Online Language Lessons & Language Training

Japonic or Japanese-Ryukyuan is a language family composed of Japanese and Ryukyuan. Their common ancestral language is known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. The essential feature of this classification is that the first split in the family resulted in the separation of all dialects of Japanese from all dialects of Ryukyuan.

Japanese is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none of them has gained unanimous acceptance. Japanese is an agglutinative language. It is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned in conversation.

The language has a relatively small sound inventory, and a lexically significant pitch-accent system. Japanese is a mora-timed language. The Japanese language is written with a combination of three scripts: Chinese characters called kanji and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.

Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.

The main distinction in Japanese accents is between Tokyo-type and Kyoto-Osaka-type, though Kyushu-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, Kyoto, Hyogo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in Hachijo-jima island and a few others.

Dialects from peripheral regions, such as Tohoku or Kagoshima may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in Kyushu as well. This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables.

A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy. Dialects of Tohoku and North Kanto are associated with typical farmers. The Ryukyuan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family.

However, many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryukyuan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryukyuan languages.

Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryukyu islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.