Japanese is a member of the Japonic language family mostly spoken in the Japanese Archipelago. As of 2010, it was spoken by over 125 million people, placing it in the top 15 of the most spoken languages.

History

The first extant evidence of the Japanese language comes from the Old Japanese period of the language, lasting until the end of the Nara Period in 794 CE. Older inscriptions do exist, and there are some phonetic transcriptions of Japanese words/names found in old Chinese literature, but the accuracy of these is debatable. Anything from before the Old Japanese period must be based on reconstructions. Some fossilized constructions from Old Japanese are still found in Modern Japanese.

The Middle Japanese period is divided into two time frames: Early Middle Japanese, which lasted through the Heian Period (794-1185) and Late Middle Japanese (1185 - 1600) during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Late Middle Japanese is subdivided into two periods corresponding to the two periods of Japanese history. It was during Late Japanese period that the first European loan words entered the language, including pan (bread) and tabako (originally tobacco, now cigarette), both coming from Portuguese. Late Middle Japanese was also the first form of the language to be described by non-native scholars.

The Middle Japanese period gave way to the Early Modern Japanese which roughly spans the Edo period until the Meiji Restoration. Modern Japanese proper emerged after the Meiji Restoration, and continues today.

Linguistics

As a Japonic language, Japanese is closely related to the Ryukyuan languages which could have split from Japanese during the Yamato period.

Japanese was long considered a language isolate before the acceptance of the Ryukyuan languages as separate languages. Since then, it has firmly been linked to them. Other theories link Japanese and Korean, sometimes with the broader Altaic family. These, however, have not garnered wide support

Classification

Japanese's full classification is as follows:

Japonic > Japanese

Phonology and Phonotactics

Japanese has a five vowel system, /i e a o u/, which contrasts for length, giving a total of 10 vowel phonemes. Japanese has a "pure" vowel system, meaning that there are no diphthongs. The vowels /i/ and /u/ often become voiceless when they occur between two voiceless consonants.

Japanese has 16 native vowel phonemes, including two special ones that occur with moras, /N/ mora nasalization and /Q/, geminination. Furthermore, there are 11 other vowel sounds in the language, though these only occur allophonically or as phonemes in loan words.

Japanese does not use a syllabic system for the timing of words, instead using a mora#Japanese) system. Each mora occupies one rhythmic unit, i.e. it is perceived to have the same time value. Each "regular" mora can consist of a vowel, or a consonant vowel combination, sometimes with a glide before the vowel. The two moraic phonemes can constitute a mora as well. Long vowels constitute two mora, with some analyses introducing a third moraic phoneme, /R/ to constitute this break. A table of all the mora types can be seen below (period representing a mora break).

Japanese has a standard pitch accent system as well. A word can have one of its moras bearing an accent or not. An accented mora is pronounced with a relatively high tone and is followed by a drop in pitch. The various Japanese dialects have different accent patterns, and some exhibit more complex tonic systems.

Mora type	Example	Japanese	English	Number of Moras
V	/o/	o 尾	tail	1 mora
jV	/jo/	yo世	world	1 mora
CV	/ko/	ko 子	child	1 mora
CjV	/kjo/	kyo 巨	hugeness	1 mora
R	/R/ in /kjo.R/ or /kjo.o/	kyō 今日	today	2 moras
N	N/ in /ko.N / kon紺	deep blue	2 moras
Q	/Q/ in in /ko.Q.ko/ or /ko.k.ko/	kokko 国庫	national treasury	3 moras

Morphology and Syntax

Japanese is an aggulitinative language, and follows a Subject-Verb-Object word order. The only strict rule of Japanese sentence structure is that the verb must be placed at the end of the sentence, though it can be followed by sentence-ending particles. Japanese is a head-final and left-branching language. Japanese can also be described as a 'topic-prominent' language, a feature which arose during the Middle Japanese period and the subject of the sentence is often omitted unless absolutely necessary to prevent ambiguity or to introduce the topic.

Japanese nouns do not inflect for number or gender, and definite articles do not exist (though the determiners can sometimes be translated as articles). However, Japanese does have several cases, which are expressed by particles attached to the nouns. These are summarized in the table below:

Case	Particle
Nominative	が (ga) for subject, は (wa) for the topic
Genitive	の (no)
Dative	に (ni)
Accusative	を (wo)
Lative	へ (e)
Ablative	から (kara)
Instrumental	で (de)

Although many grammars and textbooks mention pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi), Japanese lacks true pronouns. (Daimeishi can be considered a subset of nouns.) Strictly speaking, pronouns do not take modifiers, but Japanese daimeishi do: 背の高い彼 se no takai kare (lit. tall he) is valid in Japanese. Interestingly, unlike true pronouns, Japanese daimeishi do not represent a closed-class, meaning that new members can be, and are, regularly added. Like other subjects, Japanese deemphasizes personal daimeishi, which are seldom used. This is partly because Japanese sentences do not always require explicit subjects, and partly because names or titles are often used where pronouns would appear in a translation. Furthermore, Japanese only has one reflexive daimeishi, with uses much different to English reflexives.

Japanese verbs do not conjugate for person or number, meaning the same form of the verb is used regardless of the subject of the sentence. However, they do conjugate differently based on the level of politness required. The basic form of the Japanese verb is the imperfective aspect, which can encompass the present or the future and is thus sometimes called a 'non-past' form. It is the lemma of the word, and thus what will be found in the dictionary, and can stand on its own, as in (私は)買い物する (watashi wa) kaimono suru: "(I) shop", or "(I) will shop".

The perfective aspect of a verb generally ends in -ta (or -da), but various phonetic changes are made, depending on the verb's last syllable. This is often presented as a past tense, but can be used in any tense.

To make a verb negative, the -u of the ending generally becomes -anai, though this changes based on formality in some auxiliary verbs, notably the copula (which has different forms based on formality).

The "i form" of the verb is formed by changing the -u to -i and has a variety of uses including (among others) to form polite verbs when followed by the -ます -masu ending, to express a wish when followed by the ending -たい -tai and to express that something is easy or hard when followed by -易い -yasui or -難い -nikui.

The te form of a Japanese verb (sometimes called the "participle", the "gerund", or the "gerundive form") is used when the verb has some kind of connection to the following words. Usages of this form include forming a simple command, in requests (with くれる kureru and 下さい kudasai) and to form the progressive tense as an auxiliary. Many other uses of the te form exist as well.

To form the potential form of the verb, the -u ending becomes -eru. This is used to express that one has the ability to do something. Since this is a passive form, what would be a direct object in English is marked with the particle が ga instead of を o. For example, 日本語が読める nihongo ga yomeru: "I can read Japanese" (lit. "Japanese can be read"). It is also used to request some action from someone, in the exact sense of the English "Can you ... ?", though this would never be used to ask permission, unlike in English.

The general pattern for the passive voice is: -u becomes -areru. The passive is used as a general passive, as a 'suffering passive', to indicate that something regretful was done to someone, or as a form of polite language.

The causative forms are characterized by the final u becoming aseru for consonant stem verbs, and ru becoming saseru for vowel stem verbs. This form is used for making someone do something, allowing someone to do something, with explicit actors making someone do something as well as as an honorific form.

The causative passive form is obtained by first conjugating in the causative form and then conjugating the result in the passive form. As its rule suggests, the causative passive is used to express causation passively: 両親に勉強させられる ryōshin ni benkyō saserareru: "(I) am made to study by (my) parents".

The eba provisional conditional form is characterized by the final -u becoming -eba for all verbs (with the semi-exception of -tsu verbs becoming -teba). This form is used in conditionals where more emphasis is on the condition than the result as well as to express obligations.

The conditional ra form (also called the past conditional) is formed from the past tense (TA form) by simply adding ra. ba can be further added to that, which makes it more formal. This form is used when emphasis is needed to be placed on the result and the condition is less uncertain to be met. 日本に行ったら、カメラを買いたい。nihon ni ittara, kamera wo kaitai: "If (when) I go to Japan, then (when that has happened) I want to buy a camera." It can also be used as the main clause of the past tense and is often translated as 'when'; when used like this, it carries an emphasis that the result was unexpected.

Most of the imperative forms are characterized by the final u becoming e. The imperative form is used in orders, set phrases, reported speech where a request might be rephrased this way, on signs and in motivation speaking.

Volitional, presumptive, or hortative forms have several endings based on the verb class. This form is used to express or ask volitional ("Let's/Shall we?") statements and questions, to express a conjecture (with deshō), to express what one is thinking of doing (with omou) and to express 'about to' and 'trying to'.

Japanese does not have traditional adjectives like English, instead expressing adjectives with 'adjectival verbs' or 'adjectival nouns'. Japanese adjectives do not have comparative or superlative inflections; comparatives and superlatives have to be marked periphrastically using adverbs. Every adjective in Japanese can be used in an attributive position. Nearly every Japanese adjective can be used in a predicative position.

Finally, Japanese has many particles. Among the ones already mentioned, with identify the case of the noun, Japanese uses particles to express what would normally be expressed by prepositions in English, but they also have other meanings such as "just" in "I just ate" or "not only" when adding information ("not only did I eat it, but he did too").

Miscellany

The oldest writing in Japan is in Classical Chinese, though some evidence points to the fact that these texts were supposed to be read as Old Japanese.
Japan currently has three writing systems: the syllabic systems of hiragana and katakana as well as the logographic system of the kanji. All of these came from borrowings (and then simplification) of Chinese logographs.
Japanese has had several different methods of adapting the Chinese symbols to their language. Among these are the Kojiki system of mixed writing, Man'yōgana (which hiragana and katakana came from, and is a sister system to modern day kanji).
Hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. And thus hiragana was first widely used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.
Japanese was traditionally written right to left, top to bottom.

Samples

Spoken sample:

Wikitongues Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4R1-TLkxBs
Lullaby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68xu7uxsAgY

Written sample:

むかし、むかし、あるところにおじいさんとおばあさんがいました。おじいさんが山（やま）へ木（き）をきりにいけば、おばあさんは川（かわ）へせんたくにでかけます。「おじいさん、はようもどってきなされ。」「おばあさんもきをつけてな。」まい日（にち）やさしくいいあってでかけます。

ある日（ひ）、おばあさんが川でせんたくをしていたら、つんぶらこつんぶらこももがながれてきました。ひろってたべたら、なんともおいしくてほっぺたがおちそう。おじいさんにもたべさせてあげたいとおもって、「うまいももこっちゃこい。にがいももあっちゃいけ。」といったら、どんぶらこどんぶらこでっかいももがながれてきました。おばあさんはよろこんで、ももをいえにもってかえりました。

ゆうがたおじいさんが山からもどってきました。「おじいさん、おじいさん、うまいももをひろったでめしあがれ。」おばあさんがきろうとしたら、ももがじゃくっとわれ、ほぎゃあほぎゃあ

男（おとこ）のあかんぼうがとびだしました。「こりゃあたまげた。」「なんちゅうげんきなあかんぼうだ。」ふたりはあわてておゆをわかすやらきものをさがすやら。

(Excerpt from a traditional Japanese story)

Sources

Wikipedia articles on Mongolian
Mongolian Grammar, Kullmann & Tserenpil

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今日は - This week's language of the week: Japanese!