by Achae

There are over 126 million Japanese speakers, with more than 98% residing in Japan. Due to Western culture's near obsession with Japanese culture, there has been a surge of interest in the Japanese language. If you recall the history of the English language, it began with a root system. It is the same with Japanese. Japanese can be traced back to the historic languages of Koguryo, Paekche, and Puyo. It is thought these languages originated in the Transcaspian steppe. The people migrated sometime before 2,000 B.C., spreading to Turkey in the west and Japan in the east. This is only a theory, as it has flaws with some of the major features of the Japanese language. Some scholars believe that it has origins genetically with the South Pacific and Austronesian speakers. The Japanese follow a mix of these two theories which accepts the Transcapian steppe origination but thinks there was a heavy influence from the Austronesian languages.

Where ever Japanese originated, many of the Asiatic languages branched. This gives Turkish, Mongolian, and Korean languages a birth. Korean is noted to be most similar to Japanese due to the sentence structure, vowel harmony, and dependence on hierarchy of the receiver. Yet there are differences. Pronunciation and word structure differs. For example, one may note from the English language the similarity with German when looking at the word beer. In German, it is Bier. For the Japanese, it is Bīru, but in Korean, it is maekju.

There arises the question, "Where did the Japanese people come from?" Proto-Japanese people are thought to have lived from at least the 3^rd century A.D, but Chinese records show a unification of Japanese communities from several hundred years B.C. The Chinese culture and language pervaded Japan during the 6^th century A.D. This established the method of writing. Prior to this, Japanese was an oral only language. With the addition of writing, The Kojiki and Chronicles of Japan were written. These are Japan's first books and were transcribed in Chinese characters. The Chinese influence is still seen in the language today. Over 40 percent of the Japanese vocabulary has Chinese roots.