This lecture discussed abuses of the Japanese language from the aspects of honorifics, imported words, and dialects, along with prospects for future development, based on the results of the annual opinion surveys conducted since1987. Many changes have emerged over the past 15 years in the accent of announcers, who are believed to present standard Japanese. The changing accents in standard Japanese were discussed, based on the 1996 nationwide survey of NHK announcers. Even ordinary, daily language can suddenly have a powerful impact, depending on combinations of words and the times or occasions when they are used.
Any language develops as a spoken language.
Amid criticism of the decline in spoken Japanese, this lecture reconsidered what spoken language really is. With progress in globalization, the way for the Japanese language to survive is to stop using ideographs which have many homonyms and start to use the Western alphabet. This change would remove the shortcomings of the Japanese language, such as being difficult to read and follow. The Broadcasting Culture Research Institute has been conducting research on broadcast terminology for the past 60 years. On the basis of its accumulated results, the institute seeked to shed light on issues related to current usage of the Japanese language and to establish guidelines on how the language should be conveyed to future generations in the 21st century.