Japanese

The Japanese language is spoken primarily by the approximately 120 million inhabitants of Japan. The most prominent hypothesis places it in the Altaic family of languages, which includes Turkish, Tungusic, Mongolian, and Korean. However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with some major features of Japanese, leading some scholars to turn to the languages of the South Pacific for clues of genetic relationship. A hypothesis that has currency among a number of Japanese historical linguists is a "hybrid" theory that accepts the relationship to the Altaic family, but also hypothesizes influence from Austronesian languages possibly through heavy lexical borrowing. There are a large number of dialects spoken throughout the Japanese islands. Some dialects, such as those spoken in the southern parts of Japan (Kyushu, Okinawa), are virtually incomprehensible to the speakers of other dialects, making the use of a standard dialect essential for communication. The two dialect families with the largest number of speakers are the dialect spoken in and around Tokyo, which is the standard or "common" dialect, and the dialects of the Kansai region of western Japan spoken in cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Due to the spread of the common dialect through television and radio, most people outside the Tokyo region speak the common dialect as well as the dialect of their area.
Written Japanese uses four different character sets kanji, katakana, hiragana, and romaji. Kanji, which is based on the Chinese writing system brought to Japan by Buddhist monks more than 1200 years ago, is not phonetic in Japanese (the structure of the character gives no clue to its pronunciation). Katakana and Hiragana, on the other hand, are both syllabic scripts (each character represents a syllable) with Katakana most commonly used to express foreign names, borrowed words and company names, and Hiragana, mostly used to express grammatical inflections and particles of speech Romanji, is a romanized version of written Japanese, useful for foreign learners of Japanese.

Sources:

MIT
The Japanese Writing Tutor

Information on writing system:

ontopia.net
The Japanese Writing Tutor

Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:

• Conversational Japanese, LIDS 19
      The Rosetta Stone Language Library: Japanese (CD-ROM)   
  
  
• Conversational Japanese, LIDS 19
       Gakken Co., Ltd., Japanese for Today (Tape)                        
  
  
• Conversational Japanese, LIDS 19
       Japanese Language Promotion Center, Intensive Course (Tape)        
  

Other Courses Available at UCSD

• International Relations and Pacific Studies (IRPS) Language Courses
• History Department, Japanese Studies

Other Local Resources:

UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
SD cultural events
International channel
Balboa Park House of Pacific Relations
International web radio
Landmark Theaters: foreign films
UCSD international performers and films
UCSD Extension courses
UCSD Nikkei Student Union
UCSD Japanese Studies Program