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The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called yamato kotoba (大和言葉 or infrequently 大和詞, i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as wago (和語 ...
Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan, where it is spoken by about 126 million people. The oldest attestation is Old Japanese, which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuries. [13] It differed from Modern Japanese in having a simple (C)V syllable structure and avoiding vowel sequences. [14]
There is also a notable history of use of Kanbun (Classical Chinese) as a language of literature and diplomacy in Japan, similar to the status of the Latin language in medieval Europe, which has left an indelible mark on the vocabulary of the Japanese language. Kanbun is a mandatory subject in the curricula of most Japanese secondary schools.
Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period , but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Japan has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP among advanced economies, [173] with a national debt estimated at 248% relative to GDP as of 2022. [174] The Japanese yen is the world's third-largest reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro. [175] Japan was the world's fifth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer in 2022.
Nationalist politics in Japan sometimes exacerbated these tensions, such as denial of the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes, [291] revisionist history textbooks, and visits by some Japanese politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japanese soldiers who died in wars from 1868 to 1954, but also has included convicted war criminals ...
Genbun itchi (Japanese: 言文一致, literally meaning "unification of the spoken and written language") was a successful nineteenth and early-twentieth century movement in Japan to replace classical Japanese, the written standard of the Japanese language, and classical Chinese with vernacular Japanese.
The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on Portuguese orthography.It was developed c. 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Anjirō. [2] [citation needed] Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography.