Japanese Language: History, Structure, and Variation

Japanese within the Japonic language family

Japanese is the principal language of the Japonic language family and is spoken by approximately 123 million people, mainly in Japan and Japanese diaspora communities worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the Hachijo language, although the Ryukyuan varieties are sometimes popularly treated as Japanese dialects. Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan and is also an official language, alongside Palauan and English, in Angaur, Palau. The relationship between Japonic languages and other language families has been widely debated. Proposed connections with Ainu, Koreanic, Austronesian, Altaic, and other families have not gained broad acceptance; the relationship between Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages is the only widely supported classification. Japanese developed through several historical stages, including Old Japanese, Early and Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, while absorbing substantial Chinese and later European vocabulary. It is characterized by subject-object-verb word order, agglutinative grammar, particles, pitch accent, and a writing system combining kanji with hiragana and katakana.

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Geographic distribution and speaker communities

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