100-395: Gundam ( Japanese : ガンダムシリーズ , Hepburn : Gandamu Shirīzu , lit. Gundam Series ) is a Japanese military science fiction media franchise . Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks ), the franchise features giant robots, or mecha , with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with Mobile Suit Gundam , a TV series that defined
200-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
300-429: A collaboration to develop a live-action Gundam film. Brian K. Vaughan was brought in to write and serve as an executive producer for the film. In April 2021, it was reported that the project had landed at Netflix and that Jordan Vogt-Roberts had been hired to direct. In October 2024, it was announced that Jim Mickle would be the new director and writer, and that Netflix is no longer involved. Manga adaptations of
400-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
500-508: A few fictional elements to function (such as Minovsky Physics ). Most of the Gundam animation (including the earliest series) is set in what is known as the Universal Century (UC) calendar era , with later series set in alternate calendars or timelines . Although many new Gundam stories are told in their parallel universe with independent timelines (giving them greater creative freedom),
600-527: A fictional era, with a new calendar adopted after a drastic event or chain of events and typically involve a major conflict involving Earth and space colonies (and in some cases the Moon and terraformed planets). An exception is the Gundam Build timeline, which is set in an alternate present time where all other Gundam installments are fictional. At the 2018 Anime Expo , Legendary Pictures and Sunrise announced
700-840: A full-size RX-78-2 Gundam model was constructed and displayed at Gundam Front Tokyo, in the Odaiba district; it was taken down on March 5, 2017. A new statue of the Unicorn Gundam was erected at the same location, now renamed The Gundam Base Tokyo. Bandai , Gundam 's primary licensee, produces a variety of products. Other companies produce unofficial merchandise, such as toys, models and T-shirts. Products include Mobile Suit In Action (MSiA) action figures and Gundam model kits in several scales and design complexities. Each series generally has its own set of products, MSiA and model lines such as Master Grade and High Grade Universal Century may extend across series. The most popular action-figure line has been
800-646: A general tax from the known world by Octavian or the end of the roman conquest of the peninsula during the civil war of the Second Triumvirate . Either way the date traditionally marks the establishment of Roman rule in Spain and was used in official documents by the Suebian and Visigothic kingdoms and later in Portugal , Aragon , Valencia , Castile , and southern France . This system of calibrating years fell to disuse in
900-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
1000-402: A gun powerful enough to hold back enemies like a hydroelectric dam holding back water. In keeping with the concept, Gundams are usually depicted as prototypes or limited-production, with higher capabilities than mass-produced units, which are often referred to simply as mobile suits . Most Gundams are large, bipedal, humanoid vehicles controlled from a cockpit by a human pilot. The cockpit
1100-521: A limited time (usually to promote a DVD release). Common content includes character and mecha listings, lists of related merchandise and pay-for-download content. Special pages are frequent, often presenting downloadable wallpaper or a small game. The Superior Defender Gundam Force website has a game in which players take the role of villain Commander Sazabi, attempting to blast his subordinate with weapons. Since 1980, Gundam has also appeared in
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#17331044922681200-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
1300-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1400-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
1500-399: A spinoff of Gundam which began during the mid-1980s, features super deformed designs and emphasizes comedy and adventure. Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G , Gundam Build Fighters , and Gundam Build Divers feature contemporary settings and use Gunpla as plot elements. Except for Mobile Suit Gundam 00 , which follows the current calendar era , all Gundam series are set in
1600-675: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1700-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
1800-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
1900-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
2000-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
2100-684: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
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#17331044922682200-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
2300-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
2400-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2500-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
2600-422: Is located in the torso , while the head serves as a camera to transmit images back to the cockpit. Most of the series' protagonists are Newtypes , genetically advanced humans adapted for space. Newtypes have psychic abilities that enable them to sense each other across space and to utilize special mobile suits. The series itself has been described as a space opera . Mobile Suit Gundam reportedly pioneered
2700-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
2800-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
2900-549: Is the official Japanese site. Its English-language counterpart is the US-maintained Gundam Official. In 2005, the website hosted the Gundam Official User Forum. The forum was based on the existing fan forum, Gundam Watch, using many of its staff. When the project was retired, Gundam Watch was reborn and became Gundam Evolution. A number of series-specific websites have been created, often available for
3000-571: Is the period of time elapsed since one epoch of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year 2024 as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox churches have their own Christian eras). In antiquity, regnal years were counted from the accession of a monarch. This makes
3100-646: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
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3200-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
3300-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
3400-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
3500-603: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
3600-661: The Akitu festival (celebrating the Mesopotamian new year), one of a small group of high officials (including the king in later periods) would be chosen by lot to serve as the limmu for the year, which meant that he would preside over the Akitu festival and the year would bear his name. The earliest attested limmu eponyms are from the Assyrian trading colony at Karum Kanesh in Anatolia, dating to
3700-663: The Early Middle Ages , roughly between the 6th and 10th centuries. The era based on the Incarnation of Christ was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 and is in continued use with various reforms and derivations. The distinction between the Incarnation occurring with the conception or the Nativity of Jesus was not drawn until the late ninth century. The first day of the numbered year varied from place to place and depended on
3800-1060: The Gundam series have been published in English in North America by a number of companies, such as Viz Media , Del Rey Manga and Tokyopop , and in Singapore by Chuang Yi . Gundam has spawned over 80 video games for arcade, computer and console platforms, some with characters not found in other Gundam media. Some of the games, in turn, inspired spinoff novels and manga. Primarily made of plastic, but sometimes paired with resin and metal detail parts, hundreds of Gundam scale plastic models , aka Gunpla, have been released. They range in quality from toolless-build children's toy kits (Entry Grades) to hobbyist and museum-grade models, and most are in common scales such as 1:35, 1:48, 1:60, 1:100 or 1:144 scale. Various Grades exist to target hobbyists, ranging from smaller sized kits such as High Grade and Real Grade, to larger Master Grade and finally Perfect Grade model kits. The Real Grade (RG) Gundam series combined
3900-619: The Japan Self-Defense Forces has code-named its developing advanced personal-combat system Gundam. Based on a December 16, 2023 survey conducted by Nikkei Entertainment , the fanbase of Gundam within Japan has an average age of 42 years, and a male-to-female ratio that skews 90:10. The impact of Gundam in Japan has been compared to the impact of Star Wars in the United States . Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
4000-427: The Japanese character plastic-model market. Academics in Japan have viewed the series as inspiration; in 2008, the virtual Gundam Academy was planned as the first academic institution based on an animated TV series. As of March 2020, the franchise is fully owned by Bandai Namco Holdings through subsidiaries Sotsu and Sunrise. The Gundam franchise had grossed over $ 5 billion in retail sales by 2000. By 2022,
4100-455: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
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4200-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
4300-661: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4400-555: The chronology of the ancient Near East very difficult to reconstruct, based on disparate and scattered king lists, such as the Sumerian King List and the Babylonian Canon of Kings . In East Asia, reckoning by era names chosen by ruling monarchs ceased in the 20th century except for Japan , where they are still used. For over a thousand years, ancient Assyria used a system of eponyms to identify each year. Each year at
4500-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
4600-411: The real robot subgenre of mecha anime . In contrast to its super robot cousins, Mobile Suit Gundam attempted realism in its robot design and weaponry by running out of energy and ammunition or malfunctioning. Its technology is derived from actual science (such as Lagrange points and the O'Neill cylinder in space, and the use of helium-3 as an energy source) or feasible technology requiring only
4700-419: The " real robot " mecha anime genre by featuring giant robots called mobile suits (including the original titular mecha ) in a militaristic setting. The popularity of the series and its merchandise spawned a franchise that includes 50 TV series , films and OVAs as well as manga , novels and video games , along with a whole industry of plastic model kits known as Gunpla which makes up 90 percent of
4800-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
4900-569: The 3rd year of the 6th Olympiad. Because the Parilia had become associated with the founding of the city by his time, he took the specific date to have been 21 April 753 BC. This became the official chronology of the empire by at least the time of Claudius , who held Secular Games in AD 47 to celebrate the city's 800th anniversary. The 900th and 1000th anniversaries were then celebrated in 148 under Antoninus Pius and in 248 under Philip I . The AUC era
5000-692: The Early Modern Age and was replaced by today's Anno Domini . The months and years are the same as the Julian Calendar . Throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods, the Decapolis and other Hellenized cities of Syria and Palestine used the Pompeian era , counting dates from the Roman general Pompey 's conquest of the region in 63 BC. A different form of calendar was used to track longer periods of time, and for
5100-677: The Gundam Fix series, which includes the mecha in the animated series, manga and novels and accessories to create an updated version. In addition to Master Grade and High Grade Gundams, Bandai released a 30th-anniversary series of Gundam models in 2010. After the introduction of the RG Gunpla line, Bandai released the Metal Build series in March 2011 (beginning with the 00 Gundam). Bandai maintains several websites to promote Gundam projects; Gundam Perfect Web
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#17331044922685200-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
5300-487: The Master Grade's detailed inner structure with additional colour separation, making the 1:144-scale series complex in design and compact in size, with the final goal of retooling a Gundam to what they might would look like in real life, similar to the real-life Gundam Front Tokyo RX-78-02. Promotional 1:6 or 1:12 scale models are supplied to retailers and are not commercially available. For Gundam 's 30th anniversary,
5400-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
5500-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
5600-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
5700-416: The annual revenue of the Gundam franchise reached ¥ 101.7 billion per year, ¥44.2 billion of which was retail sales of toys and hobby items. Mobile Suit Gundam was developed by animator Yoshiyuki Tomino and a changing group of Sunrise creators with the collective pseudonym of Hajime Yatate . The series was originally entitled Freedom Fighter Gunboy (or Gunboy ) for the robot's gun, with teen boys as
5800-628: The beginning of the year. Modern application of the AUC era generally ignores this, the known mistakes in Varro's own calculations, and the 752 BC epoch used by the Fasti and later Secular Games, such that AD 2024 is generally considered equivalent to AUC 2777 (2024 + 753). Another system that is less commonly found than might be thought was the use of the regnal year of the Roman emperor . At first, Augustus indicated
5900-576: The calendar year is taken as starting on 1 Tishri or on 1 Nisan (respectively the start of the Jewish civil and ecclesiastical years) the Seleucid era begins either in 311 BC (the Jewish reckoning) or in 312 BC (the Greek reckoning: October–September). An early and common practice was Roman ' consular ' dating. This involved naming both consules ordinarii who had taken up this office on 1 January (since 153 BC) of
6000-607: The cycle, an indiction being a year in duration. Documents and events began to be dated by the year of the cycle (e.g., "fifth indiction", "tenth indiction") in the 4th century, and this system was used long after the tax ceased to be collected. It was used in Gaul , in Egypt until the Islamic conquest , and in the Eastern Roman Empire until its conquest in 1453. A useful chart providing all
6100-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
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#17331044922686200-479: The emperor Justinian I discontinued appointing consuls. The last consul nominated was Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius . Soon afterwards, imperial regnal dating was adopted in its place. Another method of dating was ab urbe condita (Latin for "from the founding of the city" of Rome) or anno urbis conditae (Latin for "in the year of the founding of the city"), both abbreviated AUC. Several epochs for this date were in use by Roman historians , all based on
6300-516: The equivalents can be found in Chaîne's book on chronology, and can easily be consulted online at the Internet Archive, from page 134 to page 172 . A rule for computing the indiction from an AD year number was stated by Dionysius Exiguus : add 3 and divide by 15; the remainder is the indiction, with 0 understood to be the fifteenth indiction. Thus the indiction of 2001 was 9. The beginning of
6400-450: The events of the Neo-Assyrian Period to be dated to a specific year, avoiding the chronological debates that characterize earlier periods of Mesopotamian history. Among the ancient Greek historians and scholars, a common method of indicating the passage of years was based on the Olympic Games , first held in 776 BC . The Olympic Games provided the various independent city-states with a mutually recognizable system of dates. Olympiad dating
6500-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
6600-405: The following countries and regions: Gundam is a Japanese cultural icon and a multi-billion- Yen annual business for Bandai Namco . Annual revenue for the franchise reached ¥54.5 billion by 2006, ¥80.2 billion by 2014, and ¥145.7 billion by 2024. Stamps have been issued, an Agriculture Ministry employee was reprimanded for contributing to the Japanese Misplaced Pages Gundam -related pages, and
6700-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
6800-404: The incomplete surviving list of Roman consuls and the myths of the city's founding by Romulus and Remus . The chronology established by Marcus Terentius Varro in the 1st century BC intercalated several years of dictatorships , a period of anarchy, and a standardized length of reign for all of Rome's former kings to arrive at a year running from 754–753 BC, taken as equivalent to
6900-432: The inscription of calendar dates (i.e., identifying when one event occurred in relation to others). This form, known as the Long Count , is based upon the number of elapsed days since a mythological starting-point. According to the calibration between the Long Count and Western calendars accepted by the great majority of Maya researchers (known as the GMT correlation), this starting-point is equivalent to 11 August, 3114 BC in
7000-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
7100-402: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
7200-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
7300-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
7400-566: The memory of the Roman Republic faded (about AD 200), when they began to use their regnal year openly. Some regions of the Roman Empire dated their calendars from the date of Roman conquest, or the establishment of Roman rule. The Spanish era , or the Era of Caesar , counted the years from 38 BC and, although the exact reasons for this are unknown, it is usually attributed to either the levy of
7500-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
7600-449: The original UC storyline continues to be popular, with new installments frequently produced ever since. It established the series, setting the standard for hard science fiction in anime; the original Gundam marked the maturing of the giant-robot genre. Nostalgia for the oldest Gundam shows (and its status as a pop-culture icon in Japan) is a factor in its continuing success. SD Gundam ,
7700-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
7800-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
7900-572: The primary target demographic. Early production had a number of references to freedom : the White Base was originally "Freedom's Fortress", the Core Fighter was the "Freedom Wing" and the Gunperry was the "Freedom Cruiser". The Yatate team combined the English word "gun" with the last syllable of the word "freedom" to form the portmanteau Gundom . Tomino changed it to Gundam , suggesting a unit wielding
8000-495: The proleptic Gregorian calendar or 6 September in the Julian calendar (−3113 astronomical). A great many local systems or eras were also important, for example the year from the foundation of one particular city, the regnal year of the neighboring Persian emperor , and eventually even the year of the reigning Caliph . Most of the traditional calendar eras in use today were introduced at the time of transition from Late Antiquity to
8100-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
8200-408: The relevant civil year. Sometimes one or both consuls might not be appointed until November or December of the previous year, and news of the appointment may not have reached parts of the Roman empire for several months into the current year; thus we find the occasional inscription where the year is defined as "after the consulate" of a pair of consuls. The use of consular dating ended in AD 541 when
8300-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
8400-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
8500-797: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
8600-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
8700-550: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Calendar era A calendar era
8800-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
8900-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
9000-472: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
9100-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
9200-709: The very beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and they continued in use until the end of the Neo-Assyrian Period , c. 612 BC . Assyrian scribes compiled limmu lists, including an unbroken sequence of almost 250 eponyms from the early 1st millennium BC. This is an invaluable chronological aid, because a solar eclipse was recorded as having taken place in the limmu of Bur-Sagale, governor of Guzana . Astronomers have identified this eclipse as one that took place on 15 June 763 BC , which has allowed absolute dates of 892 to 648 BC to be assigned to that sequence of eponyms. This list of absolute dates has allowed many of
9300-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
9400-615: The year for the indiction varied. The Seleucid era was used in much of the Middle East from the 4th century BC to the 6th century AD, and continued until the 10th century AD among Oriental Christians. The era is computed from the epoch 312 BC: in August of that year Seleucus I Nicator captured Babylon and began his reign over the Asian portions of Alexander the Great 's empire. Thus depending on whether
9500-466: The year of his reign by counting how many times he had held the office of consul, and how many times the Roman Senate had granted him the power of a tribune ( Latin : tribunicia potestas , abbr. TRP), carefully observing the fiction that his powers came from these offices granted to him, rather than from his own person or the many legions under his control. His successors followed his practice until
9600-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
9700-718: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
9800-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
9900-471: Was not used in everyday life. This system was in use from the 3rd century BC. The modern Olympic Games (or Summer Olympic Games beginning 1896) do not continue the four year periods from ancient Greece: the 669th Olympiad would have begun in the summer of 1897, but the modern Olympics were first held in 1896. The indiction cycle was an agricultural tax cycle implemented in Roman Egypt. 15 indictions made up
10000-652: Was seldom used in the traditional Roman or early Julian calendars . Naming each year by its two consuls or by the emperor's regnal years predominated, with Hadrian 's aurei and sestertii marking the Romaea in AUC 874 ( ann dccclxxiiii nat vrb ) a notable exception. AUC dating became more common in late antiquity, appearing in Censorinus , Orosius , and others. During the early Middle Ages, some church officials like Boniface IV employed AUC and AD dating together. Historical Roman dating employed several different dates for
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