There are many theories about the origin of the Japanese language. Many scholars believe that, syntactically, Japanese is close to Altaic languages ??such as Turkish and Mongolian. The syntactic similarity of Japanese to Korean is widely recognized. There is also evidence that Japanese morphology and vocabulary were influenced prehistorically by Malayo-Polysian languages ??to the south.
Although the Japanese and Chinese speak completely different languages, the Japanese writing system comes from Chinese. When Chinese writing was introduced to Japan sometime in the fifth or sixth century, Japan supplemented the Chinese writing style with two phonetic writing styles, Hiragana and Katakana, which were changed from Chinese characters.
There are still many local dialects in Japan. Under the influence of mass media such as radio, television, and movies, Standard Japanese based on Tokyo dialect has gradually spread throughout the country, but in particular, the dialects spoken by people in Kyoto and Osaka continue to thrive and retain their prestige.