lingqi's Journal: March 25th, 2003

March 25th, 2003 (6:53pm)

I have a theory.

I have a theory that Japanese is probably the strangest culture / language in the world.

In the heart of it, we begin with a strong sense of cultural identity. I don't think I need to give examples on this one.

Moreover, while having a strong sense of cultural identity, Kyoto (cultural center and all) is frequented probably by foreigners more often than the japanese themselves, not counting school trips. Similarly, people hang out at starbucks and McD much more than at traditional japanese restaurants (besides ramen and curry, which is probably because it's cheap).

On the other hand, we have serious cultural assimilation happening at a scary pace. These days it's the "everything western" wind that blows through Tokyo. Just about every store uses english names because it is "cooler."

But then, all the cultural assimilation don't phase out, which is remarkable.

Take, for example, language.

I originally thought Japan did not have a language system of its own, but rather was introduced to chinese but managed to butcher it up and made a mess that I am having trouble learning right now. It turns out that I was wrong about not having a language system before the chinese came along.

Apparently all of the inflections and politeness level was already set in store (to a degree) by the time the first monks from china sailed over, so the chinese characters were adapted to these japanese words and concepts.

For most kanji characters, there are various "on" and "kun" readings (éYèããè"èã). "kun" reading is where the chinese characters were adapted to the japanese without any relationship with their chinese origins. Example is when you pronouce "å±±" "yama" instead of "san."

The "on" reading gets quite complicated, though. they are mostly broken down into four types, traditionally:

æ¼éYãå'éYãå"éYãæ...£ç"éY

for those who read kanji and knows a little about china, it is interesting to note that the first three are chinese dynasties (the last is a category of "grandfathered-in wrong pronounciations").

The fact is that while through the dynasties chinese evolved and changed, these changed pronounciations were brought into Japan as well. However, unlike china which eventually (more or less) standarized all readings so each character can only have one pronounciation, Japanese pretty much retained all of the historical pronounciations from china, and became really complicated.

It makes me think of Japan as a "bucket in the sky" that just goes about absorbing culture / language but never lets any of it go. Give it another thousand years, Japanese will probably incorporate every major language in the world - plus some.

For those in the disbelief, many english words have already been imported to japanese, and not only nouns. "saboru (ããfoeã)," derived from "sabotage," means to "skip out." Another word, "arubaito (ããfãfããf)," is imported from German to mean "part time job."

Good thing I am attempting to learn this (japanese) before it becomes an even bigger beast than right now.

Re: Your Theory

[superflippy]

You wouldn't be alone in your belief about Japanese language. After living in Osaka for several years, my aunt wrote a book on the subject of how Japanese culture borrows and assimilates from other cultures (kind of like Microsoft's "embrace and extend" ;)). I don't know that she ever got the book published, though.

But I agree that this makes the language confusing. For example, "Marron" is hazelnut, from the French. "Melon" is melon, from the English. I always found those two troubling, because I couldn't

Learning Japanese

[krugdm]

OOC, how are you learning Japanese? On your own or through a course?

Re:Learning Japanese

[lingqi]

Hmm... I live in Japan, so if you don't count that as a 24-hour training session, I do take some classes about 5 hours / week.

Either way it's (I think) forced learning.