49 replies to this topic

[skanner]

Just in case in case anyone's interested, sacred-texts.com has some translations of Aino folktales and what appears to be an epic poem of some sort.

[mumbaki]

I have to agree with the last poster. There's simply not enough conclusive evidence to link Japanese to Korean, and these two to the Altaic family since we're at it.
There's quite a bit of similarities in grammar and even some vocabulary, but the question remains whether they are genetically inherent or something they borrowed from each other which is possible do to proximity (the same can be said for the altaic family too). Dutch, German, English, etc may no longer be comprehensible, but there's very strong indicators of a common language, and are very very closely related.

My own personal opinion is that there probably is a relation, however any split would've happened very very long ago, beyond the split among Indo-European languages. Its often hypothesized that many European languages split around 2000 years ago. Its also hypothesized that Ryukyuan and Japanese split around the same time (and these two still show strong similarities to each other despite mutual incomprehensibility), thus any split between Japanese family and Korean.. would have occurred even further. However this is all theoretical talk and we should judge things based on existing evidence and the facts are, there's not enough evidence, just possibilities.

Well,the ainu assimilation situation is fairly recent

Other languages in the japonic family other than ryukyuan and mainland japanese got extinct is because of the policy that favored the direct ancestor of the japanese language(the language that turned *p>h except before /u/),the ancestor of modern japanese and identical to some dialects of modern japanese,the yotsugana ones(except for dissapearance of certain phonemes),this was already documented by diego collado that some dialects in japan retain the f like sound(other than before /u/) i think those described dialects might be separate languages,the dialects in kyushu have similarities with ryukyuan languages is because the language that was once spoken in those areas were closely related to ryukyan languages and so they left a substratum.

Edited by -遙-, 07 April 2009 - 12:24 PM.

[f0ma]

Hans Bielenstein references the Ainu in his 2005 book: 'Diplomacy and Trade in the Chinese World'. When the Ainu visited the Tang court in 659 with a Japanese embassy, Bielenstein writes: 'The Ainu envoys had four-feet long beards. Being superb archers, they could unfailingly hit a gourd on the head of a man standing several ten paces away'. Flitting between different sources, I'm slightly confused as to whether the ancient Ainu were synonymous with the Emishi or not. For example, The Cambridge History of Japan states that Emperor Gaozong quizzed the Japanese embassy on their recent conquests of the Ainu and cites the Nihonshoki. But, when examining the Nihonshoki, Gaozong is said to inquire after the Emishi instead. The annotations provided in my translation also differentiate clearly between the Emishi and the Ainu, going as far as to say that the latter were not mentioned at all. Are modern scholars just lumping the two together, or were they one and the same? Is Bielenstein describing an Ainu or an Emishi - or both?

Edited by f0ma, 04 August 2012 - 07:07 AM.

[Karakhan]

Hans Bielenstein references the Ainu in his 2005 book: 'Diplomacy and Trade in the Chinese World'. When the Ainu visited the Tang court in 659 with a Japanese embassy, Bielenstein writes: 'The Ainu envoys had four-feet long beards. Being superb archers, they could unfailingly hit a gourd on the head of a man standing several ten paces away'. Flitting between different sources, I'm slightly confused as to whether the ancient Ainu were synonymous with the Emishi or not. For example, The Cambridge History of Japan states that Emperor Gaozong quizzed the Japanese embassy on their recent conquests of the Ainu and cites the Nihonshoki. But, when examining the Nihonshoki, Gaozong is said to inquire after the Emishi instead. The annotations provided in my translation also differentiate clearly between the Emishi and the Ainu, going as far as to say that the latter were not mentioned at all. Are modern scholars just lumping the two together, or were they one and the same? Is Bielenstein describing an Ainu or an Emishi - or both?

I always thought the Emishi generally lived south of the Ainu and they were different but related peoples

[f0ma]

Ah, I found some clarification. According to Wikipedia: 'the Hokkaidō Emishi, known by contemporaries as Watarishima Emishi, or "Emishi who crossed to the island", eventually became known as the Ezo, and later in the modern period the Ainu.' Unfortunately, it doesn't list a source for this. Though, this is the same article that says Tang Taizong was alive in 659...

Edited by f0ma, 05 August 2012 - 06:45 AM.