page_title: Urheimat
section_title: Japonic
hierarchical_section_title: Urheimat / Japonic
caption_attribution_description: Country locator map for Republic of Ezo
context_page_description: In historical linguistics, an Urheimat is the area of origin of the speakers of a proto-language, the parent language of a group of languages assumed to be genetically related.
  Depending on the age of the language family under consideration, its homeland may be known with near-certainty or it may be very uncertain. The reconstruction of a prehistorical homeland makes use of a variety of disciplines, including archaeology and archaeogenetics.
context_section_description: The Japonic languages are spoken in Japan and among emigrants from Japan and is attested in Japanese language writing from the 8th century CE, and in imperfect Chinese transcriptions from the late 5th century CE.  Conservative historical linguists tend to classify a small number of Japanese languages as a language family of their own.  The Ainu languages are a barely surviving family of languages or dialects that are spoken by indigenous populations on the island of Hokkaidō in what is now northern Japan.
  There are similarities between the Japanese language and the Korean language in lexicon and grammatical features, but there is dispute over whether these denote a common origin, or mere linguistic borrowing due to a sprachbund of neighboring languages that are adjacent to each other. Samuel E. Martin, Roy Andrew Miller, and Sergei Starostin are linguists who have argued that they have common origins. In contrast, Alexander Vovin has argued for a regional borrowing model to explain the linguistic similarities.
  One hypothesis proposes that Japanese is a relative of the extinct languages spoken by the Buyeo-Goguryeo cultures of Korea, southern Manchuria, and Liaodong of which the best attested is the extinct language Goguryeo.
  This proposal is attributed to Shinmura Izuru, who proposed it in 1916.  Modern Korean, in contrast, according to proponents of this hypothesis, appears to have stronger connections to the Silla language, spoken in the ancient kingdom of Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE), one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, whose similarity to the Goguryeo language is not clearly established.
  The earliest Chinese historical records concerning the "Wa" in Japan indicate that they were fractured into many warring states.  But, modern Japanese dialects show a common origin, rather than a "bushy" one.  So, it is possible that there were many Yayoi dialects in the period before Old Japanese emerged, of which the dialect of the warring states that ended up prevailing politically as the Japanese state was unified superseded other early Yayoi languages or dialects.
  After a new wave of immigration, probably from the Korean Peninsula some 2,300 years ago, of the Yayoi people, the Jōmon were pushed into northern Japan. Genetic data suggest that modern Japanese are descended from both the Yayoi and the Jōmon. Tradition, as documented by the Nihon Shoki, a legendary account of Japan's history, puts the date of the Yayoi arrival in Japan at 660 BCE.  Chinese historical records mention the existence of the Yayoi (called "Wa") starting in 57 BCE. The existing Japanese language has its origins at approximately this point in time, if not earlier (to the extent that Japanese derives primarily from either the language of the Bronze Age Yayoi people, as it existed prior to their arrival in Japan, or derives primarily from a language of the Jōmon at that point in time, rather than being a creole of some sort).  Skeletal remains suggests that the two cultures had fused into a group with a homogeneous physical appearance in Southern Japan by 250 CE. It is possible that the Japanese language has roots related to the Ainu language, the historical language of the Yayoi, whatever that may have been, or could have been a creole of both.  It is also possible the Japanese language has roots in a language spoken in Southern Japan that is lost and now unknown.
  The Ainu people are genetic descendants of the Jōmon, with some contribution from the Okhotsk people. The Ainu languages that are now spoken by Ainu minorities in Hokkaidō; and were formerly spoken in southern and central Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands (an area also known as Ezo), and perhaps northern Honshū island by the Emishi people (until approximately 1000 CE), are associated with the founding Jōmon people of Japan from than 14,000 years ago or earlier, and the Satsumon culture of Hokkaidō, although the Ainu also had contact with the Paleo-Siberian Okhotsk culture whose modern descendants include the Nivkh people (whose original homeland was mostly occupied by the Tungusic peoples), which could ha
caption: Location of Ezo
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