Japanese · 日本語
Expanded 14 verified age-safe resources . Full resource inventory. Level paths arrive when a Language Hacks book ships.
About Japanese
- Language family
- Japonic
- Where it's spoken
- Japan
- Speakers
- roughly 125 million speakers
Japanese belongs to the small Japonic family alongside the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa; it has no confirmed close relatives outside Japan, despite older theories linking it to Korean or the disputed 'Altaic' languages. Chinese contact from the 5th century onward gave Japanese its kanji characters and a large layer of borrowed vocabulary, which it combined with two native syllabaries, hiragana and katakana. It is written in a mix of all three systems in ordinary text.
| Resource | Type | Levels | Cost | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Pimsleur Japanese
Audio-first paid path — monetizes long-tail hubs.
|
course paid | A1-B1 | paid | 2026-07-22 |
|
JapanesePod101
Pod101-style lessons; lifetime-cookie affiliate program.
|
course paid | A1-C1 | freemium | 2026-07-22 |