in Serbo-Croatian. Indeed, if this is all the difference there is, it is not hard to believe that they can understand one another.
Hearing the term Indo-European comparative philology, most Japanese think of something terribly esoteric that a scholar studies up in his ivory tower, his face screwed up in a look of intense concentration. Although this notion is probably not true of Indo-European philology, which has its origins in very simple and common facts, it is, I think, a fair characterization of Japanese philology. When Western philology was introduced into Japan in the middle of the Meiji period, the lineage of the Japanese language became a subject of much discussion, and it was thought that failure to produce a conclusive answer would bring disgrace to Japanese scholarship. However, try as they would, Japanese philologists could not establish a clear-cut relationship between Japanese and any other language. It is now obvious that, unlike the European languages, Japanese cannot be easily linked with any family of languages, and it will only be after the continuous efforts of many scholars that the question of the origin of the Japanese language is answered, if it ever is. It is definitely not the type of problem that can be suddenly solved by the novel theory of some ambitious scholar. The Basque language mentioned above, the Caucasian language at the foot of the Caucasus, Burushaski in northwest India, the language spoken in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, Lati mentioned above, Ainu of Hokkaid
Role of isolation
What influence does the isolation of their language have on the Japanese people? On the plus side, it was thought during World War II that the enemy, owing to language difficulties, would be hindered in gathering intelligence. After the war, however, it was found that this was not the case at all. From the standpoint of national defense, isolation does not seem to have been of much help.
There are a great many entries on the minus side. The fact that Japanese differs greatly from the languages of highly civilized countries like England, Germany, and France has put Japan at a disadvantage in various ways. It is well known howdifficult it is for a Japanese to master the languages of these nations. Even though he studies English in high school eight hours each week for five years, he is barely able to read the labels on canned goods. Of course, foreigners who wish to learn Japanese and study Japanese culture are also confronted with tremendous obstacles. Some time ago there was a newspaper article about some foreign students from Southeast Asia who complained that although they had come all the way to Japan to study modern technology, they were frustrated by the difficulty of the Japanese language. Similarly, in the field of literature, it is a pity that the numerous outstanding Japanese works cannot be more widely appreciated by the people of other countries.
Recently, international conferences on physics and genetics were held in Japan. According to some Japanese scholars who attended, while they welcomed scholarly authorities from distant lands, as soon as technical discussions started, language immediately became such a barrier that they could not help feeling a little frustrated. Some years ago when the American film The Moon Is Blue was produced, separate sound recordings were made in German, French, and Italian while the film was still being made, so that the movie could be shown immediately in those countries. But the Japanese had to resort to subtitles, which marred the film’s visual effect.4
According to engineer Seki Hideo, a translation machine was devised sometime ago in the United States. When an English sentence such as “I love you” is typed into the machine, sentences like Ich liebe dich or Je t’aime come out. But a great deal of time and money will be needed to make a machine that can translate into Japanese, because Japanese sentence structure is entirely different from that of European languages.5
2Contact with Other Languages
Linguistic isolation
Another point we notice about Japanese when it is compared to other languages is that it has very little direct contact with them. In other words, the region where Japanese is spoken is completely different from the regions where other languages are spoken. To be more specific, very few Japanese people speak languages other than Japanese.
It is said that Queen Cleopatra of ancient Egypt used eight different languages to entertain state guests, and President Tito of Yugoslavia reportedly speaks seven languages. Japanese are struck with admiration when they hear such stories. In such small countries in Europe as Switzerland, it is very common to hear people speaking two or three different languages. Father W. A. Grotaas, a scholar in Eastern languages residing in Japan, says that during the annual national census in his homeland Belgium, there is an accompanying questionnaire asking what languages a person can speak. There are very few people in Japan who speak any language besides Japanese, perhaps one in ten or twenty thousand. This does not necessarily apply only to Japan. There must be exceedingly few people in the world who can speak Japanese in addition to other languages. They are chiefly those who live in Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and Hawaii. In Japan, a person like Hattori Shir
In brief, Japanese occupies a clearly defined linguistic region, and within that sphere functions in good order—a characteristic that should not be overlooked.
“Degeneration” of the language
Since Japanese functions with hardly any contact with other languages, one would expect it to possess special characteristics. Theoretically, one would suppose Japanese to receive little influence from and assert little influence on other languages. At present, many so-called intellectuals and cultured people take every opportunity to complain that Japanese has degenerated. They worry as if the Japanese people would perish unless urgent measures were taken. But their fears are, as they were from the start, quite unnecessary, for Japanese is not so easily influenced. Actually, a careful look reveals more instances of firmness than frailty.
For example, the word “Christmas” was introduced from English. The Japanese write it kurisumasu in katakana and use it that way. There are people who say that kurisumasu is a foreign word, but those very people pronounce it ku-ri-su-ma-su, inserting three u’s which are not in the English word at all. Far from speaking English, they are pronouncing a word changed to conform to Japanese standards of pronunciation. The power of assimilation exhibited here is astonishing. Linguist Shibata Takeshi hopes that Japanese will eventually change its sound system under the increased influence of Western words,1 but his expectation seems unlikely to be realized.
According to American linguist Mario Pei, the natives of Hawaii cannot pronounce the sound s or the consonants by themselves without attaching vowels to them. So when they want to say, “Christmas in December,” they say kekemapa kalikimaka.2 It is surprising to learn that kekemapa is an imitation of “December,” and kalikimaka of “Christmas.” However, an American would likely find little difference between the Japanese kurisumasu with three u’s and the Hawaiian kalikimaka.
Before the war, when there were a great many Japanese in Manchuria, it is said that when a wife of a Japanese offcial wanted to buy some vegetables from a Chinese grocer, she would say something like the following:
Nde tfu to iiyande shsh katai katai, meiy? Don’t you have the thing that looks like tfu (bean-curd) but is a little harder? (She is asking for konnyaku, a starchy, jelly food.
