Japanese Language
Linguistic Classification Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. โ
Number of Speakers Approximately 127 million people speak Japanese, making it the 13th most spoken language globally. โ
Global Presence Outside Japan, Japanese is spoken by approximately 200,000 speakers in mainland North America, 220,000 in Hawaii, and 380,000 in South America, especially in Brazil. โ
Writing System Japanese utilizes a combination of logographic kanji (Chinese characters) and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. โ