Latham, Harris Learner, A.M., S.T.M

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SOME OUTSTANDING CHARACTERISTICS OFTHE JAPANESE LANGUAGE.BY HARRIS LEARNER LATHAM, A.M., S.T.M.WHILE reading Romanes' 71/^;i/a/ Evolution in Man I have beenoften impressed with the fact that the Japanese tongue pre-sents so many features which that famous author affirms belong toprimitive language. Some of these facts will be here presented.To take a very simple instance—the absence of the personalpronoun. The psychologist says that race life-history and individuallife-history have left marks of the inner life of man of the ages be-fore and after the rise of self-consciousness. Without self-con-sciousness personal pronouns are not used.Now in Japanese this curious state of things is still in existence.Of course the first person pronoun is the most significant in anylanguage. But there is no exact rendering of 'T" in Japanese ; incommon speech there are several nouns used. With the help oflexicographer Brinkley let us see what these terms mean.Wataknshi is the most universally used term ; it has three propersignifications: (t) self-interest, selfishness; (2) private, not public;(3) embezzlement. But these significations are all lost sight ofwhen the term performs the duty of a pronoun. In careless speechthis word zvataknshi becomes zvatashi or even ivashi. A speakeraddressing a deliberate body will speak of himself as Jion-in, "thepresent member." Sessha, "stupid person," may be used in familiardiscourse with an equal. The official will speak of himself ashonkivan, "real official post" (as distinguished from those which aretemporary or are not accompanied with official title).Vulgar language uses besides zvatashi and zvashi, ore, and oira,corruptions of classical terms. Students and young men in generaluse hokii, "servant." Sometimes soregashi, "a certain person," and\ats\izare, "vour servant," are heard.CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE. 307The servant in addressing- a superior will say teniae, "beforeyour hand."These terms are all of the first person, and found in the spokenlanguage only; it would take too long to treat all of the personsand styles. Sufficient has been adduced to give a general idea ofthe situation. We see how these several nouns are gradually beingworn away, as for example, zvatakushi which in its vulgar from,zvashi, does not convey the original meaning of selfishness, but whichthough now a vulgarism, will in time along with ore or oira becomea pure pronoun.Still another mark of the primitiveness of the Japanese lan-guage is the lack of narrow discrimination between the parts ofspeech. We have just seen that Japanese "pronouns" are nouns.It is also true that verbs may all of them be used as adjectives.Miru means "to see," mirn koto means "sight." koto meaning"thing." Ushinatta kaue, "lost money." Even whole clauses canbecome adjectival so that such expressions appear as yokii hashirukoto ga dekiru hito, "well-run-can-man," i. e., a man who can runwell. In this way the relative clause of English is very often turnedas there is no relative pronoun in Japanese.As in English the verb furnishes many prepositions. It alsois used as a noun : iishi zvo zvarera zva kikeri is from Mk. xiv. i8;iishi means "said" and is in the accusative case governed by kikeri,"heard." Shikashi and keredomo, both meaning "but," are verbs.True adjectives are fitted up with verbal endings and become verbs.In short it is impossible to construct a scientific grammar ofJapanese on European models. The language is a composite thathas not yet worn its several elements into a well organized unit.It is a popular remark that Japanese scholars have never written ascientific grammar of their own tongue. The spoken language isspecially in a state of flux.Another feature that impresses the student is the abundanceof words in Japanese. This is not a mere generalization, but willbe clearly proven by a few examples. In teaching English to Japa-nese one often notices that what we express in English by a toneof voice will be put into a word in Japanese. For example therising inflection or interrogation mark, as you please, becomes ka,a word which is appended to the interrogative sentence. The pausewhich sometimes occurs between clauses or sentences may be repre-sented by shi in Japanese ; this shi is not translatable by any Eng-lish word, "and" is too strong.What time is it? \sTokei zva Jiau ji desuka. lit. "clock-bv what308 THE OPEN COURT.hour is— ?" This way of putting it seems tautological in "Ameri-can" but not so in Japanese because the syllable ji has so manymeanings that unless you see its written character or have in spokenlanguage some limiting indicative term like tokci, "clock," the hearerwill not know whether you mean Nanji desiika, "Is it you" ; Nanji desuka, "What character is it?" "What road is it?" "What bridge(of a violin) is it?" "What matter is it?" I learned this by thepuzzled look on the face of my companion who could not answerbecause my question had missed fire.This large number of homonyms is as you know due to theadoption of Chinese words into the language, both spoken and writ-ten. In China there are "tones" to differentiate these similar words;but in transplanting the words the Japanese omitted to bring thetones and so introduced a great deal of confusion along with amass of invaluable material. I must qualify the last remark to theextent that the Japanese are not entirely without "tones" althoughI have seen no clear statement of the matter in any of the books.There are groups of native homonyms that so far as I can discernare clearly distinguished by the Japanese among themselves byusing slight accents and tones together ; to imitate them in thismatter is next to impossible as there are no settled principles onwhich the pronunciation can be determined as is evident from thefact that they disagree among themselves as to just what the dif-ferences are.The Chinese elements in the Japanese language probably con-stitute the same proportion of it as do Latin elements in English.It would be most interesting to trace the parallel between the in-corporation of Latin into English and of Chinese into Japanese.We may close this passing reference to the question by saying thatwithout the aid of Chinese or some similar tongue it is impossibleto conceive how Japanese could ever have survived as the languageof a thinking, civilized people.The multiplicity of words in Japanese is also due in part to theextraordinary politeness of the people. If two coolies are searchingfor a lost article and one of them finds it he exclaims to the other,atta, lit. "was," meaning "I have found it." But when he goes tohis employer he will say "Arhnashita no de gozaimasn" with notthe least difference in meaning.Still another reason for the large number of words in commonuse is the custom of repeating the major part of the interrogativesentence when replying to it. For example : Danna san wa o uchidesuka, Hci uchi destt: "Is the master of the house at home? HeCHARACTERISTICS OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE. 3O9is at home." Any number of examples might be adduced, but innine times out of ten a simple Yes or No will not be used but somepart of the questioner's sentence will be repeated. As a matter offact the Japanese have no true rendering for our yes. In the an-swer Hei, uchi desu, hei does not mean "yes" ; it means simplythat the speaker is listening or has understood the previous speaker.Sayo comes nearer meaning "yes," but its literal meaning is "ac-cording to what is at the left" ; or more freely, "as follows." Thiscomes about from the fact that the text in Japanese runs in col-umns and reads from top to bottom and from right to left. Hence"as follows" must be "as written on the left." This idiom has beentransferred to spoken language and is presumably followed by asentence in which the speaker states explicitly his agreement withthe last remark. So desu often represents our "yes" but its mean-ing is "It is so" ; "so" being one of the very few vocables havingthe same meaning in both Japanese and English. The literaryequivalent of so desu is shikari.When denying an affirmative the sentence may be introducedby He, "no," but more often the negative idea is incorporated inthe verb. Orimasen, "is not," means that the master is not at home.Sen is the negative affix.* * *Another matter bordering both on linguistics and social psy-chology is the matter of attention. I have noticed three men con-versing on the train ; in the course of their remarks, say Mr. Atook the leading part. In order to maintain the attention he finishesnearly all of his sentences with some exclamatory word like ne orna which serves as a prod to waning interest. The listeners mustdo the polite thing of course, so at every pause made by the speakerto gather wind for additional discourse, Mr. B and Mr. C put inwith a hei. At the larger pauses Mr. A will close with his ne, Mr.B will say naruhodo, Mr. C will say so desuka and Mr. A willreply to both with a hei to indicate that he has heard their signsindicating that they have heard him. To one who can understandvery little of the language such a conversation consists of a seriesof vocables punctuated at convenient places by a mutual exchangeof grunts.In speaking to children one must put a nc after nearly everyword if he suspects he is not being understood. The responseto this particle written on their faces will signify to him whetherthey yet comprehend his talk or not.In addressing adults it is impracticable to use a style of address3IO THE OPEN COURT.as compact as one commonly employs when using English. Thenatural flow of speech is so watered by really useless terms thatthe hearers will not keep up with the speaker if he omits them.I am not now referring to discussion of abstruse subjects or theemployment of unusual terms. I refer simply to any simple narra-tive told without interruption. Some may contend against the posi-tion taken up in this paragraph on the ground that Japanese are notnaturally slower to comprehend than Westerners as is implied by theabove remarks. But every-day intercourse of the people in whichthey in familiar discourse do use shortened forms is not to bequoted against my remarks because of one vital point : in commonconversation the colloquy alternates between two or more speakersand gives each one time to gather up what has been said—a thingevidently impossible when speech flows on without a break.It takes no philosopher to discover the depth of the indirectionof thought and speech among the Japanese. Difficulty in holdingattention is but one symptom of a fundamental intellectual trait.For numerous reasons the foreigner is met with a pointless androundabout reply when he expects a plain answer. If vou ask thegreen-grocer the price of potatoes he will begin to tell you of theirvirtues, or scarcity, or where they come from. I have asked inplain unmistakable language for prices three times before gettingan answer. There is a well-known reason for this hesitation andindirection, viz., an inherited custom to pretend that money is afoul thing and not worthy the thought of a self-respecting person.Then the custom of using go-betweens and a thousand and oneother customs have ingrained indirection of thought and speech tothe very bottom. Modern methods of education are doing much toawaken the minds of these Oriental Yankees and bring them intotheir own inheritance. They are after all not stupid nor asleep inthe general sense of the word yet from certain points of view theyare guilty of almost inconceivable indirection. A Japanese who hasspent years in a foreign land has an altogether different force andmental grasp from his untraveled brother. The Japanese have givenabundant proof of real, though hidden, alertness in that they havebeen capable of turning the tables on boastful European pedantsand prodding shaggy beasts till they open their eyes in wonder attheir own stupidity.

Some Outstanding Characteristics of the Japanese Language.

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Some Outstanding Characteristics of the Japanese Language.

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