Japonic
17 languages
Japonic is a language family of 17 languages; the most are spoken in Japan and Taiwan.
See it on the globeOpen in the family tree
Did you know
Japonic comprises Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages (Okinawan, Amami and others), which are not mutually intelligible with Japanese and are listed as endangered by UNESCO.
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan (Japanese: 日琉語族, romanized: Nichiryū gozoku) is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear.
Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean Peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC. Fragmentary evidence suggests that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean Peninsula (see Peninsular Japonic) in the early centuries AD.
Possible genetic relationships with many other language families have been proposed, most systematically with Koreanic, but no genetic relationship has been conclusively demonstrated.
From Wikipedia · Japonic languages · CC BY-SA 4.0