Reflection

Looking back on my research, I think my study of Japanese has supported my language beliefs. I really think it’s interesting that there are several different alphabets used for different things, and that there are so many more characters in their alphabet than there are in ours. It’s also interesting to see the languages that have influenced Japanese from trade routes.  I still wish I could look  up more about the different variations and dialects.

 

Recommendations

Based off what I have found, I would like to research more of what the different variations of Japanese look like. Also, if I had the sources, I would record someone speaking in Tokyo dialect and someone speaking with an Osaka dialect so that I could look at the difference between the 2 and try to decipher how they are different. I would still like to study the origin of Japanese and more about what religions or beliefs could have shaped it. 

 

Conclusions

I learned many things from this project that I have been wondering about. I also answer some of the questions that people wanted to know from my survey, when I asked: “what do you know about Japanese/ what would you like to learn?”
This is what I’ve concluded:
Japanese is very original, and only has traces of other languages—primarily Chinese. It also has some traces of western Languages in it’ s numbers and such; though Japanese also has it’s own characters that can be used for numbers. The separate islands also have dialects of their own, though they speak the same languages. Westerners normally can’t tell the difference, but to the natives it makes a world of difference. There are many variations/alphabets of Japanese. These are kanji, hiragana, katakana, Romaji. Kanji is modified Chinese, while Romaji is mainly only used to type on computers or for company logos.

Audio recordings

I am planning on doing 3 voice recordings of phrases: One in Japanese, one in Chinese, and a third in English. The phrases will all the same, and the english will act as the control while the Chinese and Japanese recordings can show the difference between the 2 languages, so that people can hear how they both sound. 

The phrases are:

How are you today?

My dog has four legs. 

Only the Chinese and english have been recorded so far. 

Chinese:

English:

Survey Data:

This is some of the data I collected from my survey of 25 ninth graders. One of the questions was if they have been exposed to Japanese, and how. Most people have been exposed to Japanese in some way-- Only 4 people answered that they have never been exposed at all. My second graph shows that 13 people have been exposed through Television, 8 people have been exposed through their friends, 2 people through celebrities, 2 people through music, and 2 people through books. 

Primary research plans

My subjects for my survey will be around 25-60 9th graders at decatur high school. I will hand out a written questionnaire. Shown below. 

Japanese Language survey-

• Have you been exposed to Japanese? in what way? (TV show, family member, friend, trip,etc...)
  
• Would you be able to tell the difference between japanese and other languages (such as chinese, korean,etc..) from hearing it? from seeing the written characters? 
  
• Would you be interested in learning more about the japanese language and it's history?
  
• What would you like to know?
  
• What sort of prior knowledge do you have about Japanese? If any, please list some information. 

Sources

"Japanese Language - MSN Encarta." MSN Encarta : Online Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas, and Homework. 2 Oct. 2008 .

"Japanese language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 8 Oct. 2008 .