Friday 15 May 2009

Karate - Japanese Culture

I was actually pretty sceptical about Karate and did’nt think it would be my thing at all. Actually the only reason that I went along to a Karate class was to go with the kids who had a few friends that had taken it up.

The most striking contrast between my pre conception and the reality was actually the lack of physical contact involved. Whether this is always the case or not I don’t know however the whole class had a great fealing of Japanese culture and history about it. With each of the class members performing a set routine of sorts it was more akin to watching a theatrical performace than a fight.

I certainely came away with a very different perception of the whole sport / art and will definitely be finding out more about Karate and it’s place in Japanese / Chinese history and culture.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Differences between the Chinese and Japanese Language

It might seem to the casual observer that the Japanese language is closely associated with Chinese, however nothing could be further from the truth.

Admittedly, Japanese looks for all the world similar to Chinese in print form and indeed has absorbed a number of Chinese words over the centuaries, in common with many other langauges which ‘borrow’ from each other over time. In the context of Japanese however, these ‘loan’ words are merely a sign of cultural contact. In actual fact it would be hard to find two languages which are more dissimilar.

Chinese was originally monosyllabic, (now largely disyllabic), tonal, isolating with a subject-verb-object order. Japanese on the other hand is polysyllabic, atonal, with quite complex word formation and a subject-object-verb order.

It was precisely this enormous gap between the two languages that caused so many problems when the Japanese tried to adapt the Chinese script to their own ends in the 8th and 9th centuries.