Japanese Epapers

Japanese (日本人) is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. Japanese has no official status, but is the de facto national language. Japanese is a member of the Japonic languages family, which also includes the languages spoken throughout the Ryūkyū Islands. As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is often called a language isolate, but strictly speaking this is a misnomer, since the Ryukyuan languages are linguistically distinct. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb. In Japanese, the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. Literacy was introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, by way of Baekje before the 5th century.