Document from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Potsdam (Institut fuer Anglistik), course: Foundations in Bilingualism, language: English, abstract: In this paper I want to give a short introduction to the language varieties in Japan and I want to talk about the struggle with minority languages in the country. When talking about minority languages I will especially refer to the Ainu language, the indigenous language of Japan. The Japanese language is spoken by 127 Million people and ranks on the 9th place of the most frequent spoken languages. However, Japanese is not a universal language, since most of the people are native speakers and the center of the Japanese language is Japan. Nowadays it is spoken on the 4 main islands of Japan – Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Japanese can be also found in the former colonized parts of Japan – in Korea, Taiwan, Sakhalin, in some parts of China, in Hawaii and even Brazil. For Western people Japanese seems very exotic and difficult to learn, especially the writing and reading of the Japanese language is a struggle for every language learner from a Western country. It consist of the Hiragana and Katakana syllabary and the Chinese characters called Kanji. Although we can find Chinese characters in Japanese, both languages have totally different lexis and grammar. The Chinese characters were brought to Japan in the year 300 and developed by the Japanese people to fit their own language system. There are controversies about if Japanese is an Altaic language or a malayoaustronesian language. Since Linguists cannot find a certain genealogical relationship to another language, Japanese is considered as a Japonic language and can still not be clearly defined by today.

Despite its monolingual self-image, Japan is multilingual and growing more so due to indigenous minority language revitalization and as an effect of migration. Besides Japan's autochthonous languages such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, there are more than 75,000 immigrant children in the Japanese public education system alone who came to Japan in the 1980s and who speak more than a hundred different languages. Added to this growing linguistic diversity, the importance of English as the language of international communication in business and science especially is hotly debated. This book analyses how this linguistic diversity, and indeed recognition of this phenomenon, presents a wide range of sociolinguistic challenges and opportunities in fundamental institutions such as schools, in cultural patterns and in social behaviours and attitudes. This topic is an important one as Japan fights to re-establish itself in the new world order and will be of interest to all those who are concerned language change, language versus dialect, the effect of modern technology on language usage, and the way national and social problems are always reflected through the prism of language.

Japan is widely regarded as a model case of successful language modernization, and it is often erroneously believed to be linguistically homogenous. There is a connection between these two views. As the first ever non-Western language to be modernized, Japanese language modernizers needed to convince the West that Japanese was just as good a language as the national languages of the West. The result was a fervent desire for linguistic uniformity. Today the legacy of modernist language ideology poses many problems to an internationalizing Japan. All indigenous minority languages are heading towards extinction, and this purposefully created homogeneity also affects the integration of immigrants and their languages. This book examines these issues from the perspective of language ideology, and in doing so the mechanisms by which language ideology undermines linguistic diversity are revealed.

In this comprehensive and pioneering volume, language scholars from around the world examine the "linguistic landscape" from multiple perspectives – theoretical, methodological, and critical. Written by widely recognized experts, the articles in Linguistic Landscape analyze linguistic landscapes in a range of international contexts. Dozens of photographs illustrate the use of language in the environment – the words and images displayed and exposed in public spaces. Suitable for graduate or advanced undergraduate students in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language policy studies, Linguistic Landscape is a vital contribution to a burgeoning field.

This book presents a new outlook on the language situation in Japan and provides a sociolinguistic profile of the language situation of the older mother tongues. It presents issues such as bilingual families and 'returnee' language maintenance and rejects the stereotyping of Japan as a 'linguistically homogeneous nation with a difficult language'.

Over the last thirty years, two social developments have occurred that have led to a need for change in language policy in Japan. One is the increase in the number of migrants needing opportunities to learn Japanese as a second language, the other is the influence of electronic technologies on the way Japanese is written. This book looks at the impact of these developments on linguistic behaviour and language management and policy, and at the role of language ideology in the way they have been addressed. Immigration-induced demographic changes confront long cherished notions of national monolingualism and technological advances in electronic text production have led to textual practices with ramifications for script use and for literacy in general. The book will be welcomed by researchers and professionals in language policy and management and by those working in Japanese Studies.

Languages are not only tools of communication, they also reflect a view of the world. Languages are vehicles of value systems and cultural expressions and are an essential component of the living heritage of humanity. Yet, many of them are in danger of disappearing. UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger tries to raise awareness on language endangerment. This third edition has been completely revised and expanded to include new series of maps and new points of view.