Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, whose relation to other language groups, particularly to Korean and the suggested Altaic language family, is debated. Japanese has no genetic relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters in its writing system, and a large portion of its vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese.