Japanese language

Introduction & Top Questions
Dialects
Phonology
- The word-pitch accent system
- Phonemes
Grammatical structure: Communicating
Vocabulary
Writing systems
Relationships to other languages
Literary history
- Grammatical structure
- Phonology
- Syntax

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Map of Japan and surrounding seas, showing and labeling the major Japanese islands including Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, Sado, Tsushima, Okinawa, Tanegashima, Yakushima, Amami Great Island, as well as the Ryukyu, Izu, and Bonin Islands. Neighboring countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, and South Korea are also partially visible.

Yellow letter tiles on a teal background spell 'what is a haiku?' with abstract calligraphic scribbles in the background

A crowd of spectators watches as bonfires form the Japanese character for large, dai, illuminated on Mount Nyoigatake during Kyoto's Gozan Okuribi Bonfire Festival at night.

Six red kanji characters are shown in two rows, each labeled in English: bridge, flower, moon, friend, eye, and color. The note below states that kanji characters stand for words.

A pathway lined with numerous bright orange torii gates inscribed with black Japanese characters at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.

At a Glance

Japanese language summary

Quizzes

Dutch, Yiddish, Japanese, or Hindi? Quiz

Hand with pencil writing on page. (handwriting; write)

Word Nerd Quiz

Buddhist engravings on wall in Thailand. Hands on wall. Hompepage blog 2009, history and society, science and technology, geography and travel, explore discovery

Languages & Alphabets

Related Questions

How are English loanwords changed when they are written in Japanese katakana?
How are kanji used in Japanese nouns and verb roots?
How can the kanji for mountain be read as both san and yama?
How did Chinese writing influence the Japanese language?
How did Japanese scribes use Chinese characters to write Japanese sounds?
How did compulsory education help spread standard written Japanese?
How did the 1946 Japanese writing reform change kanji use?
How did the Tokyo dialect become the basis for standard Japanese?
How did women in the Heian court help establish hiragana as a literary script?
How do Chinese and Japanese differ in word structure?
How do Japanese particles mark subjects and objects in a sentence?
How do kanji differ from hiragana and katakana?
How do marks called nigori change the sounds of kana characters?
How does the Japanese passive form express inconvenience or suffering?
How is Japanese related to the Ryukyuan languages?
How is Japanese sentence word order different from English word order?
How is the Ainu language different from Japanese?
When did Japanese first come into contact with Chinese culture?
Which ancient Japanese works contain early examples of phonetic writing?
Why are some Japanese dialects mutually unintelligible?
Why can a Japanese kanji character have more than one pronunciation?
Why can the meaning of an unfamiliar kanji word sometimes be guessed?
Why did efforts to replace kanji with kana or the Roman alphabet fail?
Why did hiragana become important for Japanese literature?
Why do Japanese newspapers add hiragana readings to uncommon kanji?
Why does the Japanese word bōrupen include extra vowel sounds?
Why is anata often avoided when speaking directly to a superior in Japanese?
Why is written Japanese difficult to read without knowing the context?
Why was The Tale of Genji written almost entirely in hiragana?

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External Websites

Web Japan - Japanese Language
Omniglot - Japanese
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - The Japanese Language
Asia Society - Education - The Japanese Language
International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts - Japanese Language: A short introduction

Japanese language

Written by

Masayoshi Shibatani

Professor of Linguistics, Kobe University, Japan. Author of The Languages of Japan.

Masayoshi Shibatani

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

Japanese language, language of the Japonic language family and one of the world’s major languages. Japanese comprises all local language varieties (dialects) spoken on Japan’s main islands (except for the unrelated Ainu languages). It had more than 125 million speakers in the early 2020s, including more than 3.5 million speakers outside of Japan. Since the mid-20th century, no country other than Japan has used Japanese as a first or a second language. Japan’s geography, characterized...

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