Japanese Facts

What you need to know about Japanese, including one inappropriate word.

• How many people speak Japanese?

  Japanese is the official language of Japan which has a population of more than 125 million. There are also about 2.5 million people of Japanese origin living abroad, in Brazil and the rest of the Americas, particularly the United States. Many of them speak Japanese as their first language. You'll also find a sizeable expatriate presence in major cities such as London, New York and Paris.

• What's difficult about Japanese?

  The most obvious challenge is learning the characters. There's no getting around them! But if you want to stick to spoken Japanese and just learn the Romanised script, then it's a lot easier than many other languages. There are no odd pronunciations or tones to have to remember and each syllable is given equal emphasis.

• What's easy about Japanese?

  Apart from the ease of pronunciation, words have no gender. Also, Japanese doesn't use articles as much as English does. And there's no way of showing whether a word is singular or plural, so a word like tomodachi can mean a friend, the friend, friends and so on. Sounds confusing but once you get the hang of it, it actually keeps things a lot simpler.

• Japanese tongue twister

  The Japanese are rather fond of playing tongue twister games and here's one for starters: Nama mugi, nama gome, nama tamagoRaw wheat, raw rice, raw egg. Although not the most difficult, it is perhaps one of the most famous. It is also ironically very difficult to say in English never mind Japanese!

• Does learning Japanese help with other languages?

  A knowledge of Japanese will help immensely if you intend to learn Korean as the two languages are grammatically very similar. Chinese in this respect is very different but, on the other hand, learning the Japanese characters would prepare you for the even bigger task of learning the Chinese ones.

• What not to say

  One of the most notorious ways that foreigners – and in particular Italians - embarrass themselves is when they first go to a Japanese bar and say the classic toast, cin cin! Unfortunately for them, chinchin in Japanese is how children refer to the male organ.

• Respect

  In the old days of feudal Japan, a samurai warrior would shout Mi no hodo o shire!, Know your place! at anyone who dared to show insufficient respect. And with that, a sword would be brought swiftly down upon the poor unfortunate's head. Well, you might not have to fear a sword any more but it would still be wise to always remember your place. Even if you don't have the language skills, a softening of the voice, a discreet awareness of the other person's personal space and undemonstrative body language go a long way showing respect.