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{{Short description|Structure of the Japanese writing system}} {{About|the modern writing system and its history|an overview of the entire language|Japanese language|the use of Latin letters to write Japanese|Romanization of Japanese}} {{Use mdy dates|date = February 2025}} {{Use American English|date=January 2019}} {{More citations needed|date=June 2024}} {{Infobox writing system | name = Japanese | languages = [[Japanese language]]<br>[[Ryukyuan languages]]<br>[[Hachijō language]] | type = mixed | typedesc = [[Logogram|logographic]] ([[Kanji]]), [[syllabary|syllabic]] ([[hiragana]] and [[katakana]]) | time = 4th century AD to present | family = (See [[kanji]] and [[kana]]) | unicode = [https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U4E00.pdf U+4E00–U+9FBF] Kanji<br />[https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3040.pdf U+3040–U+309F] Hiragana<br />[https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf U+30A0–U+30FF] Katakana | sample = Heibon-pp.10-11.jpg | caption = Japanese novel using ''kanji kana majiri bun'' (text with both [[kanji]] and [[kana]]), the most general [[orthography]] for modern Japanese. [[Ruby character]]s (or ''[[furigana]]'') are also used for kanji words (in modern publications these would generally be omitted for well-known kanji). The text is in the traditional ''[[Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts|tategaki]]'' ("vertical writing") style; it is read down the columns and from right to left, like traditional Chinese. Published in 1908. | iso15924 = Jpan | direction = {{Plain list| * Top-to-bottom, right-to-left * Left-to-right, top-to-bottom * Right-to-left, top-to-bottom (infrequent){{Citation needed|date=June 2017}} }} }}{{Japanese writing}} The modern '''Japanese writing system''' uses a combination of [[Logogram|logographic]] [[kanji]], which are adopted [[Chinese character]]s, and [[Syllabary|syllabic]] [[kana]]. Kana itself consists of a pair of [[syllabary|syllabaries]]: [[hiragana]], used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and [[katakana]], used primarily for foreign words and names, [[Gairaigo|loanwords]], [[onomatopoeia]], scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.<ref name="Shohov2004">{{cite book|author=Serge P. Shohov|title=Advances in Psychology Research|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BDisMH0IpFcC&pg=PA28|year=2004|publisher=Nova Publishers|isbn=978-1-59033-958-9|page=28}}</ref><ref name="Nakajima2002">{{cite book|author=Kazuko Nakajima|title=Learning Japanese in the Network Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FkBdWFwh-MEC&pg=PR12|year=2002|publisher=University of Calgary Press|isbn=978-1-55238-070-3|page=xii}}</ref>{{Sfn|Seeley|1991|p=ix}} Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in [[Japan]] are referred to as "Japanese kanji" ({{langx|ja|和製漢字|wasei kanji|label=none}}), also known as "[our] country's kanji" ({{langx|ja|国字|kokuji|label=none}}). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 [[jōyō kanji]] as of 2010.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Japanese Kanji List|url=http://www.saiga-jp.com/language/kanji_list.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304190101/http://www.saiga-jp.com/language/kanji_list.html|archive-date=2016-03-04|website=www.saiga-jp.com|access-date=2016-02-23|url-status=usurped}}</ref> The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese. In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including [[diacritics]]. With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each [[Mora (linguistics)|mora]]) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words. Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer visually obvious. Texts without kanji are rare; most are either children's books—since children tend to know few kanji at an early age—or early electronics such as computers, phones, and video games, which could not display complex [[grapheme]]s like kanji due to both graphical and computational limitations. To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses initialisms from the [[Latin alphabet]], for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". [[Romanized Japanese]] is most frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered kana, and by native speakers for [[Japanese language and computers|computer input]]. ==Use of scripts== ===Kanji=== {{Nihongo|''[[Kanji]]''|漢字}} are [[logographic]] [[Chinese characters|characters]] ([[Shinjitai|Japanese-simplified]] since 1946) taken from Chinese script and used in the writing of [[Japanese language|Japanese]]. It is known from archaeological evidence that the first contacts that the Japanese had with Chinese writing took place in the 1st century AD, during the late [[Yayoi period]]. However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the 5th century AD in the [[Kofun period]], when writing in Japan became more widespread. Kanji characters are used to write most [[content word]]s of native Japanese or (historically) Chinese origin, which include the following: *many [[noun]]s, such as {{lang|ja|川}} (''kawa'', "river") and {{lang|ja|学校}} (''gakkō'', "school") *the stems of most [[verb]]s and [[adjective]]s, such as {{lang|ja|見}} in {{lang|ja|見る}} (''miru'', "see") and {{lang|ja|白}} in {{lang|ja|白い}} (''shiroi'', "white") *the stems of many [[adverb]]s, such as {{lang|ja|速}} in {{lang|ja|速く}} (''hayaku'', "quickly") and {{lang|ja|上手}} as in {{lang|ja|上手に}} (''jōzu ni'', "masterfully") *most [[Japanese name|Japanese personal names]] and place names, such as {{lang|ja|田中}} (''Tanaka'') and {{lang|ja|東京}} (''Tōkyō''). (Certain names may be written in hiragana or katakana, or some combination of these, plus kanji.) Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word—for instance, the word ''naosu'' (to fix, or to cure) is written {{lang|ja|治す}} when it refers to curing a person, and {{lang|ja|直す}} when it refers to fixing an object. Most kanji have more than one possible pronunciation (or "reading"), and some common kanji have many. These are broadly divided into ''[[on'yomi]]'', which are readings that approximate to a Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was adopted into Japanese, and ''[[kun'yomi]]'', which are pronunciations of native Japanese words that correspond to the meaning of the kanji character. However, some kanji terms have pronunciations that correspond to neither the ''on'yomi'' nor the ''kun'yomi'' readings of the individual kanji within the term, such as {{lang|ja|明日}} (''ashita'', "tomorrow") and {{lang|ja|大人}} (''otona'', "adult"). Unusual or nonstandard kanji readings may be glossed using [[furigana]]. Kanji compounds are sometimes given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes. For example, in [[Natsume Sōseki]]'s short story ''[[Ten Nights of Dreams#Summaries of the Dreams|The Fifth Night]]'', the author uses {{lang|ja|接続って}} for ''tsunagatte'', the [[gerund]]ive [[Japanese grammar#Verbs|''-te'' form]] of the verb ''tsunagaru'' ("to connect"), which would usually be written as {{lang|ja|繋がって}} or {{lang|ja|つながって}}. The word {{lang|ja|接続}}, meaning "connection", is normally pronounced ''setsuzoku''. ===Kana=== ==== Hiragana ==== {{Nihongo|''[[Hiragana]]''|平仮名}} emerged as a manual simplification via cursive script of the most phonetically widespread kanji among those who could read and write during the [[Heian period]] (794–1185). The main creators of the current hiragana were ladies of the [[Japanese imperial court]], who used the script in the writing of personal communications and literature. Hiragana is used to write the following: *{{Nihongo|''[[okurigana]]''|送り仮名}}—[[inflection]]al endings for [[adjective]]s and [[verb]]s—such as {{lang|ja|る}} in {{lang|ja|見る}} (''miru'', "see") and {{lang|ja|い}} in {{lang|ja|白い}} (''shiroi'', "white"), and respectively {{lang|ja|た}} and {{lang|ja|かった}} in their past tense inflections {{lang|ja|見た}} (''mita'', "saw") and {{lang|ja|白かった}} (''shirokatta'', "was white"). *{{Nihongo|''[[Japanese particles|joshi]]''|助詞}}—small, usually common words that, for example, mark sentence topics, subjects and objects or have a purpose similar to English prepositions such as "in", "to", "from", "by" and "for". *miscellaneous other words of various grammatical types that lack a kanji rendition, or whose kanji is obscure, difficult to typeset, or considered too difficult to understand for the context (such as in children's books). *{{Nihongo|''[[furigana]]''|振り仮名}}—phonetic renderings of hiragana placed above or beside the kanji character. Furigana may aid children or non-native speakers or clarify nonstandard, rare, or ambiguous readings, especially for words that use kanji not part of the [[jōyō kanji]] list. There is also some flexibility for words with common kanji renditions to be instead written in hiragana, depending on the individual author's preference (all Japanese words ''can'' be spelled out entirely in hiragana or katakana, even when they are normally written using kanji). Some words are colloquially written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them a more formal tone, while hiragana may impart a softer or more emotional feeling.<ref name="KessMiyamoto1999">{{cite book|author1=Joseph F. Kess|author2=Tadao Miyamoto|title=The Japanese Mental Lexicon: Psycholinguistics Studies of Kana and Kanji Processing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xdhFbwDtVUQC&pg=PA107|date=1 January 1999|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|isbn=90-272-2189-8|page=107}}</ref> For example, the Japanese word ''kawaii'', the Japanese equivalent of "cute", can be written entirely in hiragana as in {{lang|ja|かわいい}}, or with kanji as {{lang|ja|可愛い}}. Some lexical items that are normally written using kanji have become [[grammaticalisation|grammaticalized]] in certain contexts, where they are instead written in hiragana. For example, the root of the verb {{lang|ja|見る}} (''miru'', "see") is normally written with the kanji {{lang|ja|見}} for the ''mi'' portion. However, when used as a supplementary verb as in <span lang="Ja" dir="ltr">試してみる</span> (''tameshite miru'') meaning "to try out", the whole verb is typically written in hiragana as {{lang|ja|みる}}, as we see also in {{lang|ja|食べてみる}} (''tabete miru'', "try to eat [it] and see"). ==== Katakana ==== {{Nihongo|''[[Katakana]]''|片仮名}} emerged around the 9th century, in the [[Heian period]], when Buddhist monks created a syllabary derived from Chinese characters to simplify their reading, using portions of the characters as a kind of shorthand. The origin of the alphabet is attributed to the monk [[Kūkai]]. Katakana is used to write the following: *transliteration of foreign words and names, such as {{lang|ja|コンピュータ}} (''konpyūta'', "computer") and {{lang|ja|ロンドン}} (''Rondon'', "London"). However, some foreign borrowings that were naturalized may be rendered in hiragana, such as たばこ (''tabako'', "tobacco"), which comes from Portuguese. See also [[Transcription into Japanese]]. *commonly used names of animals and plants, such as {{lang|ja|トカゲ}} (''tokage'', "lizard"), {{lang|ja|ネコ}} (''neko'', "cat") and {{lang|ja|バラ}} (''bara'', "rose"), and certain other technical and scientific terms, including chemical and mineral names such as {{lang|ja|カリウム}} (''kariumu'', "potassium"), {{lang|ja|ポリマー}} (''porimā'', "polymer") and {{lang|ja|ベリル}} (''beriru'', "beryl"). *occasionally, the names of miscellaneous other objects whose kanji are rare, such as {{lang|ja|ローソク}} (''rōsoku'', "candle"); the kanji form, {{lang|ja|蝋燭}}, contains the [[hyōgaiji]] {{lang|ja|蝋}}. *[[onomatopoeia]], such as {{lang|ja|ワンワン}} (''wan-wan'', "woof-woof"), and other [[Japanese sound symbolism|sound symbolism]] *emphasis, much like [[Italic type|italicisation]] in European languages.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://motto-jp.com/media/japanese/a-walk-through-of-the-japanese-alphabet/#Katakana_8211_Characters_for_Foreign_Words |website=motto-jp.com |publisher=Motto Japan |access-date=22 December 2024 |title=A Walk-Through of the Japanese Alphabet {{pipe}} Motto Japan Media - Japanese Culture & Living in Japan }}</ref> Katakana can also be used to impart the idea that words are spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent; for example, the speech of a robot. ===Rōmaji=== The first contact of the Japanese with the Latin alphabet occurred in the 16th century, during the [[Muromachi period]], when they had contact with Portuguese navigators, the first European people to visit the Japanese islands. The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on [[Portuguese orthography]]. It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named [[Anjirō]]. The [[Latin alphabet]] is used to write the following: *Latin-alphabet [[acronym]]s and [[initialism]]s, such as [[NATO]] or [[UFO]] *Japanese personal names, corporate brands, and other words intended for international use (for example, on business cards, in passports, etc.) *foreign names, words, and phrases, often in scholarly contexts *foreign words deliberately rendered to impart a foreign flavour, for instance, in commercial contexts *other Japanized words derived or originated from foreign languages, such as {{lang|ja|Jリーグ}} (''jei rīgu'', "[[J. League]]"), {{lang|ja|Tシャツ}} (''tī shatsu'', "[[T-shirt]]") or {{lang|ja|[[:ja:B級グルメ|B級グルメ]]}} (''bī-kyū gurume'', "B-rank gourmet [cheap and local cuisines]") ===Arabic numerals=== {{Main|Japanese numerals}} [[Arabic numeral]]s (as opposed to traditional kanji numerals) are often used to write numbers in [[Yokogaki and tategaki|horizontal text]], especially when numbering things rather than indicating a quantity, such as telephone numbers, serial numbers and addresses. Arabic numerals were introduced in Japan probably at the same time as the Latin alphabet, in the 16th century during the [[Muromachi period]], the first contact being via Portuguese navigators. These numerals did not originate in Europe, as the [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]] inherited them during the [[Al-Andalus|Arab occupation of the Iberian peninsula]]. In the modern period, [[Japanese input method|Japanese keyboards]], such as the IME (Input Method Editor), primarily default their usage to the [[Halfwidth and fullwidth forms|fullwidth]] Unicode Arabic numerals {{char|1}} as opposed to {{char|1}}, though most actual usage uses the common halfwidth one {{char|1}}, especially when used to represent a quantity. The fullwidth character may be used for spacing purposes aesthetically. ===Hentaigana=== {{nihongo|''[[Hentaigana]]''|変体仮名}}, a set of archaic kana made obsolete by the [[Meiji reformation]], are sometimes used to impart an archaic flavor, like in items of food (esp. [[soba]]). ===Additional mechanisms=== ''[[Jukujikun]]'' is the writing of words using ''kanji'' that reflect the meaning of the word though the pronunciation of the word is entirely unrelated to the usual pronunciations of the constituent ''kanji''. Conversely, ''[[ateji]]'' is the employment of ''kanji'' that appear solely to represent the sound of the compound word but are, conceptually, utterly unrelated to the signification of the word. ===Examples=== Sentences are commonly written using a combination of all three Japanese scripts: kanji (<span style="color:red">in red</span>), hiragana (<span style="color:purple">in purple</span>), and katakana (<span style="color:#FF7900">in orange</span>), and in limited instances also include Latin alphabet characters (<span style="color:green">in green</span>) and Arabic numerals (in black): {{block indent|{{lang|ja|2=<span style="color:green">T</span><span style="color:#FF7900">シャツ</span><span style="color:purple">を</span><span style="color:black">3</span><span style="color:red">枚購入</span><span style="color:purple">しました</span>。}}}} The same text can be transliterated to the Latin alphabet (''rōmaji''), although this will generally only be done for the convenience of foreign language speakers: {{block indent|1=<span style="color:green">''Tī''</span><span style="color:#FF7900">shatsu</span> <span style="color:purple">o</span> <span style="color:black">san</span>-<span style="color:red">mai kōnyū</span> <span style="color:purple">shimashita</span>.}} Translated into English, this reads: {{block indent|I bought 3 T-shirts.}} All words in modern Japanese can be written using hiragana, katakana, and rōmaji, while only some have kanji. Words that have no dedicated kanji may still be written with kanji by employing either [[ateji]] (as in man'yogana, から = 可良) or jukujikun, as in the title of とある科学の超電磁砲 (超電磁砲 being used to represent レールガン). {| class="wikitable" !Kanji !Hiragana !Katakana !Rōmaji !Arabic numeral !English translation |- |{{lang|ja|私}} |{{lang|ja-Hira|わたし}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|ワタシ}} |''watashi'' |''none'' |I, me |- |{{lang|ja|金魚}} |{{lang|ja-Hira|きんぎょ}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|キンギョ}} |''kingyo'' |''none'' |goldfish |- |{{lang|ja|煙草}} or {{lang|ja-Hani|莨}} |{{lang|ja-Hira|たばこ}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|タバコ}} |''tabako'' |''none'' |tobacco, cigarette |- |{{lang|ja|東京}} |{{lang|ja-Hira|とうきょう}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|トーキョー}} |''tōkyō'' |''none'' |[[Tokyo]], literally meaning "eastern capital" |- |{{lang|ja|八十八}} |{{lang|ja-Hira|やそはち}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|ヤソハチ}} |''yasohachi'' | 88 |eighty-eight |- |''none'' |{{lang|ja-Hira|です}} |{{lang|ja-Kana|デス}} |''desu'' |''none'' |is, am, to be (hiragana, of Japanese origin); death (katakana, of English origin) |} Although rare, there are some words that use all three scripts in the same word. An example of this is the term <span style="white-space:nowrap" lang="ja">くノ一</span> ([[Romanized Japanese|''rōmaji'']]: ''[[kunoichi]]''), which uses a hiragana, a katakana, and a kanji character, in that order. It is said that if all three characters are put in the same kanji "square", they all combine to create the kanji {{lang|ja|女}} (woman/female). Another example is {{lang|ja|消しゴム}} (rōmaji: ''keshigomu'') which means "eraser", and uses a kanji, a hiragana, and two katakana characters, in that order. ===Statistics=== A statistical analysis of a corpus of the Japanese newspaper ''[[Asahi Shimbun]]'' from the year 1993 (around 56.6 million tokens) revealed:<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Chikamatsu|first1=Nobuko|last2=Yokoyama|first2=Shoichi|last3=Nozaki|first3=Hironari|last4=Long|first4=Eric|last5=Fukuda|first5=Sachio|title=A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research|journal=Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers|date=2000|volume=32|issue=3|pages=482–500|doi=10.3758/BF03200819|pmid=11029823|s2cid=21633023|doi-access=free}}</ref> {| |- valign="top" | {|class="wikitable" |+ Character frequency ! Characters !! Types !! Proportion of corpus (%) |- |Kanji||4,476||41.38 |- |Hiragana||83||36.62 |- |Katakana||86||6.38 |- |Punctuation and symbols||99||13.09 |- |Arabic numerals||10||2.07 |- |Latin letters||52||0.46 |} | | {|class="wikitable" |+ Kanji frequency ! Frequency <br/>rank !! Cumulative <br/>frequency (%) |- |10||10.00 |- |50||27.41 |- |100||40.71 |- |200||57.02 |- |500||80.68 |- |1,000||94.56 |- |1,500||98.63 |- |2,000||99.72 |- |2,500||99.92 |- |3,000||99.97 |} |} == Collation == [[kana#Collation|Collation]] (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent ''[[gojūon]]'' (fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned ''[[iroha]]'' ordering. [[Japanese dictionaries|Kanji dictionaries]] are usually collated using the [[Radical (Chinese character)|radical]] system, though other systems, such as [[SKIP (Kanji indexing)|SKIP]], also exist. == Direction of writing == {{Main|Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts}} [[File:Japanese Writing System Yokogaki.jpg|thumb|''Yokogaki'']] Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called {{nihongo|''tategaki''|縦書き}}, which was inherited from traditional Chinese practice. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one. Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called {{nihongo|''yokogaki''|横書き}}. This writing format is horizontal and reads from left to right, as in English. A book printed in tategaki opens with the spine of the book to the right, while a book printed in yokogaki opens with the spine to the left.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Shiraishi-Miles |first=Rebecca |date=2017-03-11 |title=Is Japanese Read from Right to Left or Left to Right? |url=https://teamjapanese.com/japanese-read-right-left/ |access-date=2025-02-07 |website=Team Japanese |language=en-US}}</ref> == Spacing and punctuation == {{See also|Japanese punctuation}}{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2024}} Japanese is normally written without spaces between words, and text is allowed to wrap from one line to the next without regard for word boundaries. This convention was originally modelled on Chinese writing, where spacing is superfluous because each character is essentially a word in itself (albeit compounds are common). However, in kana and mixed kana/kanji text, readers of Japanese must work out where word divisions lie based on an understanding of what makes sense. For example, {{lang|ja|{{nowrap|あなたはお母さんにそっくりね。}}}} must be mentally divided as {{nihongo krt||{{nowrap|あなた}} / は / {{nowrap|お母さん}} / に / {{nowrap|そっくり}} / ね。|Anata wa okāsan ni sokkuri ne|"You're just like your mother"}}. In rōmaji, it may sometimes be ambiguous whether an item should be transliterated as two words or one. For example, {{nihongo krt||愛する||"to love"}}, composed of {{nihongo krt||愛|ai|"love"}} and {{nihongo krt||する|suru|"to do"|extra=(here a verb-forming suffix)}}, is variously transliterated as {{Transliteration|ja|aisuru}} or {{Transliteration|ja|ai suru}}. [[Japanese particles|Particles]], like the possessive particle [[の]] in {{lang|ja|君の犬}} ("your dog"), are sometimes joined with the preceding term (''kimino inu''), or written as separate words (''kimi no inu''). Words in potentially unfamiliar foreign compounds, normally transliterated in katakana, may be separated by a punctuation mark called a {{nihongo krt||中黒|[[interpunct#Japanese|nakaguro]]|"middle dot"}} to aid Japanese readers. For example, {{nihongo krt||ビル・ゲイツ|Biru Geitsu|Bill Gates}}. This punctuation is also occasionally used to separate native Japanese words, especially in concatenations of kanji characters where there might otherwise be confusion or ambiguity about interpretation, and especially for the full names of people. The Japanese full stop ({{lang|ja|。}}) and comma ({{lang|ja|、}}) are used for similar purposes to their English equivalents, though comma usage can be more fluid than is the case in English. There is no clear standard of where the positions of commas should be inserted in a Japanese sentence.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Murata |first1=Masaki |last2=Ohno |first2=Tomohiro |last3=Matsubara |first3=Shigeki |date=2010 |title=Automatic Comma Insertion for Japanese Text Generation |url=https://aclanthology.org/D10-1087.pdf |journal=2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing |pages=892–901}}</ref> The question mark ({{lang|ja|?}}) is not used in traditional or formal Japanese, but it may be used in informal writing, or in transcriptions of dialogue where it might not otherwise be clear that a statement was intoned as a question. The exclamation mark ({{lang|ja|!}}) is restricted to informal writing. Colons and semicolons are available but are not common in ordinary text. Quotation marks are written as {{nowrap|{{lang|ja|「 ... 」}}}}, and nested quotation marks as {{nowrap|{{lang|ja|『 ... 』}}}}. Several bracket styles and dashes are available. == History of the Japanese script == === Importation of kanji === {{main|Kanji#History}} [[Japan]]'s first encounters with Chinese characters may have come as early as the 1st century AD with the [[King of Na gold seal]], said to have been given by [[Emperor Guangwu of Han]] in AD 57 to a Japanese emissary.{{Sfn|Miyake|2003}} However, it is unlikely that the Japanese became literate in Chinese writing any earlier than the 4th century AD.{{Sfn|Miyake|2003}} Initially [[Chinese character]]s were not used for writing Japanese, as literacy meant fluency in Classical Chinese, not vernacular Japanese. Eventually a system called {{nihongo|''[[kanbun]]''|漢文}} developed. This system, which closely resembled [[Classical Chinese]] in grammar and employed ''[[kanji]]'', used [[diacritic]]s to hint at the Japanese translation. Informal ''[[mokkan]]'' (木簡) wooden tablets dating from mid-7th to mid-8th century were written in both Classical Chinese and Old Japanese ''kanbun'', suggesting that literacy was widespread in the late 7th century.{{Sfn|Piggott|1990}}{{Sfn|Frellesvig|2010|22}} The earliest surviving written history of Japan, the {{nihongo|''[[Kojiki]]''|古事記}}, compiled sometime before 712, was written in ''kanbun''. Even today Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach ''kanbun'' as part of the curriculum. === The development of man'yōgana === No full-fledged script for written Japanese existed until the development of {{nihongo|''[[man'yōgana]]''|万葉仮名}}, which adapted kanji for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the {{nihongo|''[[Man'yōshū]]''|万葉集}}, compiled sometime before 759, whence the writing system derives its name. Some scholars claim that man'yōgana originated from [[Baekje]], but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_MMbNwAACAAJ|editor=Shunpei Mizuno |script-title=ja:韓国人の日本偽史—日本人はビックリ! |language=Japanese |publisher= Shogakukan |year=2002 |isbn=978-4-09-402716-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qwBgGQAACAAJ|editor=Shunpei Mizuno |script-title=ja:韓vs日「偽史ワールド」 |language=Japanese |publisher= Shogakukan |year=2007 |isbn=978-4-09-387703-9}}</ref> The modern [[kana]], namely [[hiragana]] and [[katakana]], are simplifications and systemizations of man'yōgana. Due to the large number of words and concepts entering [[Japan]] from [[China]] which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a similar pronunciation to the original [[Chinese language|Chinese]]. This Chinese-derived reading is known as {{nihongo|''[[Onyomi|on'yomi]]''|音読み}}, and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as [[Sino-Japanese vocabulary|Sino-Japanese]] in English and {{nihongo|''kango''|漢語}} in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as {{nihongo|''[[kun'yomi]]''|訓読み}}. A kanji may have none, one, or several on'yomi and kun'yomi. [[Okurigana]] are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character {{lang|ja|行}} is read ''i'' as the first syllable of {{nihongo|''iku''|行く||"to go"}}, ''okona'' as the first three syllables of {{nihongo|''okonau''|行う||"to carry out"}}, ''gyō'' in the compound word {{nihongo|''gyōretsu''|行列||"line" or "procession"}}, ''kō'' in the word {{nihongo|''ginkō''|銀行||"bank"}}, and ''an'' in the word {{nihongo|''andon''|行灯||"lantern"}}. Some [[Linguistics|linguists]] have compared the Japanese borrowing of Chinese-derived vocabulary as akin to the influx of Romance vocabulary into English during the [[Norman conquest of England]]. Like English, Japanese has many [[synonym]]s of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. Sino-Japanese is often considered more formal or literary, just as latinate words in English often mark a higher [[Register (sociolinguistics)|register]]. === Script reforms === {{Main|Japanese script reform}} ==== Meiji period ==== The significant reforms of the 19th century [[Meiji era]] did not initially impact the Japanese writing system. However, the language itself was changing due to the increase in literacy resulting from education reforms, the massive influx of words (both borrowed from other languages or newly coined), and the ultimate success of movements such as the influential {{nihongo|''[[genbun itchi]]''|言文一致}} which resulted in Japanese being written in the colloquial form of the language instead of the wide range of historical and classical styles used previously. The difficulty of written Japanese was a topic of debate, with several proposals in the late 19th century that the number of kanji in use be limited. In addition, exposure to non-Japanese texts led to unsuccessful proposals that Japanese be written entirely in kana or rōmaji. This period saw Western-style punctuation marks introduced into Japanese writing.{{Sfn|Twine|1991}} In 1900, the [[Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology|Education Ministry]] introduced three reforms aimed at improving the process of education in Japanese writing: * standardization of hiragana, eliminating the range of hentaigana then in use; * restriction of the number of kanji taught in elementary schools to about 1,200; * reform of the irregular kana representation of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji to make them conform with the pronunciation. The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by [[Linguistic conservatism|conservatives]], to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908.{{Sfn|Seeley|1991|pp=143-144}} ==== Pre–World War II ==== The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented further significant reform of the writing system. The period before [[World War II]] saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of [[furigana]]; however, there was no official endorsement of these, and much opposition. However, one successful reform was the standardization of hiragana, which involved reducing the possibilities of writing down Japanese morae down to only one hiragana character per morae, which led to labeling all the other previously used hiragana as hentaigana and discarding them in daily use.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/hentaigana-history-of-japanese-writing-system/|title=Hentaigana: How Japanese Went from Illegible to Legible in 100 Years|last=Hashi|website=Tofugu|date=25 January 2012|language=en-US|access-date=2016-03-11}}</ref> ==== Post–World War II ==== The period immediately following World War II saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of traditionalists from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were: * {{nihongo|''[[Modern kana usage|gendai kanazukai]]''|現代仮名遣い}}—alignment of kana usage with modern pronunciation, replacing the old [[historical kana usage]] (1946); * promulgation of various restricted sets of kanji: ** {{nihongo|''[[tōyō kanji]]''|当用漢字}} (1946), a collection of 1850 characters for use in schools, textbooks, etc.; ** kanji to be used in schools (1949); ** an additional collection of {{nihongo|''[[jinmeiyō kanji]]''|人名用漢字}}, which, supplementing the ''tōyō kanji'', could be used in personal names (1951); * simplifications of various complex kanji letter-forms {{nihongo|''[[shinjitai]]''|新字体}}. At one stage, an advisor in the Occupation administration proposed a wholesale conversion to rōmaji, but it was not endorsed by other specialists and did not proceed.{{Sfn|Unger|1996}} In addition, the practice of writing [[yokogaki and tategaki|horizontally in a right-to-left direction]] was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g., the station sign at Tokyo reads {{lang|ja|駅京東}}, which is {{lang|ja|東京駅}} from right-to-left).<ref name=":1" /> The post-war reforms have mostly survived, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the ''tōyō kanji'' in 1981 with the 1,945 {{nihongo|''[[jōyō kanji]]''|常用漢字}}—a modification of the ''tōyō kanji''—was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in further script reform.{{Sfn|Gottlieb|1996}} In 2004, the {{nihongo|''[[jinmeiyō kanji]]''|人名用漢字}}, maintained by the [[Ministry of Justice (Japan)|Ministry of Justice]] for use in personal names, was significantly enlarged. The ''jōyō kanji'' list was later extended to 2,136 characters in 2010.<ref name=":0" /> ==Romanization== {{main|Romanization of Japanese}} There are a number of methods of rendering Japanese in Roman letters. The [[Hepburn romanization|Hepburn]] method of [[romanization]], designed for English speakers, is a [[de facto]] standard widely used inside and outside Japan. The ''[[Kunrei-shiki]]'' system has a better correspondence with [[Japanese phonology]]. There are differences in the romanization, such as Kunrei-shiki writing "ち" as "ti", while the Hepburn writes it as "chi".<ref>{{Cite web |last= |date=2024-05-14 |title=ローマ字表記 70年ぶり改定も視野に 文化庁の審議会に検討諮問 {{!}} NHK |trans-title=Agency for Cultural Affairs asks council to consider first romanization change in 70 years |url=https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240514/k10014448921000.html |access-date=2025-02-07 |website=NHK News|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240514111053/https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240514/k10014448921000.html |archive-date=May 14, 2024 }}</ref> Other systems of romanization include ''[[Nihon-shiki]]'', [[JSL romanization|JSL]], and {{Lang|ja-latn|[[Wāpuro rōmaji]]}}. ===Lettering styles=== * [[East Asian sans-serif typeface]] * [[Edomoji]] * [[Japanese calligraphy|Shodō]] * [[Ming (typeface)|Minchō]] ===Variant writing systems=== * [[Gyaru-moji]] * [[Hentaigana]] * [[Man'yōgana]] ==See also== {{Div col}} * {{section link|Ainu language|Writing}} * [[Chinese writing system]] * [[Genkō yōshi]] (graph paper for writing Japanese) * [[Iteration mark]] (Japanese duplication marks) * [[Japanese Braille]] * [[Japanese language and computers]] * [[Japanese manual syllabary]] * [[Japanese typographic symbols]] (non-kana, non-kanji symbols) * [[Kaidā glyphs]] (Yonaguni) * [[Okinawan writing system]] * [[Siddhaṃ script]] (Indic alphabet used for Buddhist scriptures) {{Div col end}} ==References== {{Reflist|30em}} ==Sources== * {{Cite book |last=Frellesvig |first=Bjarke |title=A history of the Japanese language |date=2010 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-65320-6 |location=Cambridge New York}} * {{cite book |last=Gottlieb |first=Nanette |title=Kanji Politics: Language Policy and Japanese Script |publisher=Kegan Paul |year=1996 |isbn=0-7103-0512-5}} * {{cite book |last=Habein |first=Yaeko Sato |title=The History of the Japanese Written Language |publisher=University of Tokyo Press |year=1984 |isbn=0-86008-347-0}} * {{cite book |last=Miyake |first=Marc Hideo |author-link=Marc Hideo Miyake |title=Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction |publisher=RoutledgeCurzon |year=2003 |isbn=0-415-30575-6}} * {{Cite journal |last=Piggott |first=Joan R. |date=1990 |title=Mokkan. Wooden Documents from the Nara Period |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/2385379 |journal=Monumenta Nipponica |volume=45 |issue=4 |pages=449–470 |doi=10.2307/2385379 |jstor=2385379 |issn=0027-0741}} * {{cite journal |last=Seeley |first=Christopher |title=The Japanese Script since 1900 |series=XVIII |journal=Visible Language |year=1984 |volume=3 |pages=267–302}} * {{cite book |last=Seeley |first=Christopher |title=A History of Writing in Japan |publisher=University of Hawai'i Press |date=1991 |isbn=0-8248-2217-X}} * {{cite book |last=Twine |first=Nanette |title=Language and the Modern State: The Reform of Written Japanese |publisher=Routledge |year=1991 |isbn=0-415-00990-1}} * {{cite book |last=Unger |first=J. Marshall |author-link=J. Marshall Unger |title=Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines |publisher=OUP |year=1996 |isbn=0-19-510166-9}} ==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20210501052808/http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/unger2_introduction.html#modern_japanese The Modern Japanese Writing System]: An excerpt from ''Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan'', by J. Marshall Unger. * [https://web.archive.org/web/20060716005927/http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j19/japanese.php ''The 20th Century Japanese Writing System: Reform and Change'' by Christopher Seeley] * [https://labs.goo.ne.jp/api/2015/1293/ ''Japanese Hiragana Conversion API'' by NTT Resonant] * [https://labs.goo.ne.jp/api/2015/1302/ ''Japanese Morphological Analysis API'' by NTT Resonant] {{Japanese language}} {{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Writing System}} [[Category:Japanese writing system| ]] [[Category:Writing systems without word boundaries]]
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