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Direction of writing. Spacing and punctuation. History of the Japanese script. Romanization. See also. References. Sources. External links. Japanese writing system. The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.
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.
History. Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since the Old Japanese era. The Man'yōshū, the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, includes poems written in dialects of the capital ( Nara) and eastern Japan, but other dialects were not recorded.
