Comments on: The Mysterious Origins of the Japanese Language

By: Kochigachi

Kochigachi — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 11:14:00 +0000

I thought Korean language is akin to Evenki/Inuit language which was proven to be related. Japanese language may have got influenced from various sources say Polynesian, Ainu, and even Chinese and Korean beside, Japanese have more contacts with Korean than anyone thus naturally they share close cultural similarity. Middle Korean was also got influenced from Mongolian as Korea was once under Mongolian empire and even Manchu empire, language might have influenced. Considering horses are not native to Japan, the theory might be horse riders, but nomads don’t permanently settle in one place, so it’s rice farmers who claimed to be more stronger influence.

By: orioness

orioness — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:44:00 +0000

I forget to add, hungarian is such an odd language, either you speak it well or not at all. I speak it so I have infact picked up on the many curious roots archaic words, and so I think that people dont understanc hungarian much at all , least to make any ideological study effort or guess work. Again our language is inner north asian in origin and not related to any other aside from a few diminishing mongolian tribes todzy known as khanty and mansi both on verge of extinction. I suspect one day the connectiond will be more sustainable in comparison. Cheers again

By: orioness

orioness — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:36:00 +0000

In japanese , katana means sword, in hungarian katana means sword holder and soldier. Both languages are isolated almost entirely and share some interesting archaic word roots . Linguists should concentrate on these ancient words which usuallyhave their same usage up to date. Hungarian by the way originates from inner asia and has no dire ct european language properties aside from recent (800 ad) onward loan words.

By: o dalton

o dalton — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:32:00 +0000

I think there are some similarities of the Japanese Language with a certain African country called Botswana. The names and sounds of vowels do really sound similar, e,g Setsuko, Masako, Inamoto, etc.

By: Gregsnz

Gregsnz — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:13:00 +0000

Also a linguistics major who wrote papers on Japanese, I’d put it into the Altaic family along with Turkish, central Asian and Mongolic languages. It’s structurally similar. But like Korean, it branched off so long ago it’s pretty much unrecognizable. It seems to be only similar to Korean and not that similar. One of the old theories was that it was related to Finnish, which is pretty wild when you consider how far away Finland is. But yeah, I’m gonna say it’s Mongolic.

By: Tom K.

Tom K. — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Korea as an origin, or at least as a route to the Japanese archipelago seems reasonable. This is supported, perhaps, by the martriarchal nature of the Japanese creation myth, which seemingly coincides with the matriarchal culture extant on Cheju-do (Jeju Island) south of the Korean peninsula in the Korean Strait and in close proximity to Western Japan. The island would have been a convenient stepping-stone for a migrating people, not all of whom traveled on to Japan. A comparison of Japanese, Korean and Jeju linguistics would be interesting.