Japanese + Ainu Diana Garcia ⽇本語 Japanese Language
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The Study of Old Documents of Hokkaido and Kuril Ainu
NINJAL International Symposium 2018 Approaches to Endangered Languages in Japan and Northeast Asia, August 6-8 The study of old documents of Hokkaido and Kuril Ainu: Promise and Challenges Tomomi Sato (Hokkaido U) & Anna Bugaeva (TUS/NINJAL) [email protected] [email protected]) Introduction: Ainu • AINU (isolate, North Japan, moribund) • Is the only non-Japonic lang. of Japan. • Major dialect groups : Hokkaido (moribund), Sakhalin (extinct since 1993), Kuril (extinct since the end of XIX). • Was also spoken in Tōhoku till mid XVIII. • Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Southwestern (well documented) Northeastern (less documented) • Is not used in daily conversation since the 1950s. • Ethnical Ainu: 100,000. 2 Fig. 2 Major language families in Northeast Asia （excluding Sinitic） Amuric Mongolic Tungusic Ainuic Koreanic Japonic • Ainu shares only few features with Northeast Asian languages. • Ainu is typologically “more like a morphologically reduced version of a North American language.” (Johanna Nichols p.c.). • This is due to the strongly head-marking character of Ainu (Bugaeva, to appear). Why is it important to study Ainu? • Ainu culture is widely regarded as a direct descendant of the Jōmon culture which was spread in the Japanese archipelago in the Prehistoric time from about 14,000 BC. • Ainu is the only surviving Jōmon language; there had been other Jōmon lgs too: about 300 lgs (Janhunen 2002), cf. 10 lgs (Whitman, p.c.) . • Ainu is likely to be much more typical of what languages were like in Northeast Asia several millennia ago than the picture we would get from Chinese, Japanese or Korean. • Focusing on Ainu can help us understand a period of northeast Asian history when political, cultural and linguistic units were very different to what they have been since the rise of the great historically-attested states of East Asia. -
On Translation a Short Introduction to the Japanese Language Will
On Translation A short introduction to the Japanese language will illustrate the kind of difficulties one encounters in translating Japanese into the European languages, and vice versa. Linguistically, Japanese is an isolated language. It has no relation to Chinese. It must have had some relation to Korean, another isolated language, but the two went into different directions thousands of years ago. Some linguists claim that the Japanese language, along with the Korean, belongs to the Ural-Altaic family, yet the claim remains hypothetical. The Japanese language features some characteristics that would seem most strange to those who are only familiar with the European languages. For example, a grammatical subject is unnecessary in Japanese to construct a grammatically complete sentence. “淋しい” (Sabishii) means (someone is) lonely. It is a complete sentence, but there is no subject. The sentence may mean ‘I’m lonely,’ ‘you are lonely,’ ‘he/she is lonely,’ ‘the rock is lonely,’ ‘all human beings are lonely,’ etc, depending on the context. It may furthermore refer to a vague sense of loneliness which needn’t be specified. It is true that in some European languages, such as Italian, a grammatically complete sentence is possible without a named subject. But the subject can always be determined by the inflection of the verb (and often also by the changes in the articles, adjectives and nouns): “Sono sola,” “Sei solo.” A Japanese sentence may be very long and still be without a subject. Tale of Genji , for instance, might contain a sequence of three long sentences without subjects, yet in each a different subject would be implied. -
A Functional MRI Study on the Japanese Orthographies
Modulation of the Visual Word Retrieval System in Writing: A Functional MRI Study on the Japanese Orthographies Kimihiro Nakamura1, Manabu Honda2, Shigeru Hirano1, Tatsuhide Oga1, Nobukatsu Sawamoto1, Takashi Hanakawa1, Downloaded from http://mitprc.silverchair.com/jocn/article-pdf/14/1/104/1757408/089892902317205366.pdf by guest on 18 May 2021 Hiroshi Inoue3, Jin Ito3, Tetsu Matsuda1, Hidenao Fukuyama1, and Hiroshi Shibasaki1 Abstract & We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to left sensorimotor areas and right cerebellum. The kanji versus examine whether the act of writing involves different neuro- kana comparison showed increased responses in the left psychological mechanisms between the two script systems of prefrontal and anterior cingulate areas. Especially, the lPITC the Japanese language: kanji (ideogram) and kana (phono- showed a significant task-by-script interaction. Two additional gram). The main experiments employed a 2 Â 2 factorial control tasks, repetition (REP) and semantic judgment (SJ), design that comprised writing-to-dictation and visual mental activated the bilateral perisylvian areas, but enhanced the lPITC recall for kanji and kana. For both scripts, the actual writing response only weakly. These results suggest that writing of the produced a widespread fronto-parietal activation in the left ideographic and phonographic scripts, although using the hemisphere. Especially, writing of kanji activated the left largely same cortical regions, each modulates the visual word- posteroinferior temporal cortex (lPITC), whereas that of retrieval system according to their graphic features. Further- kana also yielded a trend of activation in the same area. more, comparisons with two additional tasks indicate that the Mental recall for both scripts activated similarly the left parieto- activity of the lPITC increases especially in expressive language temporal regions including the lPITC. -
Pictures of an Island Kingdom Depictions of Ryūkyū in Early Modern Japan
PICTURES OF AN ISLAND KINGDOM DEPICTIONS OF RYŪKYŪ IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ART HISTORY MAY 2012 By Travis Seifman Thesis Committee: John Szostak, Chairperson Kate Lingley Paul Lavy Gregory Smits Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter I: Handscroll Paintings as Visual Record………………………………. 18 Chapter II: Illustrated Books and Popular Discourse…………………………. 33 Chapter III: Hokusai Ryūkyū Hakkei: A Case Study……………………………. 55 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………. 78 Appendix: Figures …………………………………………………………………………… 81 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………. 106 ii Abstract This paper seeks to uncover early modern Japanese understandings of the Ryūkyū Kingdom through examination of popular publications, including illustrated books and woodblock prints, as well as handscroll paintings depicting Ryukyuan embassy processions within Japan. The objects examined include one such handscroll painting, several illustrated books from the Sakamaki-Hawley Collection, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library, and Hokusai Ryūkyū Hakkei, an 1832 series of eight landscape prints depicting sites in Okinawa. Drawing upon previous scholarship on the role of popular publishing in forming conceptions of “Japan” or of “national identity” at this time, a media discourse approach is employed to argue that such publications can serve as reliable indicators of understandings -
The Twentieth-Century Secularization of the Sinograph in Vietnam, and Its Demotion from the Cosmological to the Aesthetic
Journal of World Literature 1 (2016) 275–293 brill.com/jwl The Twentieth-Century Secularization of the Sinograph in Vietnam, and its Demotion from the Cosmological to the Aesthetic John Duong Phan* Rutgers University [email protected] Abstract This article examines David Damrosch’s notion of “scriptworlds”—spheres of cultural and intellectual transfusion, defined by a shared script—as it pertains to early mod- ern Vietnam’s abandonment of sinographic writing in favor of a latinized alphabet. The Vietnamese case demonstrates a surprisingly rapid readjustment of deeply held attitudes concerning the nature of writing, in the wake of the alphabet’s meteoric suc- cesses. The fluidity of “language ethics” in early modern Vietnam (a society that had long since developed vernacular writing out of an earlier experience of diglossic liter- acy) suggests that the durability of a “scriptworld” depends on the nature and history of literacy in the societies under question. Keywords Vietnamese literature – Vietnamese philology – Chinese philology – script reform – language reform – early modern East Asia/Southeast Asia Introduction In 1919, the French-installed emperor Khải Định permanently dismantled Viet- nam’s civil service examinations, and with them, an entire system of political * I would like to thank Wynn Wilcox, Nguyễn Tuấn Cường, Tuna Artun, and Jack Chia for their valuable help and input. All errors are my own. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/24056480-00102010 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 07:54:41AM via free access 276 phan selection based on proficiency in Literary Sinitic.1 That same year, using a con- troversial latinized alphabet called Quốc Ngữ (lit. -
Japanese Manuscript Sources on 19Th Century Russia in HUL
Title <LIBRARY COLLECTION>Japanese Manuscript Sources on 19th Century Russia in HUL Author(s) Akizuki, Takako Citation Acta Slavica Iaponica, 7, 149-153 Issue Date 1989 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/7994 Type bulletin (article) File Information KJ00000034161.pdf Instructions for use Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers : HUSCAP 149 Japanese Manuscript Sources on 19th Century Russia in HUL* Takako AKIZUKI Introduction to the "Northern-Studies Collection" Hokkaido University Library (HUL) has a special section called "Hoppo Shiryo-shitsu", or "Northern-Studies Collection", which organizes research materials on Northern Pacific areas and Northern Eurasia, including Hokkaido, Sakhalin, the Kuriles, the Aleutian Islands, the Soviet Far East, Siberia, Alaska and the Arctic. As far as I know, this is one of the most concentrated collections of its kind in Japan. The Northern-Studies Collection formally opened in 1967, but its root goes back to 1937, when the Research Institute for Northern Culture (Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu-shitsu) was estab lished as an interdisciplinary research center at Hokkaido University. One of the purposes of the institute was to collect resource materials on the northern regions, with the ultimate goal that "nothing would remain beyond the scope of its collection". In 1966 the institute was reorganized as a facility attached to the Faculty of Literature, and its collection was moved to the University Library. The Library's own collection of northern-studies materials, dating from the Sapporo Agricultural College founded in 1876, was added to this to create the North ern-Studies Collection of to-day. Since its establishment, the Northern-Studies Collection has been very active in acquiring new materials. -
A Student Model of Katakana Reading Proficiency for a Japanese Language Intelligent Tutoring System
A Student Model of Katakana Reading Proficiency for a Japanese Language Intelligent Tutoring System Anthony A. Maciejewski Yun-Sun Kang School of Electrical Engineering Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 Abstract--Thls work describes the development of a kanji. Due to the limited number of kana, their relatively low student model that Is used In a Japanese language visual complexity, and their systematic arrangement they do Intelligent tutoring system to assess a pupil's not represent a significant barrier to the student of Japanese. proficiency at reading one of the distinct In fact, the relatively small effort required to learn katakana orthographies of Japanese, known as k a t a k a n a , yields significant returns to readers of technical Japanese due to While the effort required to memorize the relatively the high incidence of terms derived from English and few k a t a k a n a symbols and their associated transliterated into katakana. pronunciations Is not prohibitive, a major difficulty In reading katakana Is associated with the phonetic This work describes the development of a system that is modifications which occur when English words used to automatically acquire knowledge about how English which are transliterated Into katakana are made to words are transliterated into katakana and then to use that conform to the more restrictive rules of Japanese information in developing a model of a student's proficiency in phonology. The algorithm described here Is able to reading katakana. This model is used to guide the instruction automatically acquire a knowledge base of these of the student using an intelligent tutoring system developed phonological transformation rules, use them to previously [6,8]. -
Hokkaido Ainu Dialects: Variation from the Perspective of the Geographical Distribution of Vocabulary
Hokkaido Ainu Dialects: Variation from the Perspective of the Geographical Distribution of Vocabulary Mika FUKAZAWA Preparatory Office for National Ainu Museum (The foundation for Ainu culture) 1 INTRODUCTION • The aim of this study is to generate geographical maps and to describe the variations in Hokkaido Ainu dialects. • The Ainu language has three dialect categories: Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Northern Kurils. • It is well known that “for Hokkaido, there are some differences in vocabulary, phonology, word formation, and the like between northeastern and southwestern dialects” (Tamura 2000: 3) 2 INTRODUCTION The Kamchatka Peninsula Sakhalin The Kuril Islands Hokkaido Honshu 3 INTRODUCTION • Regarding the Ainu dialects, the most important work on them was conducted by Hattori, Chiri, and their collaborators from 1955–1956. • Currently, few native speakers of Ainu exist, and collecting sufficient words and sentences through fieldwork is difficult. • My studies adopted geolinguistics for the Ainu language, referring to the audio and written materials that Hattori, Chiri, and other researchers have collected. 4 THE ATLAS OF AINU DIALECTS 5 AINU DIALECTS Hokkaido: 1. Yakumo/ 2. Oshamambe/ 3. Horobetsu/ 4. Biratori (Fukumitsu)/ 5. Nukibetsu/ 6. Niikappu/ 7. Samani/ 8. Obihiro/ 9. Kushiro/ 10. Bihoro/ 11. Asahikawa/ 12. Nayoro/ 13. Sōya/ 14. Chitose/ 15. Shizunai/ 16. Hombetsu/ 17. Mukawa/ 18. Nemuro Sakhalin: 19. Ochiho/ 20. Tarantomari/ 21. Maoka/ 22. Shiraura/ 23. Raichishka/ 24. Nairo Kurils: 25. Shumushu 6 INTRODUCTION • Nakagawa (1996) first suggested the geographical distribution and several patterns of Ainu. • Here, I consider the following major three types within Hokkaido Ainu dialects. • The Eastern-Western type • The Saru-Chitose (and Sakhalin) type • The ABA type 7 1. -
A Brief Summary of Japanese-Ainu Relations and the Depiction of The
The road from Ainu barbarian to Japanese primitive: A brief summary of Japanese-ainu relations in a historical perspective Noémi GODEFROY Centre d’Etudes Japonaises (CEJ) “Populations Japonaises” Research Group Proceedings from the 3rd Consortium for Asian and African Studies (CAAS) “Making a difference: representing/constructing the other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and languages”, 16-18 February 2012, published by OFIAS at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, p.201-212 Edward Saïd, in his ground-breaking work Orientalism, underlines that to represent the “Other” is to manipulate him. This has been an instrument of submission towards Asia during the age of European expansion, but the use of such a process is not confined to European domination. For centuries, the relationship between Japan and its northern neighbors, the Ainu, is based on economical domination and dependency. In this regard, the Ainu’s foreignness, impurity and “barbaric appearance” - their qualities as inferior “Others” - are emphasized in descriptive texts or by the regular staging of such diplomatic practices as “barbarian audiences”, thus highlighting the Japanese cultural and territorial superiority. But from 1868, the construction of the Meiji nation-state requires the assimilation and acculturation of the Ainu people. As Japan undergoes what Fukuzawa Yukichi refers to as the “opening to civilization” (文明開化 bunmei kaika) by learning from the West, it also plays the role of the civilizer towards the Ainu. The historical case study of the relationship between Japanese and Ainu from up to Meiji highlights the evolution of Japan’s own self-image and identity, from an emerging state, subduing barbarians, to newly unified state - whose ultramarine relations are inspired by a Chinese-inspired ethnocentrism and rejection of outside influence- during the Edo period, and finally to an aspiring nation-state, seeking to assert itself while avoiding colonization at Meiji. -
Chinese Script Generation Panel Document
Chinese Script Generation Panel Document Proposal for the Generation Panel for the Chinese Script Label Generation Ruleset for the Root Zone 1. General Information Chinese script is the logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. They are called Hanzi in Chinese, Kanji in Japanese and Hanja in Korean. Since the Hanzi unification in the Qin dynasty (221-207 B.C.), the most important change in the Chinese Hanzi occurred in the middle of the 20th century when more than two thousand Simplified characters were introduced as official forms in Mainland China. As a result, the Chinese language has two writing systems: Simplified Chinese (SC) and Traditional Chinese (TC). Both systems are expressed using different subsets under the Unicode definition of the same Han script. The two writing systems use SC and TC respectively while sharing a large common “unchanged” Hanzi subset that occupies around 60% in contemporary use. The common “unchanged” Hanzi subset enables a simplified Chinese user to understand texts written in traditional Chinese with little difficulty and vice versa. The Hanzi in SC and TC have the same meaning and the same pronunciation and are typical variants. The Japanese kanji were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 5th century AD. Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with Chinese characters, while Japanese words could be written using the character for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Finally, in Japanese, all three scripts (kanji, and the hiragana and katakana syllabaries) are used as main scripts. The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. -
A Comparative Analysis of the Simplification of Chinese Characters in Japan and China
CONTRASTING APPROACHES TO CHINESE CHARACTER REFORM: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SIMPLIFICATION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS IN JAPAN AND CHINA A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ASIAN STUDIES AUGUST 2012 By Kei Imafuku Thesis Committee: Alexander Vovin, Chairperson Robert Huey Dina Rudolph Yoshimi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express deep gratitude to Alexander Vovin, Robert Huey, and Dina R. Yoshimi for their Japanese and Chinese expertise and kind encouragement throughout the writing of this thesis. Their guidance, as well as the support of the Center for Japanese Studies, School of Pacific and Asian Studies, and the East-West Center, has been invaluable. i ABSTRACT Due to the complexity and number of Chinese characters used in Chinese and Japanese, some characters were the target of simplification reforms. However, Japanese and Chinese simplifications frequently differed, resulting in the existence of multiple forms of the same character being used in different places. This study investigates the differences between the Japanese and Chinese simplifications and the effects of the simplification techniques implemented by each side. The more conservative Japanese simplifications were achieved by instating simpler historical character variants while the more radical Chinese simplifications were achieved primarily through the use of whole cursive script forms and phonetic simplification techniques. These techniques, however, have been criticized for their detrimental effects on character recognition, semantic and phonetic clarity, and consistency – issues less present with the Japanese approach. By comparing the Japanese and Chinese simplification techniques, this study seeks to determine the characteristics of more effective, less controversial Chinese character simplifications. -
The Japanese Writing Systems, Script Reforms and the Eradication of the Kanji Writing System: Native Speakers’ Views Lovisa Österman
The Japanese writing systems, script reforms and the eradication of the Kanji writing system: native speakers’ views Lovisa Österman Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature Bachelor’s Thesis Japanese B.A. Course (JAPK11 Spring term 2018) Supervisor: Shinichiro Ishihara Abstract This study aims to deduce what Japanese native speakers think of the Japanese writing systems, and in particular what native speakers’ opinions are concerning Kanji, the logographic writing system which consists of Chinese characters. The Japanese written language has something that most languages do not; namely a total of three writing systems. First, there is the Kana writing system, which consists of the two syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana. The two syllabaries essentially figure the same way, but are used for different purposes. Secondly, there is the Rōmaji writing system, which is Japanese written using latin letters. And finally, there is the Kanji writing system. Learning this is often at first an exhausting task, because not only must one learn the two phonematic writing systems (Hiragana and Katakana), but to be able to properly read and write in Japanese, one should also learn how to read and write a great amount of logographic signs; namely the Kanji. For example, to be able to read and understand books or newspaper without using any aiding tools such as dictionaries, one would need to have learned the 2136 Jōyō Kanji (regular-use Chinese characters). With the twentieth century’s progress in technology, comparing with twenty years ago, in this day and age one could probably theoretically get by alright without knowing how to write Kanji by hand, seeing as we are writing less and less by hand and more by technological devices.