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| [[Image:Chingodo_Lanterns.JPG|thumb|240px|Japanese writing on a temple lantern, [[Tokyo/Asakusa|Asakusa]], [[Tokyo]]]]
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| '''Japanese''' (日本語 ''nihongo'') is spoken in [[Japan]], and essentially nowhere else other than [[South Korea]] and [[China]], where some use it as a second language. The language is strongly influenced by [[Chinese phrasebook|Chinese]] though the two are unrelated; Japanese may be distantly related to [[Korean phrasebook|Korean]], although the written form uses a combination of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji characters which were all derived from Chinese characters.
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| ==Pronunciation guide==
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| Japanese is not a tonal language like Chinese or Thai, and is comparatively easy to pronounce. The vowels are pronounced virtually identical to the "Italian way" and there are very few consonants that do not exist in English. All syllables are to be pronounced equal in length. Long vowels take the length of two syllables. Combinations like ''kya'' are treated like one syllable and are the only occurrence of sliding vowels, all other syllables are to be pronounced rather separately.
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