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The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: Chinese characters, kanji, and two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet, rōmaji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer.
Native name: 日本語 (nihongo) [ɲihoŋɡo] Language family: Japonic. Number of speakers: c. 126.4 million. Spoken in: Japan, Brazil, the USA, Peru, Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Philippines and Taiwan. First written: 8th century AD. Writing system: Chinese script, Japanese script. Status: de facto language of Japan. An introduction to Japanese.
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.
