Japanese Language. Haruhiko Kindaichi

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, with the exception of one old woman.

      This has not happened on small islands of the Pacific like Guadalcanal. When the German orientalist Gabelentz and the anthropologist Meyer traveled around the coast of Maclay in northeastern New Guinea, almost every village had its own dialect, and the people of villages six or eight miles apart could hardly understand one another. So it is said that they needed two to three interpreters on a single day’s trip.⁴

      Before World War II there was a school in Kanda, T

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, for the Chinese residents in Japan called Nikka Gakuin. One day while I was teaching there, I saw two students talking in faltering English in the hallway during a break. I learned that one was from Hubei province and the other from Fujian province. If they had spoken to each other in their own dialects they could not have understood each other, and since the two had no command of their country’s standard language, they had to use English. It seems then that the spread of the standard language in Japan is a matter to be proud of.

      The degree of difference in the Japanese dialects is probably equal to the differences between such European languages as English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. It is not so surprising, therefore, to hear of a European being able to use English, German, and Dutch. Most people along the borders of linguistic regions in Japan have long been accomplishing similar linguistic feats. That the Japanese have succeeded in establishing a modern state in the short period of time since the Meiji period illustrates the intelligence of the Japanese. The spread of the common language, too, is perhaps one of its manifestations.

       2Occupational Differences

       Military jargon

      The differences existing within the Japanese language are largely regional and professional. One group famous for possessing a special jargon of its own was the old imperial army. The exclusive nature of armies is something international, and foreign armies also have special languages. A. M. Halpern, an American linguist who was once with the Civil Information and Education Section of the U.S. occupation forces, wrote in the magazine Shis no Kagaku (The Science of Thought)¹ for January 1949 about the singularity of American soldiers’ speech. Comparing it with

kubo Tadatoshi’s article, “Japanese Soldiers’ Language,” in the same issue, I noted that American and Japanese soldiers’ speech differed greatly owing to the large number of slang words used by the Americans to refer to women as merely physical objects. This seemed to me like an amusingly correct assessment.

The Japanese army used military terms formulated by the state, which abhorred words of foreign origin and used Chinese character words or their Japanese translations exclusively. New recruits had a hard time learning how to use terms like henjka (lace boots)* and bukkanj (a drying place).^† At the Army Provisions Depot, kyarameru (caramel) was called gunrsei (essence of army food), spu (soup) was nkanj (thick meat and vegetable soup), raisukar (curried rice) was karamiiri shirukake meshi (rice with spicy gravy), and korokke (croquettes) was aburaage nikumanj (fried meatballs).²

      Elements that are typical of military jargon can be found not only in vocabulary but also in grammar. The use of the de-arimasu style is, perhaps, most well known. In general, military expressions were conventional and lacked flexibility. The following account by Sakakura Atsuyoshi, a Japanese language scholar, conveys this characteristic very well.

      When I was a new conscript we once went on field exercises. I wanted to tell a superior private something about the target: Itch hodo saki ni ikken’ya ga mieru desh? (About one ch beyond you can see a solitary house, can’t you?). But I could not express this in military language, no matter how hard I tried. I knew perfectly well that in military speech itch was yaku hyaku meitoru (about 100 meters), saki ni was zenp (ahead), ikken’ya was dokuritsu kaoku (an independent house). But I could not for the life of me express mieru desh (you can see . . . can’t you?) in de-arimasu style. Miemasu ka (Can you see?) could not be right, of course. Miemash (You see, don’t you?) would not likely be militaryspeech. After thinking of this and that, I finally realized thatexpressions of familiarity, which require another’s sympatheticresponse, simply could not be expressed in military jargon in the first place.³

      The peculiarity of military terminology is due to the isolated nature of the military world. Similarly, there are many special terms maintained in Buddhist circles, and in gay society and the gambling world.

Offcial terminology

      The following is a quotation from the writings of Japanese novelist Agawa Hiroyuki.

      Try and look up in the T

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classified telephone book thenumbers for a secondhand bookstore, a subway station, andan air-gun shop. Subway station (chika-tetsu) will not be found in the index under chi, or under den (densha, electric car). You will have to look for it under the section Teito Ksokudo Kts Eidan (The Capital’s Rapid Transit Traffc Organization) of the column Tetsud Kidgy (Railroads and Tramways). Therefore,if one has left something behind in the subway train, the system is such that he cannot find the right telephone number quickly. It is the same with secondhand bookstore (furuhon-ya), which cannot be found under the fu of furu or the ho of hon-ya. You will have to look under koshoseki-sh (old-book dealers). Atpresent we don’t say in our daily conversation, “Let’s go into a koshoseki-sh” nor do we write in our diary even in literarystyle, “Today I dropped in at a koshoseki-sh in Kanda.” Such a word, even as a synonym, is almost obsolete. As for “air-gunshop” (kkijya), you will not find it under the ku of kkij or the te of tepp (gun). If you have time, please try look it up.⁴

      There are many more terms of this type specially used by government offces. For example, what we ordinarily call rintaku (a bicycle taxi) is termed sekkyaku-y keishary (light vehicles for customers), and what we ordinarily call kuzuya (a waste-paper dealer) is called shigen kaish-in (resources recovery man).⁵

      Railroad terms often come under attack, since they are in daily public use.

       Fumikiri ichiji teishi.

      Crossing temporarily closed—This makes one think: “What, is this crossing closed today?” (But the real meaning of this notice is: “Crossing! Stop for a moment before you proceed!”)

       Ishitsubutsu o ssa itashimasu.

      We shall search the carriage for lost articles—This makesone think: “Ishitsu? Why, you mean wasure mono (forgotten articles).’’

       Ori nori wa ohayaku negaimasu.

Please be quick in getting off and getting on—This makes one think: “Then we’ll have to say yokin no ire dashi (the depositing and withdrawing of accounts), won’t we?”*