Page 59 - Difference or Disorder Digital Version

Chapter

Japanese

GENERAL INFORMATION

 Number of speakers: More than 120 million speakers worldwide

 Writing system: The Japanese language was initially written entirely using adopted

Chinese characters. These logographic Chinese characters are referred to as Chinese

kanji. Apart from Chinese kanji, women developed hiragana as a cursive written form

that was initially limited to their use only, and priests developed katakana as a phonetic

reading of Chinese kanji.

Japanese is made up of three orthographic systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

o Hiragana and katakana consist of 46 symbols made up of CV clusters, five vowels,

and the letter n. Hiragana is used for inflections and bound morphemes. It is the

first orthographic system children learn (Ota & Ueda, 2007).
47
o Katakana symbols are similar to the hiragana symbols but are typically used for 47

loanwords, onomatopoeia, and to emphasize words (Tohsaku, 2006).

Copyright © 2014 www.bilinguistics.com. All Rights Reserved