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Japan is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with a total population of 127 million. Tokyo is one of the world's most populous cities. Japanese language instruction receives more attention in Japanese schools than English instruction in the United States because of the difficulty of learning written Japanese. Virtually every Japanese student takes English language courses from the seventh grade through the final year of high school.
Japanese has a lot of pronouns for use in different occasions, and different pronouns for men and women, younger or older, etc. These pronouns are not used all the time, but often elided when the reference has been established and is obvious from context. Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by other languages, most notably Chinese, English, and some Dutch (because of the special trade relationship between Japan and Holland in the 17th century). Japanese cartoons and video games are very popular in today's society and many people, especially young ones, enjoy reading and playing them. There are numerous video games that do not reach the Western countries and in order to play them you need to know the language.
Japanese is a language that consists of characters that are completely different from the alphabet that makes up the languages of Western civilization, like English, German, French and Italian. If you are need to learn to speak Japanese for business reasons, or if you simply want to take a vacation there, it can be a bit intimidating to start learning a language so different from your own. Japanese ranks as one of the world's most important languages with over 126 million speakers. The vast majority, about 124 million, reside within Japan and the island group of Okinawa. Japanese verbs are inflected to differentiate what the speaker observes moment by moment. Therefore, the time expressed in a Japanese sentence is fixed at the speaker's present moment.
Japan may have been obliged to follow us in economic ways, but we have been obliged to follow the Japanese in many artistic ways. Japanese grammar and the grammar of the Myanmar language are very similar, so if you decided to learn them both, there would not be that many problems in studying the two languages. However, Kanji (Chinese characters) is not used in Myanmar, and even though I had studied a little bit of Kanji while at the school in Yangon, it was still not easy to become familiar with it. Japanese seems to lend itself to computerized learning, and there are a multitude of new software products that are great for learning the language. Sound files are a great aid for your pronunciation.
As was stated before, 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. However, Japanese has five short vowels: a , i , u , e , o . They are short vowels, pronounced clearly and crisply. Japanese also shares considerable similarities with the languages of the Ryukyu Islands, within which Okinawa is located, although the Ryukyu languages and Japanese are also mutually unintelligible. Japanese has borrowed many words from European languages during the last 100 years, mostly from English. This process has been greatly accelerated in the post-World War II period.
Japanese ways of thinking depend on schooling in kanji. Japanese also coined many neologisms (in kanji) to carry Western concepts; many of these were exported to Chinese and Korean via characters, in late 19th and early 20th century. In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Japanese nouns in general have neither number nor gender. Thus "hon" meaning "book" can be used for the singular or plural.
Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. Japanese does have a distinct intonation pattern. Their intonation pattern can be heard not only in individual words, but also in whole sentences.
Japan is a beautiful country with good and bad things, but the few bad things that you might find are nothing compared to the good things that you can experience here. Nagoya is a big city, but it is pretty easy to find everything that you need.
Japanese diplomatic establishments overseas also provide information and advice on foreign students who wish to come to Japan on their own. As of May 1986, about 18,000 foreign students are studying in Japan.
The Japanese language, the language of around a hundred and fifty million individuals and the native tongue of the Japan, Ryukyu and Bonin island inhabitants, boasts its recognition in various parts of the world and is extremely popular in the former Japanese possessions such as Korea and Taiwan. A distinct pitch system, verities of the rich script, presence of dozens of dialect and a pro-drop language has resulted in the Japanese culture being embellished with one of the richest literary heritages in the world. The Japanese language is an exotic blend of three different scripts, Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana all deriving their base from modified Chinese characters. The Latin alphabet Romaji, and Arabic numerals, besides conventional Sino-Japanese numerals also find a place of prominence in the Japanese script.
A vast and varied vocabulary of the Japanese language clearly reflects a strong presence of influence of various other languages on it. Words with high frequencies of use are derived from the Chinese, Indo-European, Portuguese and Dutch languages, the latter two having strong commercial relationship with Japan. Each syllable of the Japanese language has an even, metronome-like beat. The words and phrases become distinct through differences in pitch, stress and emphasis, much of which is typical to English. Despite the presence of dozens of dialects, there is a standard form of the language which is known as the Hyojungo or Kyotsugo being used proficiently by the elite classes of Tokyo and was separate for writing and speaking.
The literary language, Japanese translation “Bungo”, was widely used for writing before the 1900's but, with time and evolution of the language the spoken form or “Kogo” became more eminent and was used for writing as well, the former being reduced to a measure of adding emphasis and effect by the modern Japanese writers.
Japanese is spoken in a number of ways depending upon the social state of affairs. The ‘intimate style' is adopted for ordinary everyday conversations while the ‘polite' form is used delightfully with cultured company. The ‘honorific style' confers pride and reverence for the superiors and the ‘impersonal style' finds a prominence in public discussions, meetings and speeches.
Japanese language consists of both inflected and uninflected words which end in either vowels or the letter “n”. All sentences come with the verb at the end and there are no exact expressions for “yes” and “no” i.e. the entire subject has to be repeated with the verb at the end in order to answer a particular question. The Japanese use two tables of syllables in writing symbols, its Japanese translation being known as the Kana. The kana can be hiragana and Katakana, the rounded and square shaped forms respectively and Japanese is ordinarily written with a blend of the kana and Chinese characters called kanamajiri. Development of Japan as a powerful economy, the interest of researchers and students in its rich history and culture and the presence of great works of literature has resulted in widespread popularity of the Japanese Languages.