What is Japanese language?

Answer 1

Japanese (日本語 Nihongo) is an Asian language spoken by 126 million people, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language; however, it doesn't have official status anywhere.

Japanese is a member of the Japonic language family, and appears to be a language isolate (not related to any other living language on Earth). It's sometimes listed as being related to Korean, but this is not universally accepted among linguists, and is losing more and more support each year.

Japanese is unique among languages in that it is written with three different writing systems all mixed together:

1. Katakana, used for foreign words and for emphasis in the way that English uses italics
   
2. Hiragana, a cursive-like system, used for native Japanese words and suffixes
   
3. Kanji, Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese; Japanese officially uses 2,136 characters in theory, but many more are used in practice, often more than 5,000.
   

There is also a 4th system, called Romaji, which is the romanization of Japanese. The Hepburn system is the most common spelling system in Japan.

Sample text showing all Hiragana and Kanji mixed together:

すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利と について平等である。人間は、理性と良心とを授けられており、互いに同 胞の精神をもって行動しなければならない。

Same text in Romaji

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 seishinn o motte kōdō shinakereba naranai.

Sample of Katakana (used mainly with foreign words)

America アメリカ (a-me-ri-ka)

Russia ロシア (ro-sha)

cheating カンニング (kan-nin-gu, from the word "cunning")

employee サラリーマン (sa-ra-rii-man, from the words "salary man")

Mozart モーツァルト (mo-tsu-a-ru-to)

car horn クラクション (ku-ra-ku-shon, from the word "klaxon")

sofa ソファ (so-fu-a, the "f" sounds more like an 'h')

Halloween ハロウィーン (ha-ro-win)

French fries フライドポテト (fu-rai-do po-te-to, from the words "fried potato")

Answer 2

The national language is Japanese 98.5%, followed by Korean at 0.5%