- Jul 14, 2023

Is Japanese the Most Unique Language?

Updated: Aug 30, 2023

The Japanese Language: Where did it come from and why does it baffle so many people?

Japanese is a language that is seemingly unrelated to any other language family that exists today. It is classified as a member of the Japonic Language family along with Hachijo but there are only a handful of other languages that are very closely related: The Ryukyuan Languages: Amami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni)

So how did the Japanese language develop? Was it Aliens? Did Hungarian Jews migrate into the area to only leave behind traces of their language and esoteric bell rituals? [There are theories that claim Yayoi Dotaku bells are tied to Jewish rituals just as there are some scholars who propose there is a relation between Japanese and Hungarian (magyar nyelv). These both have very little support and are not taken seriously in contemporary academia.]

There are many theories as to where Japanese originated, here is just of them:

The Japan - Korea Connection: The relationship between the Japanese Archipelago and the Korean peninsula goes back as long as there have been people and boats in those areas. There was intense migration and trade between the peninsula and the islands of Japan throughout history and stretching far back into prehistory. The connection between Japanese and Korean is not with the Korean of today. It would have been with Old Korean, particularly those spoken in the southern parts of the peninsula.

Map showing the relation between Japan and Korea — Trade routes between the Korean Peninsula and Japanese archipelago

The Korean Peninsula used to be divided into several kingdoms and nations. The Southern part of Korea is commonly separated into Silla and Baekje but there was also a confederacy of city-states known as Gaya. The idea is that the Japanese language developed out of the languages of these southern city-states of Gaya. Today the languages of the south are no longer known because of conquest and language reform brought about by Silla Conquest. This extinguished the local languages of the south and the language of Silla became what we know today as old Korean.

The question of where the Japanese language comes from is one that can be answered in one very simple yet very unsatisfactory way.

IT COMES FROM JAPAN.

The language that we know as Japanese today developed in the Japanese archipelago and soon spread to become more uniform as the power of the central government grew and stricter control over the written and spoken language grew.

When we think about the natural development of language, the hard distinctions between languages based on nation-state borders are something that is new in the history of human language. In the past, the borders between regions blurred the lines between languages, and there existed a multitude of languages between languages. Over time languages shift, change and evolve to better suit the needs of the people who use them.

Japanese developed alongside the languages around it. It can be thought of as the Japanese language because the Japanese of today is not the universal spoken language of the past throughout the Japanese archipelago.
The Japanese language was influenced by contact with other people. This is how languages develop. From the West we have the influences from the people of the Southern Korean peninsula and to the south, they have the Influences from the Ryukyu islands.
Written Chinese also plays a heavy role in the development of the Japanese language, because of it's cultural and economic dominance of East Asia.

There can be assumed Five factors that contributed to the development of the Japanese language:

Pre-Yayoi (Older tongues that came in during the Jomon period and earlier that may have persisted in the dialects of the north such as the Ainu. )
Old Gayan-Korean
Old Ryukyu
Chinese
Modernization by Japan the Nation-State

Japanese is considered a unique language in the modern world. This is not because of its complex writing system or its love of conjugation but because it has no strong connection to the languages around it. The Japanese Language makes up a language family almost completely by itself.

The ways that language development is in a continuum. Throughout history, there are no strong lines between the two language areas. Even in today’s modern nation-states where territories work to maintain clear distinctions between languages, there are blurs between the two anywhere populations who speak different languages mix.

In a place like North America where the dominant languages of English, Spanish and French did not develop, there are mixes of the languages in places where they merge, creating Spanglish and (English+French? Freglish?) In areas where the languages have developed, one will observe several languages that are related, that all grew around each other and are influenced by one another.

In Europe you have many examples just within the Nordic Countries: Northern Germanic (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese and Norn, Icelandic and Greenlandic Norse, Gutnish and Dalecarlian) This doesn't take into account the 9 Sami languages in the north that border and overlap Scandinavia near the arctic. Every region of the world that has not had the native languages displaced has this relationship between itself and the languages that surround and interact with it. Japan is no different in this respect, so why does it not have any extant linguistic relatives? Let's look at how Japanese came together as we try to address this question.

The Pre-Yayoi

The first people to come to the Japanese islands are thought to have come from the north through Hokkaido into Northern Honshu. There is evidence of the people crossing over from the Amur river region into what is today Hokkaido Prefecture coming south to into Honshu. Here there is the oldest known evidence for Jomon Pottery and the proper beginnings of the Jomon period.

These people coming from the Amur River Valley brought with them their language and culture. This is thought to have laid down the foundation of language in the Japanese islands, although the earliest language is likely to have had very little impact on the Japanese spoken today. Today the “Jomon language” is believed to be the direct ancestor of the Ainu dialects of Hokkaido and further north towards the Russian Border.

The Gayan-Baekje-Silla Connection

The next large population to move into the Japanese islands is thought to have come from the Korean peninsula. The popular narrative is that there was a population movement into the archipelago resulting from Chinese aggression. Through migration, population displacement, and intense sustained relationships between Baekje, Silla, and the Gaya Confederacy with the Japanese archipelago a shared linguistic community emerged. The commonly held understanding is that the mixing of new populations coming into the islands with the “Jomon '' populations already living there, became the modern Japanese genetic pool. This also gives rise to the idea that the language of the people moving into the islands would have brought their language along with Rice agriculture and advanced metalworking technology. Unfortunately, Old Korean is an underdeveloped area of research and the languages of the south were replaced by the unifying Silla language of the North.

Ryukyu Islands

The Japanese Archipelago continues south into the Ryukyu islands and the relationship between these islands has been continuous and intense since the people of these islands. The relationship between the Ryukyu languages today demonstrates similarities that suggest a common heritage or at least traits developed from each other through close contact. This is the most demonstrable connection between Japanese and another living language.

Chinese

The Chinese language has had a considerable impact on Japanese in terms of written scripts and vocabulary. Where Chinese has failed to make an impact is on the actual structure and makeup of the language. The linguistic impact on Japanese is similar to the impact that Latin has had on English. (English is not a Romance language but it does have a substantial number of words taken from Latin) Japanese is similar in that the written characters it uses are derived from Chinese and many words are taken but the relationship between the two stops there. Chinese may be linguistically closer to English than it is to Japanese. (Chinese and English are both SVO Subject-Verb-Object, whereas Japanese is SOV Subject-Object-Verb)

Modern Nation State of Japan

If we want to understand Modern Japanese, the role that Nation State governments have played in shaping the language can not be underplayed. The Japanese government in the 19th and 20th centuries went through intense language reforms, striving to create a uniform spoken and written language that could be understood anywhere throughout the Japanese Empire. This process involved imposing a standard script, attempting to regulate Kanji usage as well as creating a curriculum that taught a standard dialect of Japanese. The language reforms continued up until recent times with the standard kanji lists being put into practice by the Imperial Army, the US Military, and the National Diet. Japanese has changed so drastically throughout its standardization process that pre-modern Japanese would be almost unintelligible to most Japanese-speaking today. This is due to the heavy variations in regional dialects throughout the Japanese archipelago.

Globalization

The Japanese language is one that has spread throughout the world and in doing so has continued to adopt new words and leave its footprint on other languages as well. This process has taken place through trade, through the barrel of a rifle, and through the warm childlike wonder of animation and children’s games. Japanese is becoming a more prevalent language internationally and it is fascinating to see how the modern language came to be.