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Japanese Language Profile 日本語 |
Japanese is spoken by more than 125 million people, most of whom
live in Japan. There are also many speakers of Japanese in the Ryukyu
Islands, Korea, Taiwan, parts of the United States, and Brazil. There
are many dialects, but the standard Japanese of Tokyo is understood
everywhere. The origins of Japanese are uncertain and it may be that
it is unrelated to any other language; evidence for links with Korean
and other Altaic languages is inconclusive. 
Among the most noteworthy characteristics of Japanese are pure vowels
and a musical accent; distinctive particles added to nouns and pronouns
to indicate grammatical function; and the extensive use of honorific
forms to indicate differences in the social status among the speaker,
the addressee and the person spoken about. The Japanese borrowed the
character-based alphabet of the Chinese in the fourth century AD. Since
Chinese writing is ideographic rather than phonetic, two additional
phonetic syllabaries (kana) were later devised to record the
Japanese language. Known as hiragana and katakana,
they are used along with the ideographic characters (or kanji).
Japanese is typically written from top to bottom in vertical columns
and from right to left. After World War II many kanji characters
were simplified and the number used was limited to about 2,000. Subsequently,
the phonetic kana were also modified and brought more in line
with modern pronunciation. Because of the number of its speakers and the high level of cultural, economic, and political development of the Japanese people, Japanese is one of the leading languages of the world. |