Japanese

Japanese is the principal language of the Japonic family, whose other living branch is Ryukyuan. Proto-Japonic was carried to the islands by Yayoi settlers from the Korean peninsula around the fourth century BC, displacing the languages of the older Jōmon foragers.

Writing arrived from Baekje with Buddhism in the early fifth century; the early eighth-century Kojiki recorded Old Japanese through man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their sound. During the Heian period, from 794, Chinese loanwords reshaped its vocabulary and phonology, while scribes simplified cursive characters into hiragana and derived katakana from character fragments.

Late Middle Japanese, between 1185 and 1600, absorbed Portuguese words such as pan and tabako, and Jesuit missionaries described it in grammars such as the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam. From the early seventeenth century the prestige dialect shifted from Kansai toward Edo, seat of the Tokugawa shoguns.