Nate Blaylock
Linguistics 450
Dr. Hallen

Within the field of Historical Linguistics, perhaps one of the most debated topics is the origin of the Japanese language and its relationship to other languages. Unlike Indo-European languages, which have a rich history of written material from which scholars can take data, Japanese has a relatively short history of written records. This makes the history of the Japanese language something that is not easy to divine. This paper briefly outlines the current accepted theory of the language: its roots, its inner transition, and its contacts with other languages.

Japanese is currently thought to be a part of the Altaic family of languages, descending from the hypothesized Proto-Altaic language spoken by tribes in early Central Asia. These tribes originally lived in the Transcaspian steppe, near the Caspian Sea, between about the seventh and second millennia BC.

Altaic also seems to be similar to Uralic, the language family of such languages as Finnish and Hungarian. It is unclear whether Uralic and Altaic are descended from a common source or whether they mutually borrowed during this period, however (Miller 1980) suggests the latter.

According to (Miller 1980), the Altaic tribes remained in the steppe until about 2000 BC, when the Indo-European tribes began to migrate. This migration caused the Altaic tribes to flee to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, from which they derive their name. It was about this time that Proto-Altaic began to split into three daughter language families: Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic (presently located in far eastern Russia).

This divergence of Altaic was magnified in the third century BC. At this time, the Huns began moving, causing the infamous shifting of tribes throughout Eurasia. The Altaic tribes were also not immune to this shake-up, and were scattered: the Turkic speakers to the west, the Mongolian speakers to the east, and the Tungusic speakers to the northeast. This scattering solidified the gradual linguistic changes which had already been occurring for some time. It is not agreed at which point exactly Japanese diverged from the stem of Altaic

Presumably, a group of Altaic speakers migrated down through the Korean Peninsula and eventually onto the Japanese Archipelago. There they met with Austronesian speakers. Loveday (1996) explains that, although links have been found between Austronesian and Japanese, it is unclear if the Altaic/Japanese simply borrowed from Austronesian, or if Japanese is actually derived from a creole of the two (3). Whichever is the case, Japanese, as a distinct language, emerged around 300 BC.

The earliest remaining Japanese texts date back to the eight century AD. The Japanese of this period is known as Old Japanese. A distinguishing feature of Old Japanese was that it had eight vowels and did not distinguish between long and short vowels.

The beginning of the militant Kamakura period (1192) marks the beginning of Middle Japanese. In Middle Japanese, the eight vowels of Old Japanese had condensed into just six. Middle Japanese persisted through the Ashikaga Shogunate.

In 1590, Hideyoshi reunited Japan, marking the shift to New or Modern Japanese. New Japanese is characterized by only five vowels and a distinction between long and short vowels. This is the Japanese spoken today.

Since its onset, Japanese has come into contact with, and been influenced by many different languages. This section outlines the major contacts and their influences.

The Ainu are a white race, indigenous to Japan. As the Altaic and Austronesian speakers began to settle in southern Japan, they began to push the Ainu to the north. Now there are only a sparse amount of Ainu, mostly located on the northernmost islands of Japan. (Loveday 1996) points out that, like most subordinate languages, Ainu has contributed only a handful of words, mostly place names, to its superstrate language, Japanese (44).

Perhaps the most significant borrowing in Japanese has been done from Chinese. In the third or fourth century AD, Japan adopted the Chinese writing system. As a result of this adoption and many contacts during the ensuing centuries, the Japanese borrowed a great deal of Chinese words and morphemes into their vocabulary.

In 1545, Portugal began trading with Japan. This was Japan's first contact with the West, and they adopted many words, especially for novel Western items and Christianity. However, in the 17th century, Japan outlawed Christianity, which wiped out the Christian vocabulary.

Holland began trading with the Japanese in the 1600s. This was also the time of the scientific revolution, and Japanese imported many scientific words from the Dutch.

In the post-World War II period, Japan has borrowed heavily from English. This was due, first of all, to the American occupation, and then later because of the global influence of American culture. (Loveday 1996) gives an insight into the staggering extent of this borrowing: "Between 1955 and 1972, the proportion of English loans increased by a third" (77). English is commonly used in everything from music lyrics to advertisements.

The Japanese language has a rich heritage and has been influenced by many different languages. Its roots lie in the Altaic language family. It was then combined with Austronesian, and then borrowed heavily from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, to name a few.

Anglin, J. and Hamblin, W. 1993. World History to 1648. HarperCollins: New York.

Loveday, L. 1996. Language Contact in Japan: A Socio-linguistic History. Clarendon:

Oxford.

Miller, R. 1980. Origins of the Japanese Language. University of Washington: Seattle.

Park, W. 1987. Western Loan-Words in Japanese. Magazine AB: Stockholm.