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Onbin
Onbin (Japanese "euphony") is a set of sound changes that occurred in Early Middle Japanese around the end of the eighth century to the beginning of the tenth century, first attested in written texts of the Heian period. Onbin changes affected certain consonant-vowel sequences in non-word-initial position, causing them to become replaced with either a single vowel sound (as in , from earlier ) or a single consonant sound (as in , from earlier ). (In some cases, this also caused a change in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel or following consonant, as in the development of original to in .) Onbin played a role in diversifying the syllable structure of native Japanese words by creating heavy syllables that ended in two vowels or in a vowel followed by a consonant. Historical onbin changes did not occur systematically, and some sequences could yield multiple outcomes. The non-deterministic nature of the historical sound changes is exemplified by doublets showing different ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Japanese Conjugation
Japanese verbs, like the verbs of many other languages, can be morphologically modified to change their meaning or grammatical function – a process known as conjugation. In Japanese, the beginning of a word (the ''stem'') is preserved during conjugation, while the ending of the word is altered in some way to change the meaning (this is the ''inflectional suffix''). Japanese verb conjugations are independent of person, number and gender (they do not depend on whether the subject is ''I'', ''you'', ''he'', ''she'', ''we'', etc.); the conjugated forms can express meanings such as negation, present and past tense, volition, passive voice, causation, imperative and conditional mood, and ability. There are also special forms for conjunction with other verbs, and for combination with particles for additional meanings. Japanese verbs have agglutinating properties: some of the conjugated forms are themselves conjugable verbs (or ''i''-adjectives), which can result in several suffix ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Kansai Dialect
The is a group of Japanese dialects in the Kansai region (Kinki region) of Japan. In Japanese, is the common name and it is called in technical terms. The dialects of Kyoto and Osaka are known as , and were particularly referred to as such in the Edo period. The Kansai dialect is typified by the speech of Osaka, the major city of Kansai, which is referred to specifically as . It is characterized as being both more melodic and harsher by speakers of the standard language.Omusubi: Japan's Regional Diversity , retrieved January 23, 2007 Background Since Osaka is the largest city in the region and its speakers received the most media exposure over the last century, non-Kansai-dialect speakers tend to associate the dialect of Osaka with the entire Kansai region. However, technic ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Late Middle Japanese
was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form. The period spanned roughly 500 years from the 12th century to the 16th century and is itself customarily divided into Early and Late periods. Politically, the first half of Late Middle Japanese was the end of the Heian period, known as ''Insei'' and the Kamakura period. The second half of Late Middle Japanese was the Muromachi period. Background The late 12th century was a time of transition from the aristocratic society of nobles in the Heian period to the feudal society of the warrior class. Accompanying that change, the nation's political center temporarily transitioned from historical Kyoto to Kanto alongside the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate. This move resulted in a significant blend between the dialects of Kyoto and Kanto, shaping ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sound Changes
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Historical Kana Orthography
The , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation. It differs from modern usage ('' Gendai kana-zukai'') in the number of characters and the way those characters are used. There was considerable opposition to the official adoption of the current orthography, on the grounds that the historical orthography conveys meanings better, and some writers continued to use it for many years after. The historical orthography is found in almost all Japanese dictionaries, such as '' Kōjien.'' In the current edition of the ''Kōjien,'' if the historical orthography is different from the modern spelling, the old spelling is printed in tiny ''katakana'' between the modern ''kana'' and ''kanji'' transcriptions of the word. Ellipses are used to save space when the historical and modern spellings are id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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 Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven. Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, which is a writing system that employs Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels. As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Classical Japanese
The , also called and sometimes simply called "Medieval Japanese", is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period (1926–1989). It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken during the Heian period (794–1185), but exhibits some later influences. Its use started to decline during the late Meiji period (1868–1912) when novelists started writing their works in the spoken form. Eventually, the spoken style came into widespread use, including in major newspapers, but many official documents were still written in the old style. After the end of World War II, most documents switched to the spoken style, although the classical style continues to be used in traditional genres, such as haiku and waka. Old laws are also left in the classical style unless fully revised. The terms and are still used for classical and modern Japanese, respectively. Their literal meanings are only historical, as classical Japanese is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Literary Language
Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. It may be the Standard language, standardized variety of a language. It can sometimes differ noticeably from the various spoken language, spoken Variety (linguistics), lects, but the difference between literary and non-literary forms is greater in some languages than in others. If there is a strong divergence between a written form and the spoken vernacular, the language is said to exhibit diglossia. The understanding of the term differs from one linguistic tradition to another and is dependent on the terminological conventions adopted. Literary English For much of its history, there has been a distinction in the English language between an elevated literary language (written) and a colloquialism, colloquial or vernacular language (sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
João Rodrigues Tçuzu
João Rodrigues (1561or 1562 1633or 1634), distinguished as Tçuzu and also known by other names in China and Korea, was a Portuguese sailor, warrior, and Jesuit interpreter, missionary, priest, and scholar in Japan and China. He is now best known for his linguistic works on the Japanese language, including '' The Art of the Japanese Language''. He was also long erroneously supposed to have been the main compiler of the first Japanese–Portuguese dictionary, published in 1603. Name João Rodrigues's epithet "Tçuzu" was an early Portuguese transcription of his Japanese descriptor ''Tsūji'' (, "the Interpreter"). It distinguished him from a in the Jesuits' China mission. João's surname sometimes appears in its Spanish form Rodriguez, the form he himself used in his Portuguese works; his epithet is sometimes mistakenly written as Tçuzzu. In Japan and China, Rodrigues used the Chinese name (), abbreviating his family name to a single character '' Lu'' in the Chinese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Arte Da Lingoa De Iapam
The ''Arte da Lingoa de Iapam'' (; ) is an early 17th-century Japanese grammar written in Portuguese language, Portuguese. It was compiled by João Rodrigues Tçuzu, João Rodrigues, a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, Jesuit missionary. It is the oldest fully extant Japanese grammar and is a valuable reference for the Late Middle Japanese, late middle period of the Japanese language.Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten Henshū Iinkai (1986:1417-1418) Background Kirishitan, Christian missionary work in Japan began in the 1540s, necessitating the learning of its language. Missionaries created Nippo Jisho, dictionaries and grammars. Early grammars seem to have been written in the 1580s, but are no longer extant. João Rodrigues Tçuzu, João Rodrigues arrived in Japan as a teenager and became so fluent that he was mostly known to locals as "the Translator" ('':Wiktionary:通事, Tsūji''); he served as the translator of visiting Jesuit overseers, as well as for the kampaku ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sound Changes
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fusion (phonetics)
In phonetics and historical linguistics, fusion, or coalescence, is a sound change where two or more segments with distinctive features merge into a single segment. This can occur both on consonants and in vowels. A word like ''educate'' is one that may exhibit fusion, e.g. or . A merger between two segments can also occur between word boundaries, an example being the phrase ''got ya'' being pronounced like ''gotcha'' . Most cases of fusion lead to allophonic variation, though some sequences of segments may lead to wholly distinct phonemes. A common form of fusion is found in the development of nasal vowels, which frequently become phonemic when final nasal consonants are lost from a language. This occurred in French and Portuguese. Compare the French words "a white wine" with their English cognates, ''one, wine, blank,'' which retain the sound of the letter Ns. Often the resulting sound has the place of articulation of one of the source sounds and the manner of articulatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
