This study will explore the selected phonological, typological, orthographic, morphological, and syntactic characteristics of the "isolated" language, Japanese, and will analyze how these characteristics differ from English, itself an Indo-European language, with specific emphasis placed on how accessible Japanese speakers would find learning English as a second language and vice versa. The Japanese language is spoken by almost all of the East Asian nation of Japan, comprising up to 128 people. millions of speakers. Shibatani (2009:557) states that Japanese is a language isolate, a label that has been strongly contested by linguists, consisting of a wide range of often mutually unintelligible dialects. Japanese, at least in the literary sense, became evident as early as the 8th century with a number of character borrowings from Chinese evident, up to 60% of contemporary Japanese vocabulary being borrowed from Chinese and a further 10% from English (Shibatani 2009: 557). Shibatani's insistence that Japanese is a language isolate is consistent with many linguists, however the debate has raged over the centuries with many languages ​​seen as somehow related to Japanese. A fairly recent theory suggests that the Ryukyuan languages, previously seen as simple dialects of Japanese, may be sister languages, as part of a Japanese language family (Tranter 2012:3) (Shimoji & Pellard 2010:1). Shimoji and Pellard (2010:4) argue that the Ryukyuan languages ​​share several phonological phenomena with Japanese, including "CV(C) structure, moraic rhythm, and tonal accent". The debate over whether or not the Ryukyuan languages ​​are simply dialects is acknowledged by Shimoji and Pellard (2010), however they state that it was purely a socio-political issue... middle of paper... ew Haven: Yale University Press.Okada, H. (1991). Japanese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 21(2), p94-96.Robeets, M.I. (2005) Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolian and Turkish? Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag.Shibatani, M. (1990) The Languages ​​of Japan, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressShibatani, M. (2009) Japanese. In: (eds) Brown, K and (eds) Oqilvy, S. Concise Encyclopaedia of Languages ​​of the World, Oxford, Elselvier. P557-560Shimoji. M & Pellard, T. (2010.) An introduction to the Ryukuyan languages. Soga, M. (1983). Tense and aspect in modern colloquial Japanese, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press.Tranter, N (2012). The languages ​​of Japan and Korea. New York: Routledge.Whitman, J. (2012). The relationship between Japanese and Korean. In: Tranter, N The languages ​​of Japan and Korea. New York: Routledge. P24-39.