Japan, also known as Nihon or Nippon, is a country made up of over six thousand islands. There are four main islands: Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Each island has various dialects of Japanese within that have very particular characteristics. For instance, Oosaka dialect (also known as Kansai dialect) is well known for sounding melodic compared to the standard dialect. Kyoto dialect is well known for being very formal, soft, and polite. Despite being a small country, Japan has dozens of individual dialects due to pockets of heavily condensed populations separated by mountains and sea.
Before Japan was united into a single country, their were various people of different tribes who populated the islands. Many of these groups of people (such as the Ainu in what is now known as Hokkaido) had languages that were not mutually intelligible with the languages used on Honshu or Kyushu.
Before Japan was united into a single country, their were various people of different tribes who populated the islands. Many of these groups of people (such as the Ainu in what is now known as Hokkaido) had languages that were not mutually intelligible with the languages used on Honshu or Kyushu.
Japan's geographic location was integral in the development of Japanese language. China, what we now know as North and South Korea, and Japan all had large influences on each other as developing countries through the wars, alliances, influences, and trading routes of the various dynasties, kingdoms, tribes, and militaries of each territory. Japan had become involved with the skirmishes between the three kingdoms of Korea, choosing to support the Paekche Kingdom in the sixth century (Varley, 2000, p. 25). This kingdom was the one to first introduce Buddhism, Confucianism, as well as written language to the reigning government of Japan (Varley, 2000, p. 25). This writing system was a Korean variant of the standard Chinese script that had been used by Buddhist monks to transcribe foreign lexicons (Bentley, pp. 59-73). It is referred to as Man'yougana: a writing system made of kanji used for pronunciation rather than meaning (Bentley, pp. 59-73). We will continue to learn more about Man'yougana in the Hiragana section.