GEH1015: Linguistic

Note for next week assessment:

• Cite evidences
• E.g lecture: (bud lec) or (holcombe 2011,22)

Integrate readngs and lecture plus tutorial discussion into own arguments, show sources and has a clear thesis and uses facrs to back it up.

• Do the readings

Have your own argument and show thesis

Lesson:

Japanese is adapted their language from china

Linguistic concept:

• Some langauge are related like englsh and dutch
• Have a genetic relation with them
• These are called language family

Most of our english from proto-germanic

Compare the two larger familiies

• All language can be traced back to another language
• Daughter languagas share cocablary, grammar etc.

Chinese is a member of the sino tibetan language family

• This is the second most spoken language family
• Japan is not part of the sino tibetan family
• There are about 300 sino language
• Its divide about two
• 2 major branches Tibetan burmise and sinitic
• Sinitic is made up of the han language of china

Linguistically languages not mutually intelligible

Dialects: mutually intelligible

1. Hokkien speaksuse chinese character to write
2. Politics of chinese culture
3. Hokkien is not mutally intelligible with mandarin

Example: Singlish and american english is dialects. People may not understand american english.

Dialects are intelligible

Jerry norman book about chinese characters

• Within sinitic,many broad language groups such as “min” which includes five to nine languages such as hokkien and teochew
• Comparison of the various chinese languages allow us to reconstruct archaic forms of words which are no longer use.

Chinese written:

• Its important because its widely adopted
• Ancient language are written in turtle shell written by priest for kings where they write their prayers from 3500 years ago
• 2000 before the common era.
• Not all characters surivive
• Some people suggest tht the language may not be even related to the spoken chinese language of today
• The development of classic chinese
• There is no such thing as the written language that can capture the spoken language
• Missing interpretation such as pauses or emphais in speech cant be shown in written
• Classic chinese is akin to arabic and latin as an universal language
• Example of classic chinese:
• The master said, Dont worry about whether other people understand you. Worry about whether you understand other people.  -Burton watson
• Many people in japan still learn to read and few can write it
• Chinese characters are dying out in korea

Japanese:

• Language family of the japanese is still unknown
• Japanese has no relationship to chinese linguistically
• Still one of the most spoken language
• Suggest: related to korean thats no longer spoken
• Its example of austronesian language (speculation)

Differences of chinese and japanese:

• Japense inflex but not chinese
• Japanese is polysyllabic,chinese wasnt (taberu and chi)
• Japanese grammer based on particles, chinese on word order
• The oldest chinese is monosyllabic
• Si ma QIan
• Chinese character are a good fit for chinese but not good for japanese

Adapting chinese to japanese:

• Process takes cejturies
• Creative
• Results is an extremly difficult system of orthograohy
• Which works
• Eventually this develop into manyogana
• Chinese characters use to write the sounds of japanese
• Use to write the kojiki and manyoshu
• Very hard to read today since its not simply sounds.
• Japanese scholars claim that the manyoshu is written in pure japanese but there are traces of classical chinese
• The original poem is like puzzle
• Development of syllabaries
• Hiragana
• Derive from cursive
• Today use widely for particles to indicate readings
• In the past numerous variants standardized in 1900
• Katakana
• Now katakana can be use for foreign loan words
• In the past its use for formal documents and serious treatises
• What about for the women>??
• In theory all japanese can be written with either of these two system
• Reason for using different syllaberies:
• People in japan create methods to read classical japanese

Conclusion:

CHinese and japanese are not relate languages

Using chinese characters

Through the centuries of innovation chinese writing was adapted to write japanese

Chinese text can be parsed into japanese

So japan is able to participate in the east asian cultural sphere