Japan Languages

Description
Modern-day Japanese is the language of virtually all Japanese living in Japan, but prior to 1868 there were many significant regional variations. Korean is spoken by one-half of one percent of the population. The Ainu language, spoken by the aboriginal Ainu people, is nearly extinct. There are also several Ryukyuan languages, closely related to Japanese, used in Okinawa and other islands in the south. These languages are disappearing as the younger generations are using modern Japanese.

The earliest documents in Japan were written in Chinese. Japanese language documents are written with a complex mixture of three separate writing systems: Japanese in Chinese characters (called Kanji) and two phonetic syllabic systems - Hiragana (more cursive and often used with Kanji characters) and Katakana (more angular and for transcribing words of foreign origin).

Word List(s)

 * Japanese Genealogical Word List
 * 101 Core and Commonly Used Japanese Words - Fluent in 3 months
 * Top 100 Basic Japanese Words - Coto Japanese Academy

Alphabet and Pronunciation
The Japanese written language has three writing systems:
 * Kanji
 * Characters are borrowed from Chinese (tens of thousands)
 * only 2,000 kanji are needed to read Japanese


 * Hiragana
 * Phonetic system
 * 46 basic symbols or letters --- See List


 * Katakana
 * Phonetic system
 * 46 basic symbols or letters --- See List

Online Resources
 * Aids for Vowels and Consonants - Wikipedia
 * Japanese Phonology (including Consonants, Vowels, Accent, Sound Change, etc.) - Wikipedia
 * Numbers in Japanese

Language Aids and Dictionaries
Dictionaries
 * Jisho - Japanese-English Dictionary
 * Tangorin - Japanese-English Dictionary
 * JapanDict - Japanese-English Dictionary
 * History of Japanese Dictionaries - Wikipedia

Language Aids
 * 20 Must-have Japanese Learning Tools

Additional Resources

 * Eleanor Harz Jorden & Hamako Ito Chaplin, Reading Japanese, (Tokyo : Charles E. Tuttle), 1985 - Reading Japanese
 * Hamako Ito Chaplin & Jorden Eleanor harz, Reading Japanese, (Tokyo : Charles E. Tuttle Co), 1992 - Reading Japanese