Why learn Japanese? 7 reasons, with the facts behind them

Japanese is spoken by more than 125 million people, and more people are learning it abroad than ever before. Here are seven reasons to learn it, each checked against its source — and a simple way to start: check your level, then learn 16 words a day.

Updated November 7, 2026 · 4 min read

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Japanese in five facts

1. One of the world’s major languages

Britannica describes Japanese as one of the world’s major languages, with more than 125 million speakers in the early 2020s, including more than 3.5 million outside Japan (Britannica). It belongs to the Japonic family together with the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa and the southern islands — where it is spoken, and how its dialects differ, is in Where is Japanese spoken?

2. More learners than ever

The Japan Foundation’s 2024 survey counted 4,000,750 learners at 19,344 institutions with 80,898 teachers in 143 countries and regions — all the highest numbers it has recorded, and 206,036 more learners than in 2021. The largest groups were in China (1,019,197), Indonesia (732,914), Korea (555,396), Australia (424,316) and Thailand (194,366); learners in Myanmar quintupled (Japan Foundation).

3. A recognized exam to aim for

The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test reports about 1.9 million applicants worldwide in 2025, the largest number in its history; people take it for university admission, for jobs and to test themselves (JLPT). Its five levels are explained in JLPT levels N5 to N1. Our free Japanese level test gives you a first estimate from A1 to B2.

4. A language of the web

On the websites W3Techs can classify, Japanese is the content language of 4.9% — fourth after English (49.5%), Spanish and German (W3Techs). For a language spoken mainly in one country, that is a lot of reading material.

5. A writing system shared with Chinese

Japanese writes its content words in kanji, characters taken from Chinese, and slightly more than half of its vocabulary is Sino-Japanese — about as large a share as Latin-based words in English. Many of those words were coined in Japan and borrowed back into Chinese and Korean, such as shakai ‘society’ and kagaku ‘science’ (Britannica). If you learn Chinese as well, the two help each other — see Why learn Chinese? and A short history of Chinese.

6. A grammar without agreement

Japanese verbs and adjectives change for tense and politeness, but never for person, number or gender, and nouns have no plural ending (Britannica). The sound system has just five vowels (Britannica). The challenges are elsewhere — word order, particles, politeness and the three scripts — and our guides Japanese grammar basics and Japanese tenses explained take them one at a time.

7. Words you already know

Of Japan’s loanwords from other languages, slightly more than 80% now come from English, and older ones arrived with 16th-century Portuguese and Dutch traders: pan ‘bread’ from Portuguese pão, tenpura from Portuguese tempero, biiru ‘beer’ from Dutch bier (Britannica). The story of how they arrived is in A short history of Japanese.

How to start this week

1. Check your level with the level test.
2. Learn 16 words a day — about five minutes of active recall and spaced repetition, every day.
3. Learn hiragana first, then katakana; kanji come with the words, a few at a time.
4. Read the core grammar once: the basics, then tenses.
5. Listen every day and repeat short sentences aloud, keeping each mora the same length.

Keep learning

• A short history of Japanese — from the Kojiki to kana
• Where is Japanese spoken? — dialects and the Ryukyuan languages on a map
• Japanese grammar basics · Japanese tenses explained
• Learn Japanese with 16Word · Level tests in 36 languages · All guides · Plans