Language Learning: Japanese
One of the top languages that we provide year-over-year for clients is Japanese. Both of our translation and interpretation departments receive constant requests for Japanese language specialists.
Japanese is one of the world’s major languages. It is spoken by more than 125 million people in the early 2020s. This includes more than 3.5 million speakers outside of Japan.
Interestingly, since the mid-20th century, no country other than Japan has used Japanese as a first or second language. There are only a few languages that may share this unique country-language distinction, including Georgian (Georgia), Hungarian (Hungary), and Finnish (Finland).
Despite this distinction, Japanese has a global reach. According to the Visual Capitalist, the share of global URLs on the internet in Japanese is five percent. This may not seem to be a big percentage, yet it is tied for the fourth highest percentage of URLs globally. (At the top is English. Almost half of all global URLs are in English.)
Japan’s geography of isolated, mountainous islands contributed to the initial creation of a number of different dialects, and also its unique country-language distinction. A standardized written Japanese has been a feature of compulsory education in Japan since the 1880s. In addition, modern travel and mass media have contributed to the mutual understandability between the different dialects and accelerated the rate of loss of the individual Japanese dialects.
The Japanese language dates back to approximately 300 BC. As noted, the Japanese language was standardized to create a single universal national language in the late 19th century. At that time, the modern, simplified writing system and standard Japanese were encouraged throughout the country. This contributed to Japan’s industrialization and globalization. Japanese language and culture can be seen worldwide through literature, films, and anime.
The Japanese language continues to evolve and maintains its presence on the global stage across business and cultural sectors.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Japanese-language/Grammatical-structure-Communicating
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-most-common-website-languages-on-the-internet
