日本語 – Japanese in Japanese and other names of languages in Japanese

The first step to learning Japanese or planning a trip to Japan? It’s knowing how to say Japanese in Japanese: 日本語にほんご (にほんご, nihongo).

Great! so now you know how to say Japanese in Japanese. But, if you are excited to continue our journey into the Japanese language then, let’s take a closer look and see what we can discover!

What does 日本語 mean?

In Japanese, the word for Japanese, that is the Japanese language, is 日本語 as we already know. Want to learn more about 日本語? Let’s break it down into its components: 日本にほん and 語ご. This will help us understand it’s meaning even more.

• 日本 – Japan
• 語 – word, language

So, 日本 is the name of the country where Japanese is spoken, obviously. 語 on the other hand requires some more explanation. By adding the suffix 語 to a country’s name, or a group of people you can say that country’s or peoples language in Japanese.

https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/

How to say different languages in Japanese?

So, as we know Japanese is 日本語. Now, if we want to say another country’s or peoples language we would just stick 語 to the end of it. But, as we know not all countries have one language, and not all languages have one country. So, here is a list of some names of languages in Japanese as reference.

• 中国語ちゅうごくご – Mandarin Chinese
• スペイン語 – Spanish
• 英語えいご – English
• ヒンディー語 – Hindi 
• ベンガル語 – Bengali
• ポルトガル語 – Portuguese
• ロシア語 – Russian
• ベトナム語 – Vietnamese
• トルコ語 – Turkish
• 韓国語 – Korean
• フランス語 – French
• ドイツ語 – German
• イタリア語 – Italian

References

• 日本語 (weblio)