(I started by only one paragraph, and then it went on...sadko4u wrote: Japanese evolved from just using kanji to using kanji and kana (katakana, hiragana).
)I must disagree. It is not possible for the japanese language to exist with only kanji characters. Impossible. Hanzi/kanji characters cannot carry abstractions and this is why the Chinese language has no verb tenses, no articles, no plural, no gender as these needs abstraction in the language. There is a need for sounds and particles to represent nothing but only to serve as tools. The Chinese language written and spoken does not have that. There are a few characters that serves to indicate some kind of tense and do some other functions like assignment and measure words, although these are still chracters that represent something, they are not abstract.
Today linguists are still unsure about the origin of the japanese language. You probably heard this event that went on Japanese TV in which a Finland phone book was browsed at any page and random names were read aloud to the amazement of the Japanese viewers for whom many names had close to japanese sounds and meanings. Since the Jomon times the Japanese had a language that incorporated verb tenses. And those could only be represented using an appropriate flexible scripture. So hiragana is native japanese scripture. The first very long book written was during the times when Japan was a matriarchy. I don't remember the title at the moment. it was written by a lady of those times all in hiragana. In those times they had additional hiragana characters too, as you can see when reading the iroha, this short sutra text made with a single use of each hiragana character.
Kanji was introduced during the Chinese Tang dynasty, around year 600. Some linguists say that this was a catastrophe since the Japanese were well on their way to have a written language like everybody else, eg. based on abstract characters. As kanji characters were introduced with their chinese sounds, they had to deal with existing japanese terms, so they had the marvelous idea of assigning two sounds to many, most characters, like you mentioned below, the japanese sound and the chinese sound. Which one to use at what time remains a great mystery up to this day
One thing I find very neat with Chinese characters is that they lend themselves to be universal. By this I mean that any language that uses them can be to some extent understood by non native people simple because they share the same characters' meanings. Too bad Korea and more recently Vietnam has abandoned their use.
With the Chinese characters a lot of other elements were introduced to Japan. No wonder all kyusu teapots have this kind of (very practical) handle on the side: this is a trademark of the Tang dynasty. It is also found today here and there in China. The way of making tea was imported from China. Chinese at that time used to steam the tea leaves to do the 'kill green' stage, to stop the leaves from turning black after being harvested. China has moved to other ways of doing that (pan-fired) but Japan stuck to the same principle and this is how the major green teas are produced in Japan today, by steaming the leaves. This gives the sweet enticing aroma of the dry leaves, as in sencha and gyokuro. Likewise, matcha, the powdered tea, comes from China but has gone from the Chinese scene today, apart from perhaps a few remote villages still making matcha (not talking about industrial powdered tea). However in Japan matcha is very popular. They have kept it since more than 1500 years whereas China has moved to other, more fancy ways. Mind you, by being fancy simplicity is largely lost and it is this simplicity that makes all the charm of the japanese popular green teas. There are oolongs, black and white teas made in Japan, but they're not mainstream much.
In audio, two songs, one Japanese, one Chinesesadko4u wrote:Another problem is that first time kanji were used to denote the similar with chinese language constructs but keep the original pronounce of words. That's why kanji characters can be pronounced in different ways in japanese (often called the 'on reading' and 'kun reading').
Consider this example: '人' means a human in both languages, for chinese language it's pronounced as 'rén'. In japanese language it is pronounces 'hito' as a single noun. But if you want to say about foreign person, you say '外人' that will be pronounced as 'gaijin'. Sometimes combination of kanji characters can become completely unpredictable pronounces, it looks like exception in language.
Japanese, incidently, 情熱 , jonetsu by UA :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-YJ7grasw
Chinese, 小蘋果, the extremely popular song by the Chopstick Brothers. Yes, it starts in Korean. And goes through the garden of Eden, the Renaissance and the Korean war. With flying saucers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDyo6IAnbVY
