5 Interesting Facts about Japanese

Interesting facts about Japanese and much, much more!

Before we get into the 5 main interesting facts about Japanese let us know a little more about this diverse language.

History of the Japanese language.

The origin of the Japanese is interesting. Japanese is most widely believed to be connected to the Ural-Altaic family. Which includes Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean within its domain.

The connection between Korean and Japanese

Korean is most regularly compared to Japanese, as both languages share huge key functions. the overall shape, vowel harmony, and the vast use of honorific speech.

these are some not unusual data Korean in addition to eastern language proportion. However, the pronunciation of Japanese is drastically special from Korean. And the languages are at the same time unintelligible.

that is what makes the Japanese language so unique.

What are the types of Japanese writing?

The Japanese writing method consists of two types

Here's Everything You Need to Know About the Japanese Alphabet

the syllabic kana – hiragana (平仮名) and katakana (片仮名) – and kanji (漢字), the adopted Chinese characters.

Every kana has exclusive usages, functions and traits and all are necessary for Japanese writing.

Maximum jap sentences you notice could have combinations of hiragana and kanji and every now and then, katakana. Hiragana and katakana are specific to the Japanese language and students master these two structures first before beginning their jap language research in Japan.

With the three wonderful characters used and the complicated various utilization, the Japanese written language is defined as one of the most difficult languages to master.

Eastern characters can be written both in columns going from top to bottom. With columns ordered from left, as with conventional Chinese, or horizontally analyzing left to right, as in English.
That’s why you’ll locate a few books open with the spine of the ebook to the right, even as a few open to the left.

Hiragana (First type)

Hiragana, which literally manner “ordinary” or “simple” kana, is used mostly for native jap phrases and grammatical elements. There are 46 primary characters which all signify syllabaries or seventy-one consisting of diacritics.

Every sound within the eastern language corresponds to 1 person within the syllabary. college students will typically examine hiragana first, before mastering katakana and kanji.

Katakana (Second type)

Katakana, meaning “fragmentary kana,” is used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords and onomatopoeia.

Some of the most useful Japanese words are untranslatable onomatopoeia, such as ギリリ (girigiri). This means “to be at the limit”.

Kanji (Third type)

There are numerous thousand kanji characters in everyday use. All have one-of-a-kind meanings and most have a couple of pronunciation, relying on the context.

For example, 今日 could be read kyō, meaning “today,” or it could also be read konnichi, meaning “recent days.”

Unique features of the Japanese Language:

A few common facts of Japanese are that it has an exceptionally complex writing machine, such as units of phonetic syllabaries and lots of Chinese language characters known as “kanji.

The model of Chinese language characters at some stage in the sixth to 9th centuries A.D. turned into the most crucial event within the improvement of the language. these days, jap is written with a combination of the three: “kanji”, “hiragana”, and “katakana”.
Since the mid 18th century the japanese have followed a massive amount of “gairaigo”: overseas words mainly from English. these consist of “tenure” (table), “biru” (beer), “gurasu” (glass), “aisu” (ice), “Takashi” (taxi) and “hoteru” (hotel). which might be a few super data approximately Japenese translations.

There are also a few words from Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, together with “pan” (bread) and “igirisu” (the United Kingdom), from the Portuguese “po” and “ingles”. Such phrases arrived in Japan particularly in the course of the 16th and seventeenth centuries. while missionaries and merchants commenced to visit the united states of america and that’s precisely what makes the japanese language so famous.

5 interesting facts about the Japanese language.

1. Verbs are not in conjugation.

The first and foremost interesting fact about Japanese.

Verbs don’t need to be conjugated for anybody or any number. So once you’ve learned the basic verb, you don’t have to memorize tons of other things. Instead, you may focus all your attention on difficult Japanese writings.

This is why Japanese sounds so nice.

2. Japanese has no relation to any other language.

The second interesting fact about Japanese is that unlike English, which is closely tied to Romance (e.g., Spanish, French) and Germanic languages (e.g., German), Japanese isn’t closely related to any other essential language.

Until recently, it was termed as a ‘language isolate’, which means that it is unique amongst all current world languages. However, researchers have found common roots between Japanese and Ryukyuan languages. Ryukyuan languages are the indigenous languages in southern Japan.

3. Homophones abound.

In case you thought that English has several homophones (words that suggest different things, however, are pronounced in the same way), try studying Japanese!

For example, all eight characters below are mentioned shin, however, they mean various things: God, to improve, to accept as true with, new, actual, stretch, heart, and parent, from left to proper.

4. It is the fastest spoken Language!

The lastest research compared the speed (in syllables per second) at which native speakers of various languages talk. One speaks English at a snail-paced 6.19 syllables per second which so shocking!

5. nearly 10% of internet users speak Japanese.

Last but not least fact about the Japanese language.

Japanese is the 9th most spoken language worldwide. However, it’s the third-largest language on the internet, behind English and Spanish. Even though Japanese speakers represent less than 2% population, they form 10% of online internet users.

You may be a blackbelt in karate or a connoisseur of manga, but we’re guessing you didn’t realize about Japanese loanwords from Portuguese or the eight distinct meanings of “shin”!

There’s a lot more to Japanese than just the fun trivia on this list. If you need to learn more, remember to take classes from a native Japanese speaker.

Whether you want to learn face-to-face or via Skype, listen & learn the course or other package options we at Language Fluent will definitely have something for you.