How many people speak the Japanese language?
The Japanese language has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide.
Questions about Japanese language
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What language family does Japanese belong to?
Japanese is the principal language of the Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijo language. Attempts to link Japanese to Ainu, Korean, Austronesian, and the now discredited Altaic family have not gained wide acceptance, and only the link to Ryukyuan has firm support.
Where did the Japanese language come from?
Proto-Japonic, the common ancestor of Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages, is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers from the Korean peninsula in the early to mid 4th century BC, during the Yayoi period. These settlers replaced the languages of the original Jomon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language.
What writing systems are used in the Japanese language?
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin, plus two syllabaries called hiragana and katakana that were derived from Man'yogana. The Latin script, known as romaji, is also used in a limited fashion for imported acronyms and pronunciation aids.
How many kanji do Japanese students learn in school?
Japanese students learn 1,006 kyoiku kanji by the end of sixth grade, then study another 1,130 characters in junior high school, for a total of 2,136 joyo kanji.
When did European loanwords enter the Japanese language?
The first European loanwords entered during Late Middle Japanese, between 1185 and 1600, including pan for bread and tabako for tobacco, both from Portuguese. After Japan ended its self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of European loanwords increased significantly, and English borrowings now dominate.
How does word order and grammar work in the Japanese language?
Japanese word order is subject-object-verb, with particles marking the grammatical function of words and the verb placed at the end of the sentence. Its structure is topic-comment, the topic marked with the particle wa and the subject marked with ga, and it has an extensive system of honorifics reflecting social status.