The vowels are pronounced as in Italian, a being the accented a, e and o the open sounds. The vowel u is English u in put, never as in rut or lute. The vowels a, e, o are half-long, i and u are shorter, and u shortest of all. Value is given to each syllable, subject as above, with scarcely any ictus (as in French), but the last syllable of a word, especially in u, is always weakest, and the penultimate rather the strongest.
The consonants are pronounced as in English, h well aspirated, but rather forward, even between vowels, z as in zany, zh as the s in pleasure, f may have descended from an original p, with h and w.
The scheme, according to that of the Oxford Dictionary, would be—
| a | a |
| e | e |
| i | i |
| o | o |
| u | u |
| b | b |
| ch | tʃ |
| d | d |
| dz | dz |
| f | f |
| g | g |
| h | h |
| j | dʒ |
| k | k |
| m | m |
| n | n |
| r | r |
| s | s |
| sh | ʃ |
| t | t |
| ts | ts |
| w | w |
| y | y |
| z | z |
| zh | ʒ |
The Chinese and Japanese languages differ from Aryan and Semitic forms of speech in the total absence of all concords dependent upon number, person, case, and gender, in the like default of relative words, and (from Aryan speech) in the absence of narratio obliqua. They further differ in the almost complete absence of any morphological moods or tenses. Chinese has, broadly speaking, no accidence at all; the grammar is a syntax teaching the right order and use of vocables (used as words), double vocables (constituting words), and the few form-words (empty words the Chinese call them) which serve as variously connective particles. In Japanese there is a very scanty accidence of the few adjectives the language possesses, and a more complete one of the verb; but the verbal forms are all (with an exception or two) resolvable into locutions, more or less agglutinated, scarcely constituting true inflexions. Hence, morphologically, even in Japanese there is neither mood nor tense, but there is an approach to both of the highest value to the language, giving it, in conjunction with a goodly number of particles, an articulation and plasticity wanting to Chinese. From the above considerations it will be readily understood that the power of expression even in Japanese is far inferior to that of Western speech. The imagery is, of necessity, extremely limited in range and flat in tone. It seems to me, however, of greater range and higher quality than in Chinese. But neither Chinese nor Japanese possesses a tithe of the capacity of Aryan and Semitic languages to express human thought and feeling, and describe the works of man or the appearances of nature.
Ὦ δῖος αἰθήρ, &c., thought and words, are absolutely unintelligible to the whole Far East.
Nevertheless the poetry of the two great Far Eastern languages has its charm, especially the early poetry of Japan, but that charm, depending as it does largely upon suggestiveness rather than definite statement, and upon characteristic form and decoration rather than content, can only be felt by those who are able to read the texts. The Japanese texts, apart from the labour of decipherment, in themselves present no difficulty, once their simple grammar and construction understood, and in their romanized dress, with the brief grammar that is now subjoined, and the other aids offered in the present volume and its accompanying volume of translations are, it is hoped, made accessible to the English reader who cannot give several years to the acquisition of the complicated scripts which Dai Nippon has taken over, by necessity rather than choice, from the Middle Kingdom.
The following sketch of the grammar of Old Japanese is intended merely to elucidate the texts, principally those of the Manyôshiu and the Taketori.[1] By Old Japanese is meant the unsinicized language of the Kojiki and Nihongi (as read japonicé) and particularly of the uta quoted in those works, of the norito or rituals, and of the texts above mentioned. There are no texts illustrating earlier stages of the language, and all etymologies are doubtful, both on that account and because the elements of Old Japanese are mere agglutinations (more or less contracted) of only sixty-four open syllables.
Japanese (by which expression Old Japanese is here always intended) has no affinity with Chinese, a language consisting of disconnected elements (simple or compound), for in it agglutination has to some extent contracted into inflexion or quasi-inflexion, and it possesses in addition a large number of particles which give it a plasticity not found in Chinese. In my opinion, had the development of Japanese not been arrested by Chinese influences about the middle of the first millennium, it might have won a far higher place than it occupies in the hierarchy of human speech.