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The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called yamato kotoba (大和言葉 or infrequently 大和詞, i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as wago (和語 ...
Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan, where it is spoken by about 126 million people. The oldest attestation is Old Japanese, which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuries. [13] It differed from Modern Japanese in having a simple (C)V syllable structure and avoiding vowel sequences. [14]
The following is a list of Japanese-language poets. Poets are listed alphabetically by surname (or by a widely known name, such as a pen name, with multiple names for the same poet listed separately if both are notable). Small groups of poets and articles on families of poets are listed separately, below, as are haiku masters (also in the main ...
The broadly inclusive Wamyō ruijushō dictionary was an antecedent for Japanese encyclopedias.In the present day, it provides linguists and historians with an invaluable record of the Japanese language over a thousand years ago, [2] more specifically the linguistics of the 10th century and Heian Period.
The Japanese language is Japan's de facto national language and the primary written and spoken language of most people in the country. [255] Japanese writing uses kanji ( Chinese characters ) and two sets of kana ( syllabaries based on cursive script and radicals used by kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals . [ 256 ]
For example, the modern version conclusive form of the classical verb 來 (く) (k-u "to come") is 来る (くる) (k-uru), but the modern form is given in the table as 来 (く) (k-u), which is the way that a modern Japanese writer would write the classical Japanese word, rather than the way they would write the modern Japanese word.
Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period , but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
For example, sewa ('care, concern') is written 世話, using the on'yomi "se" + "wa" ('household/society' + 'talk'); although this word is not Sino-Japanese but a native Japanese word believed to derive from sewashii, meaning 'busy' or 'troublesome'; the written form 世話 is simply an attempt to assign plausible-looking characters pronounced ...