Japanese language

Japanese language
日本語 Nihon-go
"Nihongo" ("Japanese") in Japanese script
Pronunciation	/nihoɴɡo/: [ɲihoŋɡo], [ɲihoŋŋo]
Native to	Japan  Russia  Taiwan  South Korea  Palau
Ethnicity	Japanese (Yamato)
Native speakers	125 million (2010)[1]
Language family	Japonic Japanese language
Early forms	Old Japanese Early Middle Japanese Late Middle Japanese Early Modern Japanese
Writing system	Chinese characters (kanji) Kana (hiragana katakana) Japanese Braille
Signed forms	Signed Japanese
Official status
Official language in	Japan (de facto)
Recognised minority language in	Palau  ∟ Angaur
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ja
ISO 639-2	jpn
ISO 639-3	jpn
Glottolog	nucl1643  excluding Hachijo
Linguasphere	45-CAA-a
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The Japanese language (Japanese: 日本語, romanized: Nihongo) is the official language of Japan, in East Asia. Japanese belongs to the Japonic language family, which also includes the endangered Ryukyuan languages. One theory says Japanese and Korean are related, but most linguists no longer think so. Other theories about the origin of Japanese are that it is related to the Austronesian languages, the Dravidian languages, or the controversial Altaic language family. The term used for Japanese as a course of study by citizens is "kokugo" (国語), which means national language. Nonetheless, Japanese is still referred to as Nihon-go by the Japanese.

Japanese uses three separate writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic systems and show the pronunciation of Japanese words. Kanji is the Japanese variation of Chinese characters and shows the meaning of Japanese words. The three systems are used interchangeably, and all three systems can often be found in the same sentence. The three systems are each reserved for different purposes.

In English, the order of the words is very important. For example, the sentences "Is it?" and "It is." mean different things. In Japanese, differences are often made by adding or changing the ending of words (using the previous example, one would say them as そうですか sou desu ka and そうです sou desu, respectively). A Japanese word has a stem called a "body", and additional parts (called suffixes). Changing the suffix can change the meaning or the grammar of the word.

After World War II, many English words entered the Japanese language (wasei-eigo). An example of one would be "アイスクリーム (romanized: aisukurīmu)”, meaning “ice cream”.

1. ↑ "Världens 100 största språk 2010" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2010), in Nationalencyklopedin