There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift. In some areas, there is no reliable census data, the data is not current, or the census may not record languages spoken, or record them ambiguously. Sometimes speaker populations are exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be underreported in favor of a national language. [3] Ethnologue (2023) [ edit ]

And FluentU has a learn mode which turns every video into a language learning lesson. You can always swipe left or right to see more examples. 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."One would think romaji would have come about during trade relations and early interactions with European countries in the 16th century. But this isn’t the whole story. Panorama: Intermediate Russian Language and Culture by Benjamin Rifkin, Evgeny Dengub, and Susanna Nazarova

We’ve established that kanji is adopted from Chinese characters and used as a Japanese writing system. We also know that Japanese “borrows” quite a few phrases and words from Chinese. 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. How the language developed before that is truly a mystery! 2. There are other countries outside of Japan where Japanese is spoken Watashi wa sushi ga ii desu. (literally) " As for me, sushi is good." The nominative marker ga after watashi is hidden under wa.In Hokkaidō, there is the Ainu language, which is spoken by the Ainu people, who are the indigenous people of the island. The Ainu languages, of which Hokkaidō Ainu is the only extant variety, are isolated and do not fall under any language family. Ever since the Meiji period, Japanese has become widely used among the Ainu people and consequently Ainu languages have been classified critically endangered by UNESCO. [2] Did you find a fact or two that surprised you on this list? Japanese is such a unique language with an even more unique history. If Japanese is the language you’ve chosen to learn, you’ve made a great choice! Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect, similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Like Orok, the Nivkh language was spoken in Sakhalin and later in Hokkaidō, [ citation needed] and the Kuril Islands. [ dubious – discuss] It is unknown whether speakers of Nivkh still remain in Japan. [ citation needed] European languages [ edit ] There are three main sources of words in the Japanese language, the yamato kotoba ( 大和言葉) or wago ( 和語), kango ( 漢語), and gairaigo ( 外来語). [42]

Around 125.4 million people speak Japanese. It’s the most space-concentrated of all the most-spoken languages, with a vast majority of its speakers living exclusively on the island of Japan. Ertl, John, ed. (2008). Multiculturalism in the new Japan: crossing the boundaries within. New York: Berghahn Books. p.57. ISBN 9780857450258.

19. Japanese has several grammatical features that may seem strange to non-Japanese

Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese. Dutch-Japanese relations". Netherlands and You. Government of the Netherlands. 28 April 2017 . Retrieved 2019-12-11.