanese language. The loanwords were commonly from Portuguese, German and English.

   Thus, firstly the Japanese language was originated from Japan’s ancestor. Chinese also played a significant role in the development of Japanese language. Now, Japanese language is classified into modern Japanese language with a numerous number of words and loanwords.