|
Yamato-damashii
or is a Japanese language term for the cultural values and characteristics of the Japanese people. The phrase was coined in the Heian period to describe the indigenous Japanese 'spirit' or cultural values as opposed to cultural values of foreign nations such as those identified through contact with Tang dynasty China. Later, a qualitative contrast between Japanese and Chinese spirit was elicited from the term. Edo period writers and samurai used it to augment and support the Bushido concept of honor and valor. English translations of ''Yamato-damashii'' include the "Japanese spirit", "Japanese soul", "Yamato spirit", and "The Soul of Old Japan". Lafcadio Hearn mentions the latter in connection with Shinto. For this national type of moral character was invented the name ''Yamato-damashi'' (or ''Yamato-gokoro''), — the Soul of Yamato (or Heart of Yamato), — the appellation of the old province of Yamato, seat of the early emperors, being figuratively used for the enti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yamato Province
was a province of Japan, located in Kinai, corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture in Honshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric (2005). "Yamato" in . It was also called . Yamato consists of two characters, 大 "great", and 和 " Wa". At first, the name was written with one different character (), but due to its offensive connotation, for about ten years after 737, this was revised to use more desirable characters () (see Names of Japan). The final revision was made in the second year of the Tenpyō-hōji era (). It is classified as a great province in the '' Engishiki''. The Yamato Period in the history of Japan refers to the late Kofun Period (c. 250–538) and Asuka Period (538–710). Japanese archaeologists and historians emphasize the fact that during the early Kofun Period the Yamato Kingship was in close contention with other regional powers, such as Kibi Province near present-day Okayama Prefecture. Around the 6th century, the local chieftainship gained national contro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magokoro
, (まごころ) also sometimes archaically rendered as without the "impurity" of rendaku, is a principle known in Japanese kokugaku related in particular to the origin of the country, the . It has also been described in Japanese literature. Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) devoted about 35 years of his life to the elaboration of a Commentary (Kojiki-den), which is still authoritative today. Each man, writes Motoori, possesses at his birth a "true heart" a "magokoro" (the term magokokoro is itself almost an onomatopoeia since kokoro, the heart, expresses these "beats of the heart") whose ancient Japanese literature is the most faithful expression. The poetry that describes the fluctuating feelings deep within the human heart is exceptionally intuitive. Its most sublime element, the characteristic element of this poetry, is the ''mono no aware'', that is to say, the feeling of sympathy aroused by the sweet melancholy that emanates from things. This sentiment expresses the ''Yamat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many Classification of the Japonic languages, attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as Ainu languages, Ainu, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, Koreanic languages, Koreanic, and the now discredited Altaic languages, Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩. The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphic Pejoratives In Written Chinese
Some historical Chinese characters for non-Han Chinese, Han peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs, where the racial insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. For instance, written Chinese first transcribed the name "the Yao people (in southwest China and Vietnam)" with the character for "jackal". Most of those terms were replaced in the early 20th-century language reforms; for example, the character for the term ''yáo'' was changed, replaced this graphic pejorative meaning "jackal" with another one – a homophone meaning "precious jade". Linguistic background Graphic pejoratives are a unique aspect of Chinese characters. In Alphabetic language, alphabetically written languages such as English, orthography does not change ethnic slurs – but in logographically written languages like Chinese, it makes a difference whether one writes ''Yáo'' as "jackal" or with its homophone "jade". Over 80% of Chinese characters are phono-s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to a single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse. Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands, where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what is known as the Sinosphere. Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone (phonetics), phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radical (Chinese Character)
A radical (), or indexing component, is a visually prominent component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. The radical for a character is typically a semantic component, but it can also be another structural component or an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases, the original semantic or phonological connection has become obscure, owing to changes in the meaning or pronunciation of the character over time. The use of the English term ''radical'' is based on an analogy between the structure of Chinese characters and the inflection of words in European languages. Radicals are also sometimes called ''classifiers'', but this name is more commonly applied to the grammatical measure words in Chinese. History In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as the '' Erya'' (3rd centuryBC), characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories. Because the vast majority of characters are pho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Han Dynasty
The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the Chu–Han Contention (206–202 BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) established by the usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the #Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD), Western Han (202 BC9 AD) and the #Eastern Han (25–220 AD), Eastern Han (25–220 AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a Golden ages of China, golden age in Chinese history, and had a permanent impact on Chinese identity in later periods. The majority ethnic group of modern China refer to themselves as the "Han people" or "Han Chinese". The spoken Chinese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wa (name Of Japan)
Wa is the oldest attested names of Japan, name of Japan and ethnonym of the Japanese people. From Chinese and Korean scribes used the Chinese character to refer to the various inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, although it might have been just used to Phonetic transcription, transcribe the Phonology, phonetic value of a Japonic languages, Japonic ethnonym with a respectively differing Semantics, semantic connotation. In the 8th century, the Japanese started using the character instead due to the offensive nature of the former. Etymology Although the etymological origins of ''Wa'' remain uncertain, Chinese historical texts recorded an ancient people residing in the Japanese archipelago (perhaps Kyūshū), named something like *''ɁWâ'', transcribed with Chinese character 倭, pronounced *''ʔuɑi'' < *''ʔwɑi'' in Eastern Han Chinese.Bentley, John [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language. An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is an established, ''non-native'' name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system. For instance, is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms ''Germany'' and in English and Italian, respectively, and in Spanish and French, respectively, in Polish, and and in Finni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On'yomi
, or the Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Japanese reading, is the reading of a kanji based on the historical Chinese pronunciation of the character. A single kanji might have multiple ''on'yomi'' pronunciations, reflecting the Chinese pronunciations of different periods or regions. ''On'yomi'' pronunciations are generally classified into ''go-on'', ''kan-on'', ''tō-on'' and ''kan'yō-on'', roughly based on when they were borrowed from China. Generally, ''on'yomi'' pronunciations are used for technical, compound words, while the native ''kun'yomi'' pronunciation is used for singular, simpler words. Usage ''On'yomi'' primarily occur in , many of which are the result of the adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the List of English words with dual French and Anglo-Saxon variations, English borrowings fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
