Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). [7] (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. According to Martine Irma Robbeets, Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in the world. [30] Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu, Korean, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, Uralic, Altaic (or Ural-Altaic), Mon–Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian. At the fringe, some linguists have suggested a link to Indo-European languages, including Greek, and to Lepcha. Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or the proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages, especially Austronesian. None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). [31] [32] [33] As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. [34]

Whereas teineigo ( 丁寧語) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, sonkeigo ( 尊敬語) (respectful language) and kenjōgo ( 謙譲語) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: iku "go" becomes ikimasu in polite form, but is replaced by irassharu in honorific speech and ukagau or mairu in humble speech. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment. For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. The verb desu is a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生, "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata. This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the 7th century AD, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose, but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already very distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. [48]In my experience, "Menschen" and "Sicher!" are used by some branches of the Goethe Institut for their classes, although they are kind of mass-market in that the books are usually available at any large bookstore in the German-speaking world, and not just those at an university. I haven't seen the "Schritte plus Neu" series used anywhere, although it's very similar to "Menschen" and so I would expect it to be used in other branches of the Goethe Institut at the least. Anything behind a paywall, or requiring the publisher to call your workplace to verify that you are a teacher using the text in a class, was not included in this list. keiyōdōshi, or na adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually na. For example, hen (strange) The following languages are listed as having 45 million or more total speakers in the 26th edition of Ethnologue published in 2023. [4] Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Persian, Malay, Pashto, Sindhi, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section. The kinaesthetic learner may enjoy learning in a group or using flash cards or anything else that satisfies their hunger for 'experience'

Hall, Kathleen Currie (2013). "Documenting phonological change: A comparison of two Japanese phonemic splits" (PDF). In Luo, Shan (ed.). Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-12-12 . Retrieved 2019-06-01. Paolillo, John C.; Das, Anupam (31 March 2006). "Evaluating language statistics: the Ethnologue and beyond" (PDF). UNESCO Institute of Statistics. pp.3–5 . Retrieved 17 November 2018. Japanese has no official status in Japan, [21] but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo ( 標準語), meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語), "common language". The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新, meiji ishin, 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. [22] It is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters ( kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana which were developed based on Manyogana. Some scholars claim that Manyogana originated from Baekje, but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars. [49] [50] The most widely spoken language in Japan is Japanese, which is separated into several dialects with Tokyo dialect considered Standard Japanese.Joby, Christopher Richard (2018). "Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Japan: A Social History". Dutch Crossing. 42 (2): 175–196. doi: 10.1080/03096564.2017.1279449. S2CID 151974109. - Posted online on 26 February 2017 Find sources: "Languages of Japan"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( September 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Literacy was introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, by way of Baekje before the 5th century. [44] [45] [46] [47] Using this language, the Japanese king Bu presented a petition to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in AD 478. [a] After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars ( 続守言/薩弘恪/ [b] [c] 袁晋卿 [d]) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example: Written records of Japanese date to the 8th century, the oldest among them being the Kojiki (712; “Records of Ancient Matters”). If the history of the language were to be split in two, the division would fall somewhere between the 12th and 16th centuries, when the language shed most of its Old Japanese characteristics and acquired those of the modern language. It is common, however, to divide the 1,200-year history into four or five periods; Old Japanese (up to the 8th century), Late Old Japanese (9th–11th century), Middle Japanese (12th–16th century), Early Modern Japanese (17th–18th century), and Modern Japanese (19th century to the present). Grammatical structureTable of Kana (including Youon): Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romanized equivalents at the bottom The Ethnologue's most recent list of languages by total number of speakers – this is not a list of native speakers watashi no kamera " my camera" スキーに行く のが好きです。 Sukī-ni iku no ga suki desu "(I) like go ing skiing." Japanese – Source Census 2000, Summary F