Is Japanese still Relevant and Used today?

To understand the importance of the Japanese language in today’s times, it is essential that we take a look at the details, the origins, the spread, and the history of the language in a quick and comprehensive manner.

Japanese is an East Asian language, and is the national language of Japan. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. Japanese is an isolated language, that is, it does not relate directly to any other language in the world. It has more than 127 million speakers and is primarily spoken throughout the Japanese archipelago. Its relation to the Korean language is debated. Even similarities between the original or classical Japanese language and the Chinese language cannot be firmly established. There, however, have been various influences on the Japanese language over the period, most of them from Chinese, and others mainly from European languages. Due to these influences, Japanese has undergone some changes; a lot of new vocabulary including words from European languages has been added to the medieval and new or modern Japanese.

The exact origins of the language are not clearly known, however, written records of Japanese date back to the 8th century. Between the 12th and the 16th centuries, the Japanese language shed most of its old characteristics and adapted to a newer form.

 

The Japanese language cascaded as under:

Old Japanese (up to the 8th century), Late Old Japanese (9th–11th century), Middle Japanese (12th–16th century), Early Modern Japanese (17th–18th century), and Modern Japanese (19th century to the present).

In spite of the above divisions, Japanese grammatical structure has not undergone major changes over the centuries.

People around the globe are keen on learning the language, but the Japanese themselves are rarely known to have been interested in learning other languages. 

 

The Japanese language has three major components:

Hiragana: It is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system. The word hiragana literally means “ordinary” or “simple” kana.

Katakana: The word katakana means “fragmentary kana”, as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Alexander Vovin argued that Japan’s Katakana originated from the Gugyeol writing system used during the Silla Dynasty. Yoshinori Kobayashi of Hiroshima University asserted the hypothesis that Katakana originated from Gugyeol. 

 

Kanji: Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters that are used in the Japanese writing system. They are used alongside the Japanese syllabic scripts hiragana and katakana. The Japanese term kanji for the Chinese characters literally means “Han characters”.

 

Now, what are Han characters?

Han characters are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. They have been adapted to write other Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system wherein they are known as kanji.

 

Japanese is known to be one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn for a non-native speaker. This is not true, but. If taught and learned using easy and effective methodologies, it is as easy as any other language is, for a novice. Today, people do not like to spend time studying languages in conservative manners in a typical, formal classroom-like environment. Nor do they have time to personally commute to language training institutes, citing the multitasking and the busy ways of living.