Japanese is an Agglutinative Language By Julie Landry At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loans from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Japanese lessons consisting of a transcript, English translation, vocabulary lists, grammatical explanations, cultural explanations and exercises are the best way to learn the language. Hirigana and katakana lessons should also be used. Japanese language is a popular choice for students of today. There are many cultural exchange programs, scholarships to study abroad in Japan, and career opportunities available to all sorts of students taking Japanese.

Japanese has a well-defined structure of syllables; words end with a vowel or n (futon, judo, ninja, kimono, shogun, sumo, tofu, and so on). The distinction between long and short vowels affects meaning (long ones are usually indicated by a macron, or line over the letter). Japanese cartoons and video games are very popular throughout the world, and many people, especially young ones, enjoy reading and playing them. There are numerous video games that do not reach the western countries, and in order to play them you would need to understand the language. Japanese also shares considerable similarities with the languages of the Ryukyu Islands, within which Okinawa is located, although the Ryukyu languages and Japanese are both mutually unintelligible.

Japanese exhibits a degree of agglutination. In an agglutinative language, different linguistic elements, each of which exists separately and has a fixed meaning, are often joined to form one word. Japanese students learn about 2000 kanji until the end of junior high school and continue to learn more until the end of their school careers The two writing scripts, hiragana and katakana (together about 100 signs), however, can be memorized within a short period of time.

Japanese love to import foreign words from other languages and especially English. Today's katakana is almost entirely used to write out a foreign word and to help Japanese more easily pronounce it. Japan's long standing rivalries and enmities with virtually all of its neighbors make the study of linguistic connection particularly fraught with political tensions.

Japanese is not closely related to any other language, though a distant genetic kinship to Korean is now thought probable by some scholars, and an even more remote relationship to the Altaic languages is possible. Japanese does have a distinct intonation pattern. Their intonation pattern can be heard not only in individual words, but also in whole sentences.

Japanese language courses are the gateway to a range of unique cultural adventures, such as calligraphy and Zen philosophy, popular culture, anime films, sushi making, and much more. Japan is the second largest consumer of IT services. Learning Japanese is crucial for any kind of business interactions with Japan. Japanese actually has four different ways of addressing people. One example is "kun," which is used for a younger man or a man of lower rank.

Japanese is a relative of other Asian languages. This theory maintains that Japanese split from - or had large influences from - other East Asian languages such as Korean (and possibly the Sino-Tibetan languages). Japanese consists of evenly stressed syllables, each of which ends with a vowel. Most also begin with a consonant.

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