According to the CIA World Factbook, the most-spoken first languages in 2018 were: [8] Top first languages by population per CIA [8] Rank Subete no ningen wa, umarenagara ni shite jiyū de ari, katsu, songen to kenri to ni tsuite byōdō de aru. Ningen wa, risei to ryōshin to o sazukerarete ori, tagai ni dōhō no seishin o motte kōdō shinakereba naranai. Words of different origins occupy different registers in Japanese. Like Latin-derived words in English, kango words are typically perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas an Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.

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 terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture). [25] The survey was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region. [25] Intelligibility to students from Tokyo and Kanto region (Date: 1967) [25] Dialect Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった!) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい!) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and an increase of mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration.

Find sources: "Languages of Japan"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( September 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Book of Song 順帝昇明二年，倭王武遣使上表曰：封國偏遠，作藩于外，自昔祖禰，躬擐甲冑，跋渉山川，不遑寧處。東征毛人五十國，西服衆夷六十六國，渡平海北九十五國，王道融泰，廓土遐畿，累葉朝宗，不愆于歳。臣雖下愚，忝胤先緒，驅率所統，歸崇天極，道逕百濟，裝治船舫，而句驪無道，圖欲見吞，掠抄邊隸，虔劉不已，毎致稽滯，以失良風。雖曰進路，或通或不。臣亡考濟實忿寇讎，壅塞天路，控弦百萬，義聲感激，方欲大舉，奄喪父兄，使垂成之功，不獲一簣。居在諒闇，不動兵甲，是以偃息未捷。至今欲練甲治兵，申父兄之志，義士虎賁，文武效功，白刃交前，亦所不顧。若以帝德覆載，摧此強敵，克靖方難，無替前功。竊自假開府儀同三司，其餘咸各假授，以勸忠節。詔除武使持節督倭、新羅、任那、加羅、秦韓六國諸軍事、安東大將軍、倭國王。至齊建元中，及梁武帝時，并來朝貢。

While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた) (literally, "explaining gave" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. The Japanese language can express differing levels of social status. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other person might use a plainer form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto. 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.Chinese characters were first introduced to Ryūkyūan languages shortly into the 13th-century. Details concerning the language before then are not well known. 14th-century records indicate that gifts from Ryūkyū Islands to China used Hiragana, which indicates that these languages were tied to Mainland Japanese at the time. Depending on the speakers’ gender, different linguistic features might be used. [53] The typical lect used by females is called joseigo ( 女性語) and the one used by males is called danseigo ( 男性語). [54] Josiego and danseigo are different in various ways, including first-person pronouns (such as watashi or atashi 私 for women and boku ( 僕) for men) and sentence-final particles (such as wa ( わ), na no ( なの), or kashira ( かしら) for joseigo, or zo ( ぞ), da ( だ), or yo ( よ) for danseigo). [53] In addition to these specific differences, expressions and pitch can also be different. [53] For example, joseigo is more gentle, polite, refined, indirect, modest, and exclamatory, and often accompanied by raised pitch. [53] Kogal Slang

Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. This is a significant increase from before World War II; in 1940, only 65 Americans not of Japanese descent were able to read, write and understand the language. [56] The United Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic I don't currently possess any of these textbooks, so I can't vouch for their quality or appropriateness for independent learners, nor can I guarantee that the set of files posted by the publisher is the complete audio program for that title. However, I only listed books that seem to have a LOT of audio files available. Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of kyōiku kanji ("education kanji", a subset of jōyō kanji), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 1,130 characters in junior high school, covering in total 2,136 jōyō kanji. The official list of jōyō kanji was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged. In addition, languages such as Orok, Evenki and Nivkh spoken in formerly Japanese controlled southern Sakhalin are becoming more and more endangered. After the Soviet Union took control of the region, speakers of these languages and their descendants migrated to mainland Japan and still exist in small numbers.

A study of macaque monkeys suggests that languages may have evolved to replace grooming as a better way of forging social ties amongst our ancestors Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron) in rōmaji, a repeated vowel character in hiragana, or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana. /u/ ( listen ⓘ) is compressed rather than protruded, or simply unrounded. The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example: Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi], approximately chi ( listen ⓘ); however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status".