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Konishiwa!! Kanye kurusemato, kanye kyoshi!! Are you lost? Because if you were in medieval Japan than this is the type of language that you would be speaking and writing with. If you were confused with my opening statement, don’t stress because I am here to inform you about the different languages and the style of writing that the Japanese used in medieval times.

Languages and writing was an important part of the Japanese lifestyle and is still evident in modern day society. For a long time the Japanese had no writing system of their own, but over time Japan began to learn, understand and write the Chinese Script and many other features and aspects of the Chinese culture.

Although this was the case, the Japanese eventually got used to the sounds, vocabulary and characters. So, they altered it and made it their own language. The inhabitants of Japan used multiple Chinese roots to form a new language called Japanese. The Japanese people were settled from either continental asia or near by pacific islands.

The original inhabitants of the Japanese islands were the Jomon and very little is known about them because writing had not being introduced to Japan by the Chinese settlers until the 2nd century. Chinese documents from the 3rd century had Japanese words in them, but Japanese documents did not appear until the 8th century.

Through the spread of buddhism, which is the primary religion in China, the Chinese writing system was brought to Japan. The Chinese writing system is called the kanji and this forms the basis of Japanese writing. The Japanese writing system also uses a huragana and katakana writing methods.

Japanese could read religious and political texts that were imported from China. Japanese was a spoken language, and the Japanese then started adapting to Chinese characters to create a set of syllabus called Kana that would make the Japanese not only speak their own language but write it as well. This is another aspect that has Chinese roots.

The Japanese used most of the Chinese language because speaking Chinese was a public language that was spread all around Asia, this is why the Japanese wanted to base their language around the Chinese characters. The Japanese used Chinese characters to create a simple idea of what the Japanese characters

will eventually look like after the language evolves and has been practiced over a long period of time. If I was to speak simple Mandarin which is a type of Chinese language I would say ni how, hello, wa shing Orna (my name is Orna) and War shi si saua (I am 14 years old) For people who lived in China and Japan this was a Japanese-Chinese hybrid form of writing.

This is the type of things that the Japanese would learn and then transform by taking and adding different sounds to create the Japanese language.


An example of this was known as manyōgana meaning literally “Ten Thousand leaf syllabic script”, which gave the characters a more Japanese like meaning.

Soon after the Japanese adopted the Chinese writing system, they altered it and made it their own. Japanese literature became more and more popular throughout Japan and officially became a well known language. Japanese is mainly spoken in Japan, but due to emigration and due to the war Japanese is now spoken in Brazil, Hawaii, Korea, Taiwan,

parts of China, the Philippines, Peru and Argentina. KEYNOTE: The writing on the left is Chinese and the writing on the right is Japanese. You don't have to know how to speak either language fluently to see that the Japanese has a lines within the characters that don't show up in the Chinese text. Take these, for instance. These are the kana.

They were adapted from Chinese characters and were used for the Japanese and Chinese to communicate with each other before each language was easily noticed as different languages. In conclusion, Japanese has been used from the 3rd century to present day. It shows that Japanese is a unique writing and language style. Thank you