Nihon-go, the language of Japan, can be heard in such diverse locations as China, Southeast Asia, Mongolia, the Philippines, South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States. Nineteenth Century Western scholars proposed a number of theories that linked the Japanese language with Ural-Altaic, Korean, Chinese, Tibetan, Indo-European and other languages. Linguistically, Japanese is unrelated to Chinese and is similar to, but distinct from Korean.

The language has evolved over the centuries through four major periods:  Old Japanese (to the 8th century), Late Old Japanese (9th - 11th century), Middle Japanese (12th - 16th century), and Modern Japanese (from the 17th century). The syntax of the language has changed little in this time, but there have been considerable changes in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. The major dialects spoken in Japan are Manabi-shima, Sanuki, Kinki, Sogo, Nairin, Churin, Gairin, Oki, and Kagoshima.

Included among the dialects spoken throughout the Japanese islands is a group of Ryukyuan languages which are 62% to 70% related to the Tokyo dialect of Japanese. Still, inherent intelligibility is generally impossible or very difficult between the Ryukyu languages and Japanese. Japanese under the age of 20 speak mainly Japanese and do so more fluently than their elders. Those aged 20 to 50 understand their native dialect, but mainly speak standard Japanese at home and work. Those over 50 years old frequently speak their native dialect at home among themselves, but understand and use standard Japanese .

When the Catholic missionary Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in the 17th Century, he was confronted not only with a totally foreign language, but an amazingly complex language that seemed to change depending on the speakers. The formal language of the upper classes sounded totally different from the almost inscrutable conversations heard in the street.

The spoken language varied not only from prefecture to prefecture, but from village to village. Adding to his confusion, Japanese used four different methods of writing their own language! Little wonder that he referred to Japanese as "the Devil's Language." In truth, Nihon-go is a beautiful, delightful language. It is very pleasant to listen to, especially when spoken properly (not formally). Spoken slowly, it's almost musical, but not "sing-song" like Chinese.

The United States Foreign Service Institute classifies the languages it teaches into four groups based on the degree of difficulty for English-speaking students. They estimate that a student with average aptitude can reach the "advanced" level of proficiency in a Group I (the easiest group) language after 480 hours of Foreign Service Institute instruction. This compares with 720 hours of instruction to reach an "advanced" level of proficiency in Russian (Group III) and 1320 hours to reach the same level of proficiency in Japanese (Group IV).

There are four characteristics of the Japanese language that make it such a challenging language to learn for English-speaking students.

First, the Japanese vocabulary contains few words that resemble English words in either pronunciation or meaning.

Second, the Japanese language is deeply embedded in a culture that is unfamiliar to most English speakers. The two are so closely and fundamentally linked that unless you are familiar with the situation in which words are being used, they will make little sense to you. You have to actually experience the culture those words are connected to for them to be meaningful.

Third, the basic grammatical pattern of Japanese is so different from English that if you translate an English sentence word-by-word into Japanese, the result is not only incorrect, but incomprehensible.

Finally, the modern Japanese writing system is very cumbersome, and learning it demands significant time and effort even from native speakers of Japanese.