What Is The Relationship Between The Japanese And Chinese Languages?

Due to the use of Chinese ideographic script, which we call "Kanji," Japanese is often thought to have close connections with Chinese. But the differences are considerable. Chinese is a "monosyllabic" language, containing words of only one syllable. Japanese, however, is "polysyllabic," having numerous words of two or more syllables. In Chinese, word meaning is conveyed by pitch and word order, while in Japanese the meaning is conveyed by the words themselves and by the word endings.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Japanese language had, basically, the same grammar as that used today. But by the end of the ninth and tenth centuries, changes began taking place. This made it necessary to know one set of words for reading and another set for speaking. The result was that until the end of World War II, one had to know 3,000 to 5,000 Chinese characters and two sets of syllabary of 50 characters each in order to read any weighty material.

Since 1945, however, the essential Kanji have been somewhat simplified and reduced to a little less than 2,000. The language also has adopted many English words. Nowadays, besides these Kanji characters, schoolchildren are taught two sets of romanization. This requires hours of work at memorizing as well as writing practice until, by the end of grammar school, children have learned 881 Kanji, and, by the end of high school, 1,850. Reading college textbooks, however, requires knowledge of about 3,000 Kanji.