JAPANESE VOICE OVER TALENTS NATIVE SPEAKERS - PAGE 1

Japan language
Native to: Japan
Native speakers: 125 million
Writing system: Chinese characters (kana)
Capital city: Tokyo
Currency: Yen (JPY)
Dialing code: +81
Country code: JP
Population: 126,434,964
Japanese is spoken by 126 million people mainly in Japan but also in 26 other countries including American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Germany, Guam, Mexico, Micronesia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines and Taiwan. Japanese has no known linguistic relatives though is possibly distantly related to the Altaic family of languages, which includes Korean, Mongolian and Turkic languages. Japanese is not related to Chinese, though it does contain a huge number of Chinese 'loan' words, in fact perhaps 50% of the words used in Japanse are of Chinese origin. Since the mid 18th century the Japanese have adopted a huge amount of gairaigo: foreign words mainly from English. These include t?buru (table), b?ru (beer), gurasu (glass), aisu (ice), takush? (taxi) and hoteru (hotel). There are also a few words from Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, such as pan (bread), from the Portuguese pão. Such words arrived in Japan mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries, when missionaries and merchants started to visit the country. Another interesting feature of Japanese is the distinction between male and female speech. This involves vocabulary, grammar and particularly pitch - women tend to speak in very high, squeaky voices, at least in public, while men prefer low, gruff voices. If a foreign man learns Japanese from his Japanese girlfriend the results can sound very funny to Japanese ears!