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Language Lineage

Japanese

The language of the Nara court and its successors, written with Chinese characters and two syllabaries derived from them, and remodelled by a large Chinese vocabulary.

c. 1st millennium CE – present (written from the 8th century)Japan
On this page
  1. Old Japanese and Its Writing
  2. From p to h
  3. In its own words
  4. Where it's spoken
  5. Turning points

01

Old Japanese and Its Writing

The first Japanese texts, the Kojiki (712) and the Man'yōshū (compiled around 759), write Japanese with Chinese characters used for their sounds (man'yōgana). From these, simplified syllabaries developed in the 9th and 10th centuries: hiragana, used for the court literature of women such as Murasaki Shikibu, and katakana, for glossing Buddhist texts. Written Japanese has combined characters and kana ever since.

In 1917 Hashimoto Shinkichi noticed that Old Japanese texts consistently use two different sets of characters for some syllables, such as ki, mi and ko. He concluded that Old Japanese had eight vowels, not five. They merged into the modern five by the Heian period.

02

From p to h

Modern Japanese h goes back to an older p: hana 'flower' was once pana. Between Old Japanese and the 17th century the sound weakened to ɸ, and when Portuguese Jesuits arrived in the 16th century they wrote it with f. João Rodrigues's grammar and the 1603 Jesuit dictionary have fana. The Jesuits also left the first Western loans, such as pan 'bread' and tabako.

In the Meiji era writers and educators built a modern standard (hyōjungo) on the speech of Tokyo, and the genbun itchi movement brought written language close to speech. After 1946 the government limited the characters for general use and reformed kana spelling.

A sample

In its own words

Japanese

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
furuike
old.pond
ya
EXCL
kawazu
frog
tobikomu
jump.in
mizu
water
no
GEN
oto
sound
‘The old pond: a frog jumps in, the sound of water.’
Sources (1)
  • Matsuo Bashō, 1686. Discussed in Shirane, Haruo. 1998. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Japanc. 120 million

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Writing712 – c. 759

    Kojiki and Man'yōshū

    The earliest Japanese texts use Chinese characters both for meaning and for sound (man'yōgana), and record Old Japanese poetry and myth.

    Sources (1)
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Contact5th – 9th century CE onward

    The Chinese layer

    Buddhism, Confucian learning and Chinese statecraft bring thousands of Chinese words, read in Japanese pronunciations, into Japanese. Sino-Japanese vocabulary comes to make up much of the learned lexicon.

    Sources (1)
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Sound lawc. 8th – 10th century CEContested

    Eight vowels become five

    i₁ i₂ · e₁ e₂ · o₁ o₂ → i e o (8 vowels → 5)

    Old Japanese distinguished two kinds of i, e and o in certain syllables, spelled with different characters. These merge by the early Heian period. Hashimoto Shinkichi's discovery of the distinction in 1917 transformed the study of Old Japanese. What the eight vowels sounded like is still debated.

    Figures · Hashimoto Shinkichi (1882–1945)

    Compare with other mergers across families →

    Sources (2)
    • Hashimoto, Shinkichi. 1917. Kokugo kanazukai kenkyūshi-jō no ichi hakken. Teikoku Bungaku 23.
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. Writing9th – 10th century CE

    Hiragana and katakana

    Simplified forms of man'yōgana become the two kana syllabaries, used for Heian court literature and for annotating Chinese texts.

    Sources (1)
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. Sound lawc. 8th – 17th century CE

    p becomes h

    *p → ɸ → h (pana → fana → hana 'flower')

    Old Japanese *p weakens to ɸ and then to h before most vowels: pana → fana → hana 'flower'. Portuguese records of around 1600 still write f.

    Compare with other weakening and voicing across families →

    Sources (1)
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. Contact1543 – 1639

    The Portuguese and the Jesuits

    Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries bring words such as pan and tabako, and produce the first Western grammars and dictionaries of Japanese, among them João Rodrigues's Arte da Lingoa de Iapam. They record the pronunciation of the time.

    Figures · João Rodrigues (c. 1561–1633)

    Sources (2)
    • Rodrigues, João. 1604–1608. Arte da Lingoa de Iapam. Nagasaki: Collegio de Iapão da Companhia de Iesu.
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  7. Revitalization1880s – 1946

    A modern standard

    Meiji reformers promote a standard language based on Tokyo speech and a written style close to speech (genbun itchi). After 1946 the list of characters for general use is limited and kana spelling is modernised.

    Sources (1)
    • Frellesvig, Bjarke. 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.