The Emory College Language Center
Japanese - Image of a Japanese Garden

Introduction

"Welcome to Japanese at Emory", a video message by professor Mamoru Hatakeyama

Japanese is a language of uncertain origin that is spoken by more than 125 million people. Some scholars see a kinship with Korean because the grammars of the two are very similar. In the 3d - 4th century A.D., the Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system of ideographic characters. Since Chinese writing is ideographic rather than phonetic, the Chinese characters do not completely fill the needs of the inflected Japanese language in the sphere of writing. In the 8th century A.D., two phonetic scripts, or kana, were therefore devised. Modern Japanese uses a mixture of all 3 scripts. Katakana is used to represent non-Japanese words and for emphasis.