学日语-标准初级日本语单词学习 1.0

Japanese, also known as Nihongo or Nippongo, is the official language of Japan. It is spoken by approximately 130 million native speakers and is divided into four main dialects: Eastern Japanese, Western Japanese, Kyushu, and Hachijō. A closely related language to Japanese is Ryukyuan (Uchinaaguchi).

Chinese characters were introduced to Japan during the Three Kingdoms period, and during the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese created kana for communication among women. In ancient times, Classical Chinese – or Kanbun – was used as the official language, greatly influencing modern Japanese. For instance, in 1956, the "Revised Edition of Kokugo Daijiten" showed that in Japanese vocabulary, 36.6% consists of native Japanese words, while 53.6% are of Chinese origin. In 1964, the National Institute for Japanese Language conducted a study on vocabulary usage in 90 magazines, concluding that native Japanese words accounted for 36.7%, Chinese words for 47.5%, and Western loanwords for nearly 10%.

Japanese pronunciation is straightforward with only five vowel phonemes and a limited number of consonants. Including rarely used sounds, there are no more than 100 sounds in total. Similar to Japanese pronunciation are Spanish and Italian languages where the ratio of consonant to vowel sounds is close to 1:1. The vocabulary in Japanese is rich and vast, incorporating numerous loanwords. As of 1956, there were over 30,000 common words in the Japanese language (excluding personal and place names).