@prometheanbound Among living languages, modern Japanese is actually very close (if not the closest) to modern Chinese. Although Chinese and Japanese origniated from different language families, Japan developed its culture much later than China, therefore coming under the strong influence of Chinese culture (a good analogy would be the relationship between Ireland and Rome). In fact, Japan used the Chinese script along with certain alteration of the script as their own writing language, and they still do, so even a Chinese person with no knowledge of any Japanese language can read some of it even today. To give a demonstrating example, Japanese still write the name of their country ----"日本"---- in Chinese characters.