The Japanese Language

by Kindaichi, Haruhiko

• ISBN13: 9784805310809
• ISBN10: 4805310804
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-10
• Publisher: Tuttle Pub

Summary

This book will interest anyone intrigued by one of the world's most widely used but least understood languages. The relationship of Japanese to other languages is not well understood even by native speakers, and Professor Kindaichi sets out to examine it. He concludes that Japanese is indeed only remotely related to other world languages, although it has many features in common with the languages of so-called primitive societies. The author, after briefly discussing the unique isolation of the Japanese language, moves on to consider the varieties of ordinary speech-dialects, jargon, sex- and rolebased distinctions, and the differences between informal, formal, and literary language. He then examines the structure of Japanese pronunciation, its rhythm, and accent. The longest section of the book is devoted to the variety of the vocabulary. Readers who are just beginning their own study of Japanese will find this section especially fascinating, for each point is backed by examples from literature and everyday speech. Kindaichi also investigates the so-called vagueness of Japanese and traces it to its source-the unusual sentence order.

Author Biography

Haruhiko Kindaichi, one of Japan's most famous linguists, was a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. He was also a well-known radio and television personality, having won the Cultural Broadcasting Award. Professor Kindaichi has published numerous books on Japanese linguistics, of which this is the best known and first to be translated into English.

Umeyo Hirano, the translator, was for many years a professor of English at Kyoto Woman's College and Osaka City University. She has lectured on Japanese language and literature at Columbia University. Her previous translations include Tsutsumi Chunagon Monogatari and Kurata's Shinran.