What are the origins of the Japanese language?

The closest language to Japanese is Korean. There are definite commonalities in the arrangement of the subject, direct object, and predicate. However, there is no determining evidence that they belong to the same linguistic family.
There are many theories about the origins of the Japanese language: one of the Ural-Altaic languages; one of the southern, Malayo-Polynesian languages; a relative to the Indo-Tibetan languages; or one of the Tamil languages.

While its origins remain uncertain, the Japanese language has incorporated many Chinese words. The hiragana and katakana syllabaries were created based on the Chinese readings for the characters, resulting in a language that incorporated both Chinese characters and kana syllabaries.