Nihongo wa Doko Kara Kimashita ka---Where Did the Japanese Language Come From?

Japanese is one of the most spoken languages in the world, having over 126 million fluent speakers in Japan and over 2 million others outside of the country.
No one really knows where the spoken language came from though many scholars have tried making educated guesses. Some places have been linked to the language such as the Ural-Altaic family, which includes Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean. Other sources are beleived to be Polynesian and Chinese. Here we can see Japan and Korea.

The Ural-Altaic family is the most widely accepted link among scholars, and within this family it is Korean that has been linked the most. With sentence structure, vowel pronunciation, and grammar being identical, this language has the most potential for being the language’s root. Another similarity is the use of honorifics. This is the use of hierarchies is the language; such as “san” is put at the end of someone’s name for respect, Korea also has their equivalence such as “oppa”. Even though this seems exciting, the pronunciation of words is completely different and mostly incomparable. Here are the consonats and vowels in Korean.

Nihongo no Kita, Nishi, Minami, Higashi --- The Japanese Language of North, West, South, and East

In the Japanese language are many regional dialects. Just like in America where people from the south use different words and have different accents and people on the east coast like Boston or people from Chicago use different words. It can be as similar as Pop versus Soda and Sub sandwich versus Hoagie to as confusing as using “pie” for pizza. Even slang is different in different parts of America and it is the same in Japan. The main dialect continues to be the Tokyo Dialect which is pushed through media but this does not mean that the other two main dialects, Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe) and Kyushu (the southern islands) are not real or correct Japanese.

Kodomo no Nihongo --- The Japanese Language of the Youth

The most current change in the language is the role that youth has in shaping the language. In America slang is used by the youth while slang used by older generations disappears unless brought back by those wishing to be retro. Changing grammar however is the newest trend in Japan. Using informal speech and ignoring honorifics and shortening words are widely accepted by the younger generations while the older members of society are appalled with this “lack of respect” for the language.