There are many synonyms in Japanese because the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...

draws from several different

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

s for loanwords, notably

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, as well as its own native words. In Japanese,

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

s are called ''dōgigo'' (

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequen ...

: 同義語) or ''ruigigo'' (kanji: 類義語). Full synonymy, however, is rare. In general, native Japanese words may have broader meanings than those that are borrowed, Sino-Japanese words tend to suggest a more formal tone, while Western borrowed words more modern.

''Yamato kotoba'' vs. ''kango'' vs. ''gairaigo''

The table below compares native Japanese words, inherited from

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...

– ''

yamato kotoba are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango () and gairaigo (), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese wor ...

'' – with words borrowed from

– '' kango'' – and loanwords from other languages – ''

gairaigo is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chines ...

''.

Native synonyms

References

{{reflist Lexical semantics Japanese vocabulary