From: yeonwook@hardy.u.washington.edu (Mark Choi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan,soc.culture.korean,soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Hus Fu and the Japanese
Date: 24 Dec 92 09:08:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec24.090821.9249
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <1hbcbgINNmou@agate.berkeley.edu> robohen@ocf.berkeley.edu (Henry Robertson) writes:
>I don't understand what the fuss is about.  It's obvious to anyone that the
>Japanese are predominantly of East Asian descent, not Polynesian or 
>Caucasian.  Japanese assert their difference from the Chinese because of the
>difference in linguistics.  The written language is adopted from Chinese,
>but the grammar & spoken language is completely dissimilar.  Japanese has a
>range of classifications from Altaic to Malayo-Polynesian.  The world is
>a mongrelized place, so chances are that various races mingled in the islands
>and eventually blended to proto-Japanese.  Then in the Heian era proto-Japanese
>adopted Chinese written language, introducing more vocabulary and a 
>written language.  There is evidence that the phonemes of Japanese pronunciations
>have changed considerably over time, with scientific proof that it did so
>since the Heian era.  

Yes, this is accurate. The Japanese are most likely a mixture of various
peoples. Scholars are positively sure of this. Including people from China,
(yes Dwighty, CHINA) Korea, and other places. In fact, many Korean people 
are descendents of both the Tong-i people and the northern Tungusic type
people. The Tong-i people are traced back to the Shantung Peninsula and 
down Eastern China. These people (the Tungusic/Tong-i mixture) without
doubt emigrated to Japan in one of the many mass migrations of artisans,
scholars, and monks. Therefore, I can safely say that the Japanese people
are partly Chinese, as are the Korean people. This is without the support
of any linguistic data.

>Therefore, it is just as likely that Japanese
>pronunciatiosn were considerably Sinofied during the Heian era, from the 
>previous Polynesian-like Ryukyuan language.  

Yes. There have been many cases where language has changed dramatically.
English is only one of many examples of such change. Korean is another.
Before the Yi dynasty, Chinese influence on Korean pronunciation was 
noticable, but the general "common" tongue remained relatively the same,
or "Korean" in nature. During the Yi, Korea rapidly sinicized to the point
where even the common tongue (non technical words, non official words, etc)
words became altered beyond recognition. But the main current influence of
written Chinese has been heavy throughout the entire history of Korea,
until around the mid 20th century.

>Since MacArthur's occupation,
>considerable modifications have been made to the "standard" Tokyo Japanese
>as taught in schools, summarily to make it easier for foreigners to learn.
>Therefore, Japanese since 1945 has been effectively Westernized.  Language
>is like a software program that is being updated all the time, until the 
>far-previous versions are barely recognizable to the present version.
>Japanese is a language with a particularly high reprogramming rate.

Without a doubt.