Re: [tied] Japanese as a creole language?

Hello, all:

Is this message not appropriate for this list?  I had thought that, since Altaic is one of the language families that is supposed to be related to Indo-European, and since Japanese, according to some scholars, is a member of the Altaic family, that someone on this list would have been interested in the claims presented on the web-site that I listed.  Could someone, please, at least tell me whether it's a viable theory or whether the person who wrote it is smoking a really low-grade brand of crack. 

Thanks a lot:

Andy Howey

 Andrew Howey <andyandmae_howey@...> wrote:

Hello, all:

A couple of months ago, while trying to do some basic research on the Altaic language family, I found this link, which I found to be quite intriguing:

http://www-lib.icu.ac.jp/LibShuppan/lecture/6-2-1.html

The author, John C. Maher, proposes the theory that Japanese is actually originally a creole language, in which speakers of an Austronesian language merge with speakers of an Altaic language, both of which apparently were invaders to the Japanese archipelago.  According to this and other sites, the now Japanese islands were apparently first settled by hunter-gatherers during the last Ice Age, while there was a land bridge  between present-day north-east China/Korea and Japan, and those early settlers, who's linguistic affiliations can only be guessed at, could well have provided a linguistic substrate to what would follow.

According to my understanding of what this author has presented, there were two follow-on migrations, the Jomon, who were apparently Austronesian; and the Yayoi, who apparently were Altaic.

Whatever the case may be, I was hoping that other list members might read this web site and comment on whether or not this author is on the mark.

Any comments welcome:

Andy Howey

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