Japanese language

===Prehistory===
[[Proto-Japonic]], the common ancestor of the Japanese and [[Ryukyuan languages]], is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the [[Yayoi period]]), replacing the languages of the original [[Jōmon people|Jōmon]] inhabitants,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Wade |first=Nicholas |date=4 May 2011 |title=Finding on Dialects Casts New Light on the Origins of the Japanese People |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04language.html |url-status=dead |url-access=subscription |access-date=7 May 2011 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220103/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04language.html |archive-date=2022-01-03}}{{cbignore}}</ref> including the ancestor of the modern [[Ainu language]]. Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from [[Old Japanese]], or [[Comparative method|comparison]] with the Ryukyuan languages and [[Japanese dialects]].{{sfn | Frellesvig | Whitman | 2008 |p = [https://books.google.com/books?id=aun8BRHTDEAC&pg=PA1 1]}}