Japanese is spoken by 126 million people mainly in Japan but also in 27 other countries including American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Germany, Guam, Indonesia, Micronesia, Nepal, Mongolia, New Zealand, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines and Taiwan.
    Japanese has no known linguistic relatives though is possibly distantly related to the Altaic family of languages, which includes Korean, and Mongolian languages. Japanese is not related to Chinese, though it does contain a huge number of Chinese 'loan' words, in fact perhaps 50% of the words used in Japanese are of Chinese origin. Japanese isn't a tonal language as Chinese. Since the mid 18th century when the Japanese began to experience heavy Western influence, they have adopted a huge number of gairaigo: foreign words, most of them from English. Some typical Examples: tēburu (table), bīru (beer), gurasu (glass), aisu (ice), takushī (taxi) and hoteru (hotel). There are also a few words from Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, such as pan  (bread), from the Portuguese pão. These words arrived in Japan mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries, when European explorers first started to arrive in Japan.
    One notable feature of Japanese is the tendency to create new words by shortening and/or combining English words. Examples include wāpuro (word processor), sarariman ("salary man" = a male corporate employee), OL, pronounced ōeru ("office lady" = a female corporate employee) and masukomi (mass communications).
    Another interesting feature of Japanese is the distinction between male and female speech. This involves vocabulary, grammar and particularly pitch - women tend to speak in very high voices, at least in public, while men prefer low, gruff voices. If a foreign man learns Japanese from his Japanese girlfriend the results can sound very funny to Japanese ears!