LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE

Japanese ranks as one of the world’s most important languages with over 126 million speakers.
Japanese is believed to be linked with Ural-Altaic, Polynesian, and Chinese. Of these, Japanese is most widely believed to be connected to the Ural-Altaic family, which includes Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean.

Korean is the most frequently compared to Japanese among all these languages. This is so because both languages share significant key features such as general structure, vowel harmony, lack of conjunctions, and the extensive use of honorific speech.

The Japanese writing system consists of three different character sets:

• Kanji (includes several thousands of Chinese characters)
• Hiragana
• Katakana

Japanese texts can be written in two ways:

• Western style. i.e. in horizontal rows from the top to the bottom of the page,
• Traditional Japanese style. i.e. in vertical columns from the right to the left side of the page.

Both writing styles are accepted today.

KANJI

HIRAGANA

KATAKANA