Blood and Language
orig: 98/06/26
rev1: 98/07/03 spelling and minor corrections

In page 11, we reviewed recent anthropological findings. They tended to show that Ainu would carry heavy Jomon properties.

If one looks at many Africans residing in USA and speaking English (well, American), it is easy to understand that race and language cannot be always in one-to-one fashion.

Let Ainu be a Jomon decendent. Is Ainu language really a Jomon language decendent? Answering to this question in a positive way is relatively hard. Easier approach first. Let's see if there is any candidate language for Ainu's mother language.

Well, sigh, it has been long since Ainu language is known an isolated one, no family around. Just in case, let me quote from a Murayama book.

"Chukoto, Koryak, Alutor, Kerek and Iterimen (Camchadar) languages are all vividly different from Ainu. They have 7 "classes" in nouns while Ainu does not change word form for classes. They have "tense" which Ainu does not. They differentiate "I" and "we" clearly, which Ainu does not."

On the other hand, certain relationship of Ainu with Austronesian languages has been found by Murayama.

Often, people asks about Okhotsk influence to Ainu. From around 8AD to 13AD, Okhotsk influence was there which left cultural matters, perhaps the cub bear worship or some clay pottery ? And, some even suggests blood mixture may take place.

"Fine", I'd say. My point is whether or not the language was influenced. Whether or not the language that the Ainu people might inherited from Jomon era was influenced, or replaced in an extensive degree with, by an Okhotsk language (whatever it is).

So long that researchers have not found similarity between Ainu language and any other language, be it a Kamchatskan or Siberian or any Altai language (other than Murayama's Austronesian theory), Okhotsk influence upon Ainu language can be determined minimal/negligible.

The language chronology tells that a language experiences "wears and tears" of vocabulary at an approximate rate of 20% per 1,000 years. If Okhotsk language entered into Ainu language as "recent" as 700 years ago, more than 80% (about 86%) of that vocabulary should remain today. It's not the case.

This page and page 11 are an attempt to solidify the reason for my "wander" into the Ainu language as associated with Jomon language.


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