Japanese and Linguistics

Japanese is a language of unusual richness and structural complexity, written in a system that combines thousands of logographic characters with two syllabic scripts, and spoken by over 125 million people. Combining Japanese with linguistics at degree level gives you both deep practical fluency in the language and a theoretical understanding of how language works as a system, how it is acquired, how it varies across speakers and communities, and how Japanese fits into the broader study of human language.

At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, this four-year full-time programme includes a foundation year, which prepares you for advanced academic and linguistic study before you progress to the full degree. SOAS has particular depth in East Asian languages and cultures, and its location in London places you in a global city with a substantial Japanese-speaking community and strong connections to Japanese businesses, cultural institutions and diplomatic organisations.

The Japanese strand develops your reading, writing, listening and speaking skills progressively across the programme, alongside study of Japanese history, society and culture. The linguistics strand introduces you to phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and language acquisition, with the opportunity to apply these frameworks to Japanese specifically. You will develop both the practical language skills to operate in Japanese professional and cultural contexts and the theoretical tools to analyse how language functions.

Graduates work in translation and interpreting, international business, diplomacy, education, publishing, journalism, the cultural sector and technology companies with interests in Japanese markets. Linguistics graduates are also valued in natural language processing, speech technology and language teaching. Many go on to postgraduate study in Japanese studies, linguistics, applied linguistics, translation or related disciplines.