Japanese, or “nihongo”, is the official language of Japan. It has been spoken for between 2,000 and 3,000 years.

The language uses three writing systems: kanji (characters borrowed from the Chinese) and two syllabic phonetic scripts, hiragana and katakana, both native to Japan. Today, Japanese also uses the Roman alphabet (rōmaji) for certain purposes, such as acronyms and brand names. 

One of the hallmarks of Japanese is its system of honorific expressions, called “keigo”, which changes according to how the speaker perceives his or her relationship with the listener. This system reflects Japanese values of respect and hierarchy.

Today, young Japanese tend to transcribe (*) in “hiragana” to better understand the characters.

Note:

(*) Hiragana is one of the three writing systems used in the Japanese language, along with katakana and kanji. It is a syllabic alphabet, meaning that each character represents a syllable rather than a single letter or sound. Hiragana is mainly used to write words of Japanese origin, grammatical particles, verb conjugations and words for which kanji are little used or difficult to understand. It is also widely used in children's books or for learners of Japanese, as it is simpler than kanji, which are characters of Chinese origin.