Characteristics of Japanese Language

The Japanese language is made up of phonetic symbols and has no tones, which makes it easier for foreigners to learn. Since Japan is the only country to use Japanese as its official language, the language is heavily tied to Japanese culture. English is adopting more and more Japanese words as well, for example :
Zen
Manga
Anime
Ninja
Karaoke
Sushi
Tofu

Japanese is considered to be a Japonic language, and there are many competing theories about its origin. Some of these theories are:
Extinct languages spoken by Goguryeo (current Korean peninsula) and Manchuria.
A relative of other Asian languages, such as Korean.
A relative of the Altaic language group, which includes Mongolian, Hungarian and Finnish.

The Japanese name for their language is Nihongo 日本語. Official standard Japanese is called hyojungo 標準語.There are dozens of dialects spoken in Japan, and all are mutually intelligible.

Let’s look at some characteristics of the Japanese language.

• Japanese use SOV (subject + object + verb) structure and have an unmarked phrase order for time + manner + place, the reverse of English order.
• Japanese is a topic prominent language. Topics are marked separately from the subject with a special postposition.
• Japanese is a pronoun-dropping language. Pronouns, such as he, she, I, you, can be deleted when considered unnecessary by the speaker, not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts.
• Japanese use extensive classifiers to indicate the word class of a noun, and does not have gender.
• Japanese verbs are conjugated to show tenses and moods.
• Japanese has many ways to express different levels of politeness, including a different conjugation for verbs, special verbs and pronouns, verbs indicating relative status, or the use of different nouns.