🇯🇵 What Language Do They Speak in Japan?
The short answer
Japan speaks Japanese — spoken by essentially the entire population of 124 million, making Japan one of the most linguistically uniform large countries in the world. The Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa and Ainu in Hokkaido are the notable indigenous exceptions.
Worth knowing
- ●Japanese uses three scripts at once: hiragana, katakana and kanji
- ●The Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa are related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Japanese
- ●Despite myths, Japanese pronunciation is one of the easier parts — just five vowel sounds
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