Scholarly discussions about the origin of Japonic languages present an unresolved set of related issues.

(See Classification of Japonic languages for further details on a possible relationship.)

The classification of the Japonic languages (Japanese and Ryukyuan) is unclear.

Yonaguni language also exhibits intervocalic voicing of plosives, as do many Japonic languages.

Japonic languages '

Japanese is a member of the Japonic languages family, which also includes the languages spoken throughout the Ryūkyū Islands.

It is part of the Amami-Okinawan languages, which are part of the Japonic languages.

The family is widely accepted by linguists, and the term "Japonic languages" was coined by Leon Serafim.

The Okinawan language, the most widely spoken Ryukyuan language, is related to Japanese, the two being in the Japonic languages.

Various versions included the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages.

All these languages belong to the Ryūkyūan languages group, which in turn belong to the Japonic languages group.

A 2011 study by Sean Lee and Toshikazu Hasegawa reported that a common origin of Japonic languages had originated around 2,182 years before present.

Inconclusive attempts have also been made to link the family with the Japonic languages and with the extinct Elamite language (by Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis).

Independent of the question of a Japonic-Korean connection, both the Japonic languages and Korean were often included in the largely discredited Altaic family.

Conservative historical linguists tend to classify the Korean language as a language isolate, although other suggest a relationship to Altaic languages or to Japonic languages.

However, the Koguryo (Goguryeo) languages themselves came from further north; they may have been ancestral to Korean and replaced Japonic languages in southern Korea.

It belongs to the Northern Asian linguistic area including the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean and Japonic languages.

There remain six Ryukyuan languages which are incomprehensible to Japanese speakers, although they are considered to make up the family of Japonic languages along with Japanese.

Ryukyuan languages are a group of languages in the Japonic languages, spoken in the Ryūkyū Islands, South of Japan.

These are the Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages (including Manchu), Korean, and Japonic languages.

Born in Kameyama, Mie, Hattori was a linguistics expert, a specialist in early Japanese and Japonic languages and a professor at the University of Tokyo.

Miyako is notable among the Japonic languages in that it allows non-nasal syllable-final consonants, something not found in most Japonic languages.

Being a linguist himself, he worked as an informant of the Shodon dialect, which is part of the Southern Amami Ōshima dialect group of the Japonic languages.

Unger (1990) advocates a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic languages but not Turkic or Mongolic; and Doerfer (1988) rejects all the genetic claims over these major groups.

While in many Japonic languages this special inflection is often identical to the verbal inflection in relative clauses, in Yuwan Amami is different (the relative inflection is -n/-tan).