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Multiple decent languages (was Yay!!!! I have

From:Mathias M. Lassailly <lassailly@...>
Date:Thursday, November 12, 1998, 22:18
Eric wrote :

> Um, what makes you think Japanese has significant contributions from > these languages? I am reasonably sure there must be at least some > vocabulary from Ainu, but what about the others? Malayo-Polynesian?? > Or was this your sick idea of a joke? :D > >
Sick joke ? You really are lucky my lawyer is so greedy I can't even get a free call ring to him. (but sometime I may remember I'm a lawyer myself so beware, young man). Back to Japanese and Indonesian I've run into many apparented words like haru - perut, te - tangan, me/manako (= me no ko) - mata, suki - suka, etc. I don't speak Korean, but I've got Korean friends in Japan who convincingly explain me that their grammar - not vocabulary, ok - is just as similar to Japanese as French is to Spanish as some non-sino vocabulary is too like the famous ie-yip example : J : yipe > ipe > ihe > iwe > ie K : yipe > yip (you can see from this example that Korean hardly *evolved* compared to Japanese ;-) Altaic rooting is self-illustrated by the grammatic pattern (no need to draw a picture ;-) and Japanese themselves are as proud of this hypothetical rooting as they are reluctant to concede some Korean mingling. The problem with the study of Japanese language until now is the Japanese themselves, and the extreme sensitivity foreign specialists have regarding their own ability in Japanese language but that's another story. Bizarrely, I did not find much Ainu vocabulary reminiscent to Japanese when I studied it, except for basic words like tek-te. But it's no surprise to pro-Ruhlen sick jokers like I am : IE 'dig-dic-deik' root may well be the sign that Indo-European roots from Ainu or Japanese (OK, I grant you this last one may be a joke everything being well considered). Now your post has convinced me that Ainu is definitely THE auxiliary language to propone and mix in priority into TUNU. Your cash welcome for that great enterprise. Your fellow conlanger Mathias ----- See the original message at http://www.egroups.com/list/conlang/?start=18315