Japanese<\/strong>, generally understood to be one of the hardest languages to learn, is gaining increasing popularity. Becoming fluent in Japanese is no simple matter, not least because of the large number of written characters that must be mastered. There are more than 60,000 of these, most of which were borrowed from Chinese. In day-to-day communication the simplified syllabic alphabets, katakana<\/strong> and hiragana<\/strong>, are in general use.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>