Explore the impact of one language on the other language(s) at different levels The impact of the Chinese language on the Japanese language Introduction

The oldest attested writing system used by the Japanese is known as the “Manyoshu” writing system, which was used in the 8th century CE. This system was heavily based on Chinese characters, known as kanji, which were imported by way of the Korean peninsula. In addition, several Chinese loanwords were also adopted into the Japanese language during this period.

The second major writing system adopted by the Japanese was the “Kanbun” system. This system was based on the Chinese Classical Literary Style, which is still used in modern Chinese literature. This system used the same set of Chinese characters as the Manyoshu system, but used a completely different set of grammar rules, which has greatly impacted the grammatical structure of the Japanese language.

In the 9th century CE, a new writing system was adopted by the Japanese known as “Kana”. This system was based on Chinese characters that had been adapted to suit the needs of the Japanese language. This system was used to represent the phonetic sounds of the Japanese language, as opposed to the Chinese characters which represented semantic or ideographic concepts. Thus, Kana was used to create a phonetic writing system to supplement the Kanbun system.

In the 11th century CE, Kana was further developed to form two writing styles known as “Hiragana” and “Katakana”. Hiragana was used to represent the native Japanese sounds, while Katakana was used to represent all the sounds borrowed from other languages, such as the Chinese and Korean languages. Hiragana and Katakana still function as the main writing systems used in modern Japanese today.

The influence of Chinese characters on the Japanese orthography can still be seen in the modern language. Even today, Chinese characters are commonly used in Japanese writing, alongside the two phonetic scripts; Hiragana and Katakana. In addition, Chinese characters are still used to represent both ideographic and phonetic concepts. For example, the character 人 (“jin” or “hito” in Japanese), which means person in Chinese, is still used in the same way in the Japanese language.