Yamato kotoba

Yamato kotoba (kanji: Da He Yan Xie , hiragana: yamatokotoba) are words that are native to the Japanese language. The word itself is also a native Japanese word, interestingly enough. Yamato kotoba can also be called by its Chinese based name, wago (kanji: He Yu , hiragana: wago). It is one of the three main sources of Japanese words, along with kango (kanji: Han Yu , hiragana: kango), or Chinese loanwords, and gairaigo (kanji: Wai Lai Yu , hiragana: gairaigo), or loanwords borrowed from languages other than Chinese (especially English since the post-WWII era).
Yamato kotoba in Japanese has much in common with native English words in that most of the everyday vocabulary comes from yamato kotoba, while Chinese loanwords words (much like Latin and French loanwords in English) are used for more formal situations (usually writing) and for specialized terms.
How to write yamato kotoba
Usually, words with only one kanji are yamato kotoba, such as katana (kanji: Dao , hiragana: katana, meaning: sword), sakana (kanji: Yu , hiragana: sakana, meaning: fish), kami (kanji: Zhi , hiragana: kami, meaning: paper), yama (kanji: Shan , hiragana: yama, meaning: mountain) te (kanji: Shou , hiragana: te, meaning: hand), and oyogu (kanji and hiragana: Yong gu, hiragana only: oyogu, meaning: to swim). Most kanji (the Japanese version of Chinese characters) have two different kinds of pronunciation, on'yomi (the pronunciation of the kanji borrowed from Chinese) and kun'yomi (the native pronunciation of Japanese words that use the kanji). Yamato kotoba words use the kanji's kun'yomi.
Since on'yomi came from Chinese monosyllables (words with only one syllable), they themselves are also only one syllable, and like Chinese, they can have a CV or CVC structure. For example, the on'yomi for the following kanji Dao , Yu , Zhi , Shan , Shou , and Yong are to, shi, san, shu, and ei. However, kun'yomi can have one or multiple syllables, and those syllables are usually a CV structure, like the examples given above.
Since Japanese uses three different writing systems interchangeably, even yamato kotoba can be written in several different ways. For example, the word sushi can be written entirely in hiragana as sushi, entirely in katakana as sushi, in kanji as Qi or Zha , or in ateji (kanji used only to show a word's pronunciation and not its meaning) as Shou Si or Shou Si .
Kanji usually show the root meaning of the word. While nouns are usually written only with kanji, they can also be written in kana if they are very common words, like sushi, or if their kanji is not well known, not part of the joyo kanji (a standard list of 1,945 kanji all Japanese adults are expected to know) or too difficult to remember how to write, like bara, whose kanji is Qiang Wei , but is usually only written as bara in hiragana or as bara in katakana.
Japanese also invented many of its own kanji to name things that could be found in Japan, but not China (usually plants and animals). These are called kokuji (kanji: Guo Zi , hiragana: kokuzi) meaning "national characters", or wasei-kanji (kanji: He Zhi Han Zi , hiragana: waseikanzi) meaning "Japanese-made Chinese characters". Kokuji include the names of fish like iwashi (kanji: Ruo , hiragana: iwashi, meaning: sardine), tara (kanji: Xue , hiragana: tara, meaning: codfish), and kisu (kanji: Xi , hiragana: kisu, meaning: sillago), and trees like kashi (kanji: Jian , hiragana: kashi, meaning: evergreen oak), sugi (kanji: Chang , hiragana: sugi, meaning: Japanese cedar), and kaba or momiji (kanji: Momiji , hiragana: kaba/momizi, meaning: birch/maple). Most kokuji only have kun'yomi because they are yamato kotoba, but some kanji also have on'yomi, like Dong (on'yomi: do dou, kun'yomi: hatara(ku) hatara(ku), meaning: work), and some have only on'yomi, like Xian (on'yomi: sen sen, meaning: gland).
Yamato kotoba parts of speech
Other content words like verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are usually written in a combination of kanji and hiragana, where the root of the word is written in kanji and the inflectional morphemes (the parts of the word that don't change the central meaning of the word's root) are written in hiragana. For example, the native Japanes verb meaning "to swim" is oyogu in its plain form, where it is written as Yong gu in kanji and hiragana. The kanji Yong shows the verb's meaning, while gu (gu) as in oyo-gu shows that the word is in its plain form. The polite form of "to swim" is oyogimasu, which is written as Yong gimasu in kanji and hiragana. Once again, it has the same kanji, but it ends with different syllables gimasu (gi-ma-su) as in oyo-gimasu to show that the word is in the polite form. Native Japanese adjectives usually end in with the syllable i (-i), like the word hayai (kanji and hiragana: Su i, hiragana only: hayai, meaning: fast), takai (kanji and hiragana: Gao i, hiragana only: takai, meaning: tall, high), and ookii (kanji and hiragana: Da kii, hiragana only: ookii, meaning: big or large), while native Japanese adverbs are simply adjectives that end in ku (-ku) rather than i, like hayaku (kanji and hiragana: Su ku, hiragana only: hayaku, meaning: quickly).
Nouns based on adjectives end with the syllable sa (-sa), as in hayasa (kanji and hiragana: Su sa, hiragana only: hayasa, meaning: speed), takasa (kanji and hiragana: Gao sa, hiragana only: takasa, meaning: height), and ookisa (kanji and hiragana: Da kisa, hiragana only: ookisa, meaning: size/largeness).
Sometimes, native Japanese nouns can be written with multiple kanji. These are usually proper nouns like family names or place names. Japanese family names are usually yamato kotoba, like Tanaka (kanji: Tian Zhong , hiragana: tanaka), Yamamoto (kanji: Shan Ben , hiragana: yamamoto), and Kobayashi (kanji: Xiao Lin , hiragana: kobayashi). Most Japanese place names are also yamoto kotoba, like Osaka (kanji: Da Ban , hiragana: oosaka), Ehime (kanji: Ai Yuan , hiragana: ehime), and Hiroshima (kanji: Guang Dao , hiragana: hiroshima), although there are also plenty of Japanese places with Chinese-based names, like Tokyo (kanji: Dong Jing , hiragana: toukiyou), Mt. Fuji or Fuji-san (kanji: Fu Shi Shan , hiragana:huzisan), and Honshu (kanji: Ben Zhou , hiragana: honshiyuu).
While usually cardinal numbers (numbers for measuring things) in Japanese are based off of Chinese words, most ordinal numbers (numbers for ordering things) and even certain measure words use native Japanese words. The following table has Sino-Japanese numerals (Japanese numbers based on Chinese) on the left and native Japanese numerals on the right.
Japanese language