Much about the roots of the Japanese language is unclear. Some link it to the Altaic language family, which includes Turkish, Mongolian and other languages, but it also shows similarities to Austronesian languages like Polynesian.
Writing:
The Japanese writing system consists of three different character sets: Kanji (several thousands of Chinese characters) and Hiragana and Katakana (two syllabaries of 46 characters each; together called Kana). Japanese texts can be written in two ways: In Western style, i.e. in horizontal rows from the top to the bottom of the page,...