96
THE NATURE OF THE JAPANESE
LANGUAGE, AND ITS POSSIBLE
IMPROVEMENTS.
BY
The Rev. J. EDKINS, of Peking.
Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan,
on the 9th October, 1873.
———o———
The comparison of Japanese with kindred languages may be expected to yield most interesting results. The field is a new one and its riches are therefore unknown. Why not try what it will yield?
The methods of inquiry are now better than they used to be, and in the present state of our knowledge they are not difficult to apply. Philology is now a recognized science; comparative philologists by limiting themselves almost exclusively to one family of languages have left the more to be learned by inquirers in new fields. We have grammars and dictionaries of the Chinese, Mongol and Manchu languages on the one side, and of the languages and dialects spoken on the islands of the Eastern Archipelago and of the Pacific Ocean on the other. By placing them in juxtaposition it is not difficult to assign to the Japanese language its true place in the world of speech.
The Japanese then is not in immediate sisterly relation to the Chinese because it is polysyllabic and places the verb at the end of the sentence; nor is it Polynesian or Malay because its adjectives do not follow their substantives; nor does it place the genitive after the nominative.
