Japanese language

Introduction to Japanese Language
- Japanese is the principal language of the Japonic language family.
- It is spoken by the Japanese people, with around 128 million speakers.
- Japanese is primarily spoken in Japan, where it is the national language.
- It is also spoken by the Japanese diaspora worldwide.
- The Japonic family includes the Ryukyuan languages and the Hachijō language.

Historical Development of Japanese Language
- Little is known about the language's prehistory or when it first appeared in Japan.
- Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words.
- Substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century.
- From the Heian period, Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language.
- Late Middle Japanese saw grammatical changes and the introduction of European loanwords.

Linguistic Features of Japanese Language
- Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language.
- It has a relatively simple phonotactics and a pure vowel system.
- Japanese has lexically significant pitch-accent.
- Word order is subject-object-verb, and sentence structure is topic-comment.
- Sentence-final particles are used for emotional impact or to form questions.

Writing System of Japanese Language
- The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters (kanji) with two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana.
- Kanji are used for their phonetic and semantic values.
- Manyōgana, based on kanji, was used in Old Japanese.
- Latin script (rōmaji) is also used in a limited fashion.
- The numeral system uses Arabic numerals and traditional Chinese numerals.

Development of Japanese Language over Time
- Proto-Japonic, the common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, arrived in Japan in the 4th century BC.
- Old Japanese was influenced by Chinese and had 88 distinct syllables.
- Early Middle Japanese underwent phonological developments and became mora-timed.
- Late Middle Japanese saw sound changes and the introduction of non-native sources.
- Modern Japanese emerged during the Edo period, with loanwords from European languages.