LYCOS RETRIEVER
Japanese: Languages
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Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loans from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and Holland in the 17th century, Dutch has ... been influential, with words like
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Because of the nature of Japanese culture, which is characterized by a hierarchical system, the Japanese language has evolved to be very complicated. The style of speech varies significantly according to social class, gender, age, and so on. Only if you have personal information about your partner in conversation will you be able to choose the appropriate manner of speaking Japanese.
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The first step for all new Japanese learners should be to learn the sounds that Japanese uses. If you are new to the language a stop at the Pronunciation page is suggested.
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The Japanese language has a number of dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible. Thanks to the development of mass communications and the governments directive to establish a common language... most people now speak a common tongue.
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Japanese is not an easy language. It's not a terribly difficult language, either (try Chinese for that), but the grammar is different, and most words are very different from English and other European languages.
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There have been numerous attempts to establish a genetic relationship between Japanese and other languages and language families. The most popular theory is that Japanese, like Korean, is a member of the Altaic language family. This would suggest that Japanese and Korean are related, albeit in an extremely remote way. Although Ainu is spoken in northern Japan, there is no evidence that there is a relationship between the two languages, and Ainu, for the moment, is considered to be a language isolate.
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