Japanese language (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

Japanese (ダイワゴ Daiwago, [daiwaɡo]) is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers. Japanese is the national language of Japan and one of official languages in Manchuria, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Kwantung. It is also spoken by the Japanese diaspora in many countries including China, Brazil, Peru, the United States, Korea, and the Soviet Union. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to other language groups, particularly to Korean and the suggested Altaic language family, is debated.

Phonology
Japanese has five vowels, all of which are monophthongs, there are no diphthongs. Vowel length is phonemic, and each can be short or long. Long vowels can be denoted in Roman script with a line called a macron over the vowel.

The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus /j/. This type of cluster only occurs in onsets. Consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.

Grammar
Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch accent. Sentence structure is topic–comment and word order is normally subject–object–verb. According to the standard that authorized by the National Language Research Institute in 1934, Japanese has ten basic parts of speech:


 * Dōshi (ドウシ), verbs


 * Keiyōshi (ケイヨウシ), i-type adjectives.


 * Keiyōdōshi (ケイヨウドウシ), na-type adjectives


 * Meishi (メイシ), nouns

Daimeishi (ダイメイシ), pronouns

Fukushi (フクシ), adverbs


 * Setsuzokushi (セツゾクシ), conjunctions

Kandōshi (カンドウシ), interjections


 * Rentaishi (レンタイシ), prenominals

Joshi (ジョシ), particles/propositions

Particles mark the grammatical function of words, and sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or to make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles (such as English a or the). Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of speaker, listener, and persons mentioned.