scholarly journals Derivatization of the Word-forming Model “OWN-ALIEN”in the Japanese Language against the Background of Historical Dynamics of theJapanese Writing System Forms Development: Diachronic and Syncronic Aspects

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-110
Author(s):  
V. Pyrogov

The paper attempts to study the conditions of historical origin and subsequent derivatization of the basic word-formation model “own-alien” in the Japanese language against the background of historical dynamics of the Japanese writing system development. Despite the fact that Japan and the Japanese are considered genetically isolated from the rest of the world, they repeatedly had to face the influence of external factors, in particular, to perceive and assimilate the norms and stereotypes of foreign cultures and languages, while preserving their national identity and integrity, and at the same time, to improve their own language and culture, resulting in the formation of a highly original and unique language that can be characterized as syncretic – Japanese-Chinese – with inclusion at present time of lexical elements from European languages, mainly English. The Japanese pattern of thinking has been periodically restructured throughout the history of the formation and development of their civilization. And every time at the moment of cardinal transformation of their culture one of the important if not the main factor was writing system, which served as a special mean of adjusting their culture and mentality. In recent decades, the algorithm of Japanese thinking has changed, adapting to the conditions of a new historical format (which corresponds to the synchronous type of thinking), while the Japanese writing largely preserves the traditional form, which corresponds mainly to the archaic type of thinking. As a result, objective cultural and psychological contradictions arise, and at the same time a need to find a way out of this difficult situation emerges, perhaps by further reforming the existing system of writing, creating a more adequate system of written signs that would correspond to the imperatives of the modern socio-cultural paradigm.

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 223-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa M. van Leeuwen ◽  
Mark Dingemanse ◽  
Büşra Todil ◽  
Amira Agameya ◽  
Asifa Majid

Numerous studies demonstrate people associate colors with letters and numbers in systematic ways. But most of these studies rely on speakers of English, or closely related languages. This makes it difficult to know how generalizable these findings are, or what factors might underlie these associations. We investigated letter–color and number–color associations in Arabic speakers, who have a different writing system and unusual word structure compared to Standard Average European languages. We also aimed to identify grapheme–color synaesthetes (people who have conscious color experiences with letters and numbers). Participants associated colors with 28 basic Arabic letters and ten digits by typing color names that best fit each grapheme. We found language-specific principles determining grapheme–color associations. For example, the word formation process in Arabic was relevant for color associations. In addition, psycholinguistic variables, such as letter frequency and the intrinsic order of graphemes influenced associations. Contrary to previous studies we found no evidence for sounds playing a role in letter–color associations for Arabic, and only a very limited role for shape influencing color associations. These findings highlight the importance of linguistic and psycholinguistic features in cross-modal correspondences, and illustrate why it is important to play close attention to each language on its own terms in order to disentangle language-specific from universal effects.


Author(s):  
Norhazlina Husin ◽  
Nuranisah Tan Abdullah ◽  
Aini Aziz

Abstract The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students has its own issues and challenges. It does not merely involve only teaching the four language skills. Japanese language has its own unique values. These unique values also tend to differentiate the teaching of Japanese language as a third language from other third language acquisitions. The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students also involves the teaching of its writing system. This makes the teaching of Japanese language rather complicated because Japanese language has three forms of writings, namely: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Students are required to fully understand the Hiragana system of writing first before proceeding to learn the other two forms of writings. The main challenge in the teaching of Japanese writing systems is the time allocated that can be considered as very limited as other language aspects need to be taught too. This, which relates directly to students’ factor very much contribute to the challenges foreseen. Students are likely to face problems in understanding and using the writings as they simultaneously need to adhere to the findings teaching and learning schedules. This article discusses on the analysis conducted in terms of the learning of the Hiragana and Katagana systems of writing among foreign students. The discussion in this article is based on the teaching of Japanese language to students of Universiti Teknologi MARA(UiTM), Shah Alam. Keywords: Third language, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji


Author(s):  
Haun Saussy

We often hear that certain words or texts are “untranslatable.” At the root of this judgment lies an exaggerated respect for the native language, which must not be altered by contact with other languages. Against this superstition, it is here argued that translation is one of the great movers of change in language, and accomplishes this precisely through the rendering of difficult and unidiomatic texts. At another level, a purported ethics of translation urges that translations should be “foreignizing” rather than domesticating: this too evidences a normative idea of the integrity of the language and culture of the foreign text. Against such defences of purity, a sense of both language and translation as inherently hybrid, and literary language in particular as macaronic, should open to examination the historical individuality of encounters that every translation records. Examples from Western European languages indicate how this hybridity is to be understood.


2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 280-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine E. L. Beveridge ◽  
Thomas H. Bak

AbstractFrost's claim that universal models of reading require linguistically diverse data is relevant and justified. We support it with evidence demonstrating the extent of the bias towards some Indo-European languages and alphabetic scripts in scientific literature. However, some of his examples are incorrect, and he neglects the complex interaction of writing system and language structure with history and cultural environment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Ichiro Taida

The first high school student Haiku-Karuta competition was held at I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in May 2017. Haiku, which is a traditional Japanese cultural form, is widely known abroad, and karuta is often used in Japanese language educational institutions. Our competition event is a fusion of these two kinds of Japanese cultural traditions, i.e. haiku and karuta, and 61 high school students participated in the game. The competition contributes to the reception and diffusion of haiku and karuta in Taiwan. Also, the educational merits of the competition involve students having to concentrate on listening to and reading Japanese traditional poems. The fusion is immensely useful in learning Japanese language and culture. In this paper, we will describe the competition in detail. 2017年5月、台湾高雄の義守大学で第1回高校生俳句かるた大会が開かれた。日本の伝統文化である俳句は海外でも広く知られており、またかるたも日本語教育のなかでしばしば使われている。俳句とかるたという2 種類の日本文化を融合させた本大会に7校の高校生、61名が参加した。当該大会の教育的意義は主に以下の3つである。1. 俳句を集中して聞き、該当する札を見つけるという訓練を通じて得られる日本語能力の向上、2. 日本文化の理解の促進、3. チームワークの重要性に対する認識。また本大会の開催を通じてこれらの日本の伝統文化の受容と普及へとつながることが期待できる。本論では、この大会について詳細に報告する。この報告が俳句とかるたを用いた教育の参考例となり、台湾に限らず各国での日本語・日本文化教育がより一層充実したものになればと考えている。


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Olszewski

Chūya Nakahara as the author of Japanese sonnet: Translation perspectives This article offers a reflection – against the historical and literary background of the epoch – on Chūya Nakahara’s work (1907–1937), who was the precursor of the Japanese syllabicaccentual verse (particular of the sonnet). Comparative analysis of his poem Mata kon haru (Spring comes again) and its Polish translation (included in the only Polish anthology of contemporary Japanese poetry entitled Cherries bloomed in winter) aims at shedding light on how difficult was the adaptation of the sonnet to the Japanese language. The OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary) service seems to offer a new promise for the research practice, proving that the intonation cadence may be treated similarly as feet in the poetry written in European languages.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Megumu Doi ◽  
John Peters

This article discusses the experiences of Megumu (first author) and her students as they engaged in collaborative learning (CL) in their intermediate Japanese course at an American university. CL was one of three types of teaching and learning employed in Megumu’s course, but it enabled students to learn aspects of Japanese language and culture that other types of teaching and learning are not designed to accomplish. We first discuss the concept of CL from our social constructionist perspective; i.e., we see learning as a social process of knowing instead of merely a construct of individual minds (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 1999). This is then followed by a description of how this social constructionist perspective was incorporated in Megumu’s course, based on her and students’ reflections on their CL experiences. Finally, we close with an invitation to readers to explore the potential of CL in various Japanese language classroom environments. 本論では、米国大学の中級日本語のクラスで、筆者とその学生達が協働学習教授法(Collaborative learning: CL)に参加した際の経験を論じる。CLはこのクラスで用いられた3種類の教授法の1つで、学生達が日本の言語や文化を学ぶ上で、他の教授法では可能でないことを達成するのに大変役立った。本論では、まず、社会構造主義の視点に基づいたCLの概念を論じる。ここで言う社会構造主義とは、学習を単に個人の知の構築ではなく、物事を知るという社会的過程であるとみなす理論である (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 1999)。次に、この社会構造主義の側面が筆者のクラスでどう用いられているかを、学生達との実際の経験を振り返って叙述する。最後に、様々な日本語教育現場におけるCLの可能性を、共に探求するよう読者に提案する。 *A version of this paper was presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese (SEATJ) at Duke University, NC, in May 2010.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxu Xu

China’s social and economic development has developed rapidly in recent years. International trade is getting closer and closer, trade and cultural exchanges with Japan have increased year by year. China’s foreign policy gradually develops towards internationalization. Japanese language plays a very important role in the process of friendly cooperation between China and Japan. At this juncture and circumstances, many universities have added Japanese language majors in order to improve the Japanese language communication skills among domestic college students and learn more about Japanese language and culture. Compared with English, Japanese is not a widely spoken language. Moreover, the Japanese language is used less frequently and has a smaller range of application. At present, Japanese has not become a major language communication tool for Chinese and as well as for foreign communication. Some universities still use the traditional teaching methods of the past to teach Japanese language. Teachers are not capable enough, it simply cannot meet the actual development needs of modern society, which requires us to pay enough attention to the teaching of Japanese in colleges and universities, in our work we summarize the problems existing in the teaching process of Japanese language today, and formulate corresponding perfect countermeasures.


Author(s):  
Franz Rainer

All languages seem to have nouns and verbs, while the dimension of the class of adjectives varies considerably cross-linguistically. In some languages, verbs or, to a lesser extent, nouns take over the functions that adjectives fulfill in Indo-European languages. Like other such languages, Latin and the Romance languages have a rich category of adjectives, with a well-developed inventory of patterns of word formation that can be used to enrich it. There are about 100 patterns in Romance standard languages. The semantic categories expressed by adjectival derivation in Latin have remained remarkably stable in Romance, despite important changes at the level of single patterns. To some extent, this stability is certainly due to the profound process of relatinization that especially the Romance standard languages have undergone over the last 1,000 years; however, we may assume that it also reflects the cognitive importance of the semantic categories involved. Losses were mainly due to phonological attrition (Latin unstressed suffixes were generally doomed) and to the fact that many derived adjectives became nouns via ellipsis, thereby often reducing the stock of adjectives. At the same time, new adjectival patterns arose as a consequence of language contact and through semantic change, processes of noun–adjective conversion, and the transformation of evaluative suffixes into ethnic suffixes. Overall, the inventory of adjectival patterns of word formation is richer in present-day Romance languages than it was in Latin.


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