Japanese

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Japanese(日本語, pronounced [ɲihoŋgo]) is the primary language spoken in the country of Japan, and the sole de facto official language of the nation. It holds a co-official status on Angaur Island, Palau, and has around 120 million speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken Japonic language, and is thus related to languages like Okinawan and other languages spoken in the Ryūkyū Islands.

There is great debate over the broader linguistic classification of Japanese and the Japonic language family as a whole. The Japonic language family, as well as the Koreanic family are sometimes included in some versions of the controversial Altaic language family, which usually only includes the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families.

Japanese is a mora-timed agglutinative SOV language that also incorporates pitch-accent.

Notable features of Japanese

• Japanese uses several different writing systems:
  • Kanji, a morphemic writing system using Chinese characters (hanzi)
  • Two kana alphabets systems, katakana and hiragana
  • Romaji (or rōmaji, or roumaji), i.e., Latin characters; exists in several variants, which coexist somewhat in use in Japan.

This article is one of quite a few pages about Natlangs. Indo-european natlangs: Balto-Slavic Natlangs: Czech * Russian Celtic Natlangs: Revived Middle Cornish * Pictish Germanic Natlangs: North Germanic Natlangs: Norwegian West Germanic Natlangs: Anglo-Saxon * Dutch * English (Old English * Middle English * Modern English * Scots) * German (High German * Low German) Indo-Iranian Natlangs: Pahlavi Italic Natlangs: French * Italian * Latin * Spanish Debated: Cimmerian Uralic Natlangs: Finnish * Khanty * Mansi * Mordvinic * Proto-Uralic Altaic (controversial): Japanese Sino-Tibetan Natlangs: Uto-Aztecan Natlangs: Nahuatl - Isolate Natlangs: Basque * * Hypothetical/debated Natlangs and Natlang families: Danubian * Europic (obsolete)