Yamato kotoba (大和言葉, literally "Japanese words") are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage.
They are also known as wago (和語). Together with kango and gairaigo, they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin).
The word "yamato kotoba" itself is composed of native Japanese words, and hence is an autological word. The synonym wago is instead a kango, and hence a heterological word.
Sino-Japanese, or Kango (漢語) in Japanese, refers to that portion of the Japanese vocabulary that originated in the Chinese language
or has been created from elements borrowed from Chinese.
Some
grammatical or sentence patterns can also be identified with
Sino-Japanese. Sino-Japanese vocabulary is referred to in Japanese as kango (漢語), meaning 'Chinese words'. Kango is one of three broad categories into which the Japanese vocabulary is divided. The others are native Japanese vocabulary (ja:大和言葉 yamato kotoba or ja:和語 wago) and borrowings from mainly Western languages 外来語 (gairaigo).
Approximately 60% of the words contained in a modern Japanese dictionary is estimated to consist of kango,[1] and it forms about 18% of words used in speech, as measured by the National Institute for Japanese Language in its study of language use in NHK broadcasts from April to June, 1989.[2]
No comments:
Post a Comment