TILE WRITTEN FORMS. The lan guage differs in grammatical forms and in vocab ulary in its spoken and written forms, making a twofold series of grammars and dictionaries neces sary. In the written language there are also marked distinctions. the archaic. classical, Sinieo Japanese.epistolary. etc. The oldest specimens we have go back to the eighth A.D., but they are unintelligible to all hut special students.' At a still earlier period the Chinese language had already influenced the Japanese, and many Chinese words are imbedded in the Japan ese, disguised and naturalized. lint from the ninth century onward Chinese has been the lan guage of the learned, taking the place of Latin in Europe. The talk of educated men is unin telligible to the common people, so full is it of Chinese words and phrases. In our day the use of Chinese has increased, since its monosyllables offer unequaled facilities for the coinage of scientific terms, and the whole terminology of modern science has been translated into Chinese compounds by the Japanese. The result is mysti fying to a Chinaman, because of the unfamiliar use and collocation of the ideographs, as well as from the retention of the order of the Japanese sentence and its grammatical structure in the cidina•y written styles. The pronunciation, too, of Chinese in Japan is traditional, derived from teachers who spoke dialects which have ceased to exist in China. Unfortunately, there are two traditions and both in use. complieating a situa tion which has inherent diffieulties enough.
As the Japanese had no writing previous to the introduction of Chinese, the Chinese ideographs are used phonetienlly. as well as for the expres sion of ideas. Thus in Japan names arc written the iflograplis without regard to the mean ing, implied, and originally pure Japanese litera ture was thus written, certain ideographs being associated with definite sounds. But the result
was cumbersome in the extreme. the long, poly syllabic Japanese words not lending themselves to this treatment. In course of time the ideogra ph.i were abbreviated and finally took on the form of the Dann, the syllabary. It is in two forms. the kata•ono and tlie hiragana, the former used ehietly for names. The katakano are fashioned out of the square or book form of Chinese charac ters, the hiragana from the cursive. The 1:(171(1, for mnemonic purposes, is arranged in two orders, one composing a verse of Buddhist poetry written by linbo Daishi (q.v.) which sets forth the vanity and brevity of life. and the other the table of `fifty sounds,' though there are really hut forty seven. For convenience in transliterating Chi ta-sp. however, a letter representing n has been added. All purely .Japanese words and syllables end with a vowel sound. The kana is thus used as an alpnabet, representing syllaliles instead] of consonants and vowels. By the change of studs to sonants in certain instances. and by the distinction of long and short vowels. the number of syllables is considerably increased.
Bruitoraneny. Chamberlain. Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (Tokio, ISS:;) : id., The Japanese Language (Tokio,1SS7): Aston. Gram mor of the Japanese Written Language (Yoko hama. I S77 ) id., Grammar of the Japanese I"Poken Language (Yokohama, 1SSS) ; Tiohric, Handbook of English-Japanese Etymology (To kio, ISS91 ; Dictionary of Chi»ese Japancse ll'ord/R (3 vols., London, 1889) : Sato• and Masakata. English-Japancse Dirtionary of the Spoken Language (2tl ed., London. Is79) liephurn. Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (London. ItiSQ.).