Automotive Financial Group (normally styled as AFG ) was a British company specialising in automotive retailing and the sale of associated products and services. The company was founded by the Austro-Hungarian businessman Octav Botnar in 1985 as an extension of his successful Nissan import and distribution company, Nissan UK.
102-514: Botnar had successfully built up his successful business since 1970, importing and marketing Datsun and Nissan cars in the United Kingdom. By 1980, the firm had achieved an overall market share of 6% and the UK was the only export market where Nissan outsold its arch rival Toyota . Botnar achieved this by appointing a network of small, family owned dealers (many of whom were former franchisees of
204-645: A proprietary 25 hp (19 kW ; 25 PS ) 850 cc (52 cu in) four-cylinder engine . Datsun entered the American market in 1958, with sales in California. By 1959, the company had dealers across the U.S. and began selling the 310 (known as Bluebird domestically). From 1962 to 1969 the Nissan Patrol utility vehicle was sold in the United States (as a competitor to
306-637: 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
408-414: 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 )
510-405: A figure in the region of US$ 500 million. Operational costs included the changing of signs at 1,100 Datsun dealerships, and amounted to US$ 30 million. Another US$ 200 million were spent during the 1982 to 1986 advertising campaigns, where the "Datsun, We Are Driven!" campaign (which was adopted in late 1977 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis and subsequent 1979 energy crisis ) yielded to "The Name
612-419: 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
714-524: A license. DAT Automobile Manufacturing began development of a line of 495 cc cars to sell in this new market segment, calling the new small cars "Datson" – meaning "Son of DAT". The name was changed to "Datsun" two years later in 1933. The first prototype Datson was completed in the summer of 1931. The production vehicle was called the Datson Type 10, and "approximately ten" of these cars were sold in 1931. They sold around 150 cars in 1932, now calling
816-484: 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
918-523: A long-held 'official' company bias against use of the name "Datsun". At the time, Kawamata was a veteran of Nissan, in the last year of his presidency, a powerful figure whose experience in the firm exceeded two decades. His rise to its leadership position occurred in 1957 in part because of his handling of the critical Nissan workers' strike that began May 25, 1953, and ran for 100 days. During his tenure as president, Kawamata stated that he "regretted that his company did not imprint its corporate name on cars,
1020-472: A major expansion programme in 1998 to increase its dealership network, buying six sites in north-west England that were owned by United North West . In 1999, the company was subject to a management buyout. By 2000, it was operating nine franchises from eleven dealerships. However, it dropped its Renault franchise in 2002, selling the dealerships to Sunwin, Renault Retail Group and Arnold Clark . In 2006, it lost its Alfa Romeo dealer franchise, which resulted in
1122-715: A month. For 1966, Datsun debuted the Sunny/1000 , allowing kei car owners to move up to something bigger. That same year, Datsun won the East African Safari Rally and merged with Prince Motors , giving the company the Skyline model range, as well as a test track at Murayama. The company introduced the Bluebird 510 in 1967. This was followed in 1968 with the iconic 240Z , which proved affordable sports cars could be built and sold profitably: it
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#17327800900161224-408: 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),
1326-428: 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
1428-461: A startled rabbit" (脱兎), which was considered a good name for the little car. The firm was renamed Kaishinsha Motorcar Co. in 1918, seven years after their establishment and again, in 1925, to DAT Motorcar Co. DAT Motors constructed trucks in addition to the DAT passenger cars. In fact, their output focused on trucks since there was almost no consumer market for passenger cars at the time. Beginning in 1918,
1530-647: A successful name when exporting models to the United States. Only in the 1960s did Datsun begin to brand some automobile models as Nissans , like the Patrol and a small test batch of about 100 Cedric luxury sedans, and then not again until the 1980s. The Japanese market Z-car (sold as the Fairlady Z) also had Nissan badging. In the United States, the Nissan branch was named " Nissan Motor Corporation in U.S.A. ", and chartered on September 28, 1960, in California, but
1632-562: A three-wheeled vehicle with an enclosed cab called the Gorham in 1920, and the following year produced a four-wheeled version. From 1923 to 1925, the company produced light cars and trucks under the name of Lila. ) The DAT corporation had been selling full size cars to Japanese consumers under the DAT name since 1914. In 1930, the Japanese government created a ministerial ordinance that allowed cars with engines up to 500 cc to be driven without
1734-624: 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
1836-421: 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
1938-459: Is Nissan" campaign (the latter campaign was used for some years beyond 1985). Another US$ 50 million was spent on Datsun advertisements that were paid for but stopped or never used. Five years after the name change program was over, Datsun still remained more familiar than Nissan . In 2001, Nissan marketed its D22 pick-up model in Japan with the name Datsun . This time however, the use of
2040-448: 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,
2142-527: 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
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#17327800900162244-440: 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
2346-701: 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
2448-466: 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
2550-509: 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
2652-417: 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
2754-755: 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
2856-420: 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
2958-498: 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
3060-402: 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
3162-471: 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
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3264-405: 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
3366-666: The 110 saloon and the 110-based 120 pickup . The use of the Datsun name in the American market derives from the name Nissan used for its production cars. In fact, the cars produced by Nissan already used the Datsun brand name, a successful brand in Japan since 1932, long before World War II . Before the entry into the American market in 1958, Nissan did not produce cars under the Nissan brand name, but only trucks. Their in-house-designed cars were always branded as Datsuns . Hence, for Nissan executives it would be only natural to use such
3468-563: 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
3570-518: The Austin 7 . There is evidence that six of these early Datsuns were exported to New Zealand in 1936, a market they then re-entered in May 1962. In 1937, Datsun's biggest pre-war year, 8593 were built, with some exported to Australia in knock-down form. After Japan went to war with China in 1937, passenger car production was restricted, so by 1938, Datsun's Yokohama plant concentrated on building trucks for
3672-567: The British Motor Corporation and British Leyland ) to sell Datsun and by placing an emphasis on customer service. However, by the 1980s it had become clear that many of these businesses were too small to handle the vast amount of extra used stock and servicing/repair work that was now being generated. The solution Botnar arrived at was to buy out many of these smaller businesses to create a conglomerate that would allow larger, more profitable sites to be developed. At its peak,
3774-717: The Imperial Japanese Army . When the Pacific War ended, Datsun would turn to provide trucks for the Occupation forces. This lasted until car production resumed in 1947. As before the war, Datsun closely patterned their cars on contemporary Austin products: postwar, the Devon and Somerset were selected. For Datsun's smaller cars (and trucks), such as the DB and DS series , they depended on designs based on
3876-517: 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
3978-581: 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
4080-514: 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
4182-540: The Toyota Land Cruiser J40 series), making it the only Nissan-badged product sold in the US prior to that name's introduction worldwide decades later. From 1960 on, exports and production continued to grow. A new plant was built at Oppama , south of Yokohama ; it opened in 1962. The next year, Bluebird sales first topped 200,000, and exports touched 100,000. By 1964, Bluebird was being built at 10,000 cars
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4284-738: 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
4386-668: The Z and ZX coupés . Before the Datsun brand name came into being, an automobile named the DAT car was built in 1914, by the Kaishinsha Motorcar Works ( 快進自動車工場 , Kaishin Jidōsha Kōjō ) , in the Azabu-Hiroo District in Tokyo. The new car's name was an acronym of the initials of the company partners: Incidentally, datto (how a native Japanese speaker would pronounce "dat") means to "dash off like
4488-806: 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
4590-527: 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),
4692-403: The DAT's larger vehicle already in production. When Nissan took control of DAT in 1934, the name "Datson" was changed to "Datsun", because "son" also means "loss" ( 損 son ) in Japanese , and to honour the sun depicted in the national flag – thus the name Datsun : Dattosan ( ダットサン , Dattosan ) . The Datsun name is internationally well known for the 510 , Fairlady roadsters, and
4794-572: The Datsun brand in March 1986, but relaunched it in June 2013 as the brand for low-cost vehicles manufactured for emerging markets . Nissan considered phasing out the Datsun brand for a second time in 2019 and 2020, eventually discontinuing the struggling brand in April 2022. In 1931, DAT Motorcar Co. chose to name its new small car "Datson", a name which indicated the new car's smaller size when compared to
4896-486: 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,
4998-781: The Nissan name was used for some new vehicles for 1982 such as the Nissan Stanza and the Nissan Sentra while the Datsun name was used on existing vehicles through 1983 including – confusingly enough – the Datsun Maxima , which like the Stanza and Sentra was also a new model for 1982, albeit as a renamed Datsun 810 . The Maxima and Z continue in production in North America as of 2021, as Nissan's last direct link to its Datsun years. The name change had cost Nissan
5100-736: 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
5202-581: The Russian market, the Datsun on-Do based on Lada Granta , was launched. In November 2019, it was announced that Datsun would stop its production in Indonesia and Russia in 2020. In April 2022, Nissan announced that it is shutting down the production of Datsun cars in India. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of
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#17327800900165304-488: 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
5406-489: The Second World War would be in prime car-buying age by 1960, if only to find an economical small second car for their growing family needs. Yutaka Katayama (Mr. "K"), former president of Nissan's American operations, would have had his personal wartime experiences in mind supporting the name Datsun. Katayama's visit to Nissan's Manchuria truck factory in 1939 made him realise the appalling conditions prevalent on
5508-480: The UK, appointing an all-new network of dealers. In 1991, Nissan terminated the supply of new vehicles to Nissan UK and AFG. The company was sold in 1994 to the Barclay brothers for £200 million. As parts of the company were sold off, the remaining operations, under the name Caledonia Motor Group, refocused on sales of Fiat , Alfa Romeo , Citroën , Peugeot and Renault in north-west England . Caledonia launched
5610-543: 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
5712-605: The assembly line, on April 11, 1935. By 1939 Nissan's operations had moved to Manchuria , then under Japanese occupation, where its founder and President, Yoshisuke Ayukawa , established the Manchurian Motor Company to manufacture military trucks. Ayukawa, a well-connected and aggressive risk taker, also made himself a principal partner of the Japanese Colonial Government of Manchukuo . Ultimately, Nissan Heavy Industries emerged near
5814-481: The assembly lines, leading him to abandon the firm. In 1945, near the end of the war, Katayama was ordered to return to the Manchurian plant, however he rebuffed these calls and refused to return. Katayama desired to build and sell passenger cars to people, not to the military; for him, the name " Datsun " had survived the war with its purity intact, not " Nissan ". This obviously led Katayama to have problems with
5916-414: The brand name was wholly restricted to this one specific model name. Production of this model was between May 2001 and October 2002. On 20 March 2012, it was announced that Nissan would revive the Datsun marque as a low-cost car brand for use in Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa, India, and Russia, and on 15 July 2013, nearly three decades after it was phased out, the name was formally resurrected. Nissan said
6018-517: The brand's reputation for value and reliability would help it gain market share in emerging markets. The Datsun brand was relaunched in New Delhi , India, with the Datsun Go , which went on sale in India in early 2014. Datsun models are sold in Indonesia, Russia, India, Nepal and South Africa since 2014. The brand entered Kazakhstan in 2015, and Belarus and Lebanon in 2016. The Datsun Go
6120-446: The cars were sold as Datsuns. "What we need to do is improve our car's efficiency gradually and creep up slowly before others notice. Then, before Detroit realizes it, we will have become an excellent car maker, and the customers will think so too. If we work hard to sell our own cars, we won't be bothered by whatever the other manufacturers do. If all we do is worry about the other cars in the race, we will definitely lose." In 1935,
6222-402: The corporate management. The discouragement felt by Katayama as regards his prospects at Nissan, led to his going on the verge of resigning, when Datsun's 1958 Australian Mobilgas victories vaulted him, as leader of the winning Datsun teams, to national prominence in a Japan bent on regaining international status . The company's first product to be exported around the world was the 113 , with
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#17327800900166324-578: 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
6426-738: The end of the war as an important player in Japan's war machinery. After the war ended, Soviet Union seized all of Nissan's Manchuria assets, while the Occupation Forces made use of over half of the Yokohama plant. General MacArthur had Ayukawa imprisoned for 21 months as a war criminal . After release he was forbidden from returning to any corporate or public office until 1951. He was never allowed back into Nissan, which returned to passenger car manufacture in 1947 and to its original name of Nissan Motor Company Ltd. in 1949. American service personnel in their teens or early twenties during
6528-762: The first DAT trucks were assembled for the military market. The low demand from the military market during the 1920s forced DAT to consider merging with other automotive industries. In 1926 the Tokyo -based DAT Motors merged with the Osaka-based Jitsuyo Jidosha Co., Ltd. ( 実用自動車製造株式会社 , Jitsuyō Jidōsha Seizō Kabushiki-Gaisha ) also known as Jitsuyo Motors (established 1919, as a Kubota subsidiary) to become DAT Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. ( ダット自動車製造株式会社 , Datto Jidōsha Seizō Kabushiki-Gaisha ) in Osaka until 1932. (Jitsuyo Jidosha began producing
6630-450: The first Datsun-badged vehicle was shipped to Britain by car magnate Sir Herbert Austin. The vehicle, a Type 14, was never meant for the road or production, but was a part of a patent dispute as Austin saw a number of similarities to the car with the Austin 7 Ruby. Nissan began exporting Datsun-badged cars to the United Kingdom in 1968, at which time foreign cars were a rarity, with only a small percentage of cars being imported – some of
6732-455: 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
6834-430: The following year and continued to climb over the next few years, with well-priced products including the Cherry 100A and Sunny 120Y proving particularly popular, at a time when the British motor industry was plagued by strikes and British Leyland in particular was gaining a reputation for building cars which had major issues with build quality and reliability. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Nissan frequently enjoyed
6936-609: 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
7038-529: The group only being able to provide servicing for cars. In 2008, the company was placed in receivership ; the remaining sites were acquired by Cambria Automobiles and became part of its Motor Parks chain. Datsun Datsun ( UK : / ˈ d æ t s ən / , US : / ˈ d ɑː t s ən / ) was a Japanese automobile manufacturer brand owned by Nissan . Datsun's original production run began in 1931. From 1958 to 1986, only vehicles exported by Nissan were identified as Datsun. Nissan phased out
7140-430: 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,
7242-402: 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
7344-449: 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
7446-427: 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 ,
7548-596: The largest market share in Britain of any foreign carmaker. By the early 1980s, the Nissan badge was gradually appearing on Datsun-badged cars, and eventually the Datsun branding was phased out, the final new car with a Datsun badge being the Micra supermini, launched in Britain from June 1983. By the end of 1984, the Datsun branding had completely disappeared in Britain, although it lingered elsewhere until 1986. In Japan, there appears to have been what probably constituted
7650-410: The late 1970s onward until the Nissan name was given prominence in 1983 – although in some export markets, vehicles continued to wear both the Datsun and Nissan badges until 1986. In the United Kingdom for example, the Nissan name initially was used as a prefix to the model name, with Datsun still being used as the manufacturer's name (e.g. Datsun-Nissan Micra ) from 1982 until 1984. In the United States,
7752-468: The model the Datsun Type 11 . In 1933, government rules were revised to permit 750 cc (46 cu in) engines, and Datsun increased the displacement of their microcar engine to the maximum allowed. These larger displacement cars were called Type 12s . By 1935, the company had established a true production line, following the example of Ford , and were producing a car closely resembling
7854-498: The most important motivation was that a name change would help Nissan market stocks and bonds in the U.S. They also presumed substantial ego involvement, since the absence of the Nissan name in the U.S. surely rankled Nissan executives who had seen Toyota and Honda become household words." Ultimately, the name change campaign lasted for a three-year period from 1982 to 1984 – Datsun badged vehicles had been progressively fitted with small "Nissan" and "Datsun by Nissan" badges from
7956-545: The most popular examples at the time including the Renault 16 from France and Volkswagen Beetle from West Germany . The first European market that Nissan had entered was Finland, where sales began in 1962. Within a few years, it was importing cars to most of Western Europe . Datsun was particularly successful on the British market. It sold just over 6,000 cars there as late as 1971, but its sales surged to more than 30,000
8058-425: 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
8160-470: 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
8262-415: 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,
8364-584: The pre-war Austin Seven. The heavier trucks, meanwhile, were based on Chevrolet's 1937 design with an engine of Graham-Paige design. Nissan also built the 4W60 Patrol , based on the Willys Jeep, and the 4W70 Carrier, based on the Dodge M37 . Not until January 1955 did Datsun offer a fully indigenous design. That year, the Occupation returned production facilities to Japanese control, and Datsun introduced
8466-481: 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
8568-565: The resulting company operated 220 car dealerships in the UK, specialising in Nissan vehicles; approximately 160 of the 220 sites held Nissan franchises. By the end of the 1980s, however, Nissan had established an assembly plant in Sunderland and was considering taking the existing Japanese import and distribution business in house. Negotiations with Botnar over a possible take-over of Nissan UK began in 1988. Disputes began to emerge between executives of Nissan in Japan and Botnar over pricing of
8670-459: 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
8772-484: The small cars the firm exported to America were still named Datsun. Corporate choice favored Datsun, so as to distance the parent factory Nissan's association by Americans with Japanese military manufacture. In fact Nissan's involvement in Japan's military industries was substantial. The company's car production at the Yokohama plant shifted towards military needs just a few years after the first passenger cars rolled off
8874-439: 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 )
8976-817: 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
9078-481: 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
9180-663: The then new Nissan Primera in 1990. Nissan was pitching the Primera further upmarket, which was at odds with AFG's marketing of Nissan as a value-focused brand which it had been since the Datsun era. Nissan in Japan had also had shown its distaste towards Botnar's notoriously ruthless business practices which clashed with their own corporate values. This, coupled with controversies surrounding alleged tax fraud implying certain AFG and Nissan UK executives (including Botnar himself), Nissan set up its own import and distribution business within
9282-419: 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 ,
9384-577: 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
9486-480: 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
9588-407: 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
9690-445: The way Toyota does. 'Looking back, we wish we had started using Nissan on all of our cars,' he says. 'But Datsun was a pet name for the cars when we started exporting .'" Ultimately, the decision was made to stop using the brand name Datsun worldwide, in order to strengthen the company name Nissan . "The decision to change the name Datsun to Nissan in the U.S. was announced in the autumn (September/October) of 1981. The rationale
9792-548: 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
9894-539: 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
9996-644: Was being built at the Renault-Nissan plant in Chennai , India. It was also produced in Indonesia. The Go is based on the same Nissan V platform as the Nissan Micra . The Go+, a 5+2 seater station wagon , was added to the range in September 2013. In February 2014, the redi-Go concept car was presented. The redi-Go crossover became available in India mid-2015. In April 2014, the first model for
10098-735: 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,
10200-474: 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 )
10302-654: Was soon the world's #1-selling sports car. It relied on an engine based on the Bluebird and used Bluebird suspension components. It would go on to two outright wins in the East African Rally. Katayama was made Vice President of the Nissan North American subsidiary in 1960, and as long as he was involved in decision making, both as North American Vice President from 1960 to 1965, and then President of Nissan Motor Company U.S.A. from 1965 to 1975,
10404-416: Was that the name change would help the pursuit of a global strategy . A single name worldwide would increase the possibility that advertising campaigns, brochures, and promotional materials could be used across countries and simplify product design and manufacturing. Further, potential buyers would be exposed to the name and product when traveling to other countries. Industry observers, however, speculated that
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