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Japanese Language

Over 130 million people around the world speak Japanese; most live in Japan, but Japanese speakers live in almost every country around the world. Japanese has three writing systems; Kanji (Chinese characters), Hiragana, and Katakana are used.  Kanji was brought to Japan from China.  Hiragana and Katakana are Japanese syllabic scripts.   These three writing systems are often used together in a single sentence, such as the one below. 

The basic Japanese word order is subject, object and verb.  However, in Japanese the order is very flexible. 

Japan has a different culture from the West. In class, not only Japanese not only the language but also the underlying culture will be learned.

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Email: linguisticsWeb@ohio.edu
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This page last updated August 10, 2007 by John McVicker.