What is Yamato kotoba?

Due to its history of adopting a written language and many aspects of its culture from China, Japanese has a huge number of loan words from Chinese. The Japanese have also invented many pseudo-Chinese words. Since the sixteenth century, they have also adopted many loan words from English (see Japanese and English) and other languages (see Words from other languages), called gairaigo (外来語).

The word Yamato kotoba (大和言葉), also known as wago (和語), means Japanese words which are not Chinese, pseudo-Chinese, or other foreign loan words. Yamato is an ancient name for Japan (see What are the names of Japan?) and yamato kotoba implies the ancient Japanese language without any loan words, as opposed to kango (漢語), Chinese-based words, or gairaigo (外来語), words taken from other languages such as English, Dutch, or Portuguese (see Which Japanese words come from Dutch?, Which Japanese words come from Portuguese?).

Words like akai, "red", or Yamamoto, a surname, are typical "Yamato kotoba". Words like shouyu (醤油), "soy sauce", or kousokudouro (高速道路), "motorway", which have long vowels and youon (see What is yōon?), small ya, yu or yo kana, are typical kango.

This division of Japanese into yamato kotoba and Chinese-derived kango is somewhat similar to the division of English words into Anglo-Saxon and Latin-derived words.

Characteristics of Yamato kotoba include

Words do not begin with dakuon or handakuon (voiced sounds, such as が or ぷ).
Words do not begin with "r" (らりるれろ). This is why, in a Japanese dictionary, the らりるれろ section is the shortest.

If you have questions, corrections, or comments, please contact Ben Bullock or use the discussion forum / Privacy policy


Book reviews	Convert Japanese numbers	Handwritten kanji recognition	Stroke order diagrams	Convert Japanese units