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his own dissent from this theory. Having done so he next sets up a theory of his own, to which I shall presently refer. Dr. Kaempfer founds his chief argument against the Japanese race being descended from the Chinese on the difference betwixt their respective languages. He considers that on proper enquiry the Japanese language would be found to he entirely pure (p. 84). A native of Japan, he says, does not understand any of the three Chinese dialects of Nanking, Tsiaksju and Foksju. The Chinese language is, he adds, to the Japanese people what Latin is to the people of most European countries. The Japanese language is entirely different from the Chinese in two essential properties—construction and pronunciation,—and there is therefore no room to think that one of these two nations gave birth to the other. He here enters into some details respecting the construction of the two languages, respectively, and having done so he remarks that it is needless to give himself and his readers the trouble to prove Japanese different from Corean or Jedsoan as no one ever pretended to derive the descent of the Japanese from one or other of these two nations.
Of Dr. Kaempfer’s arguments founded on the different manner in which certain letters of the alphabet are pronounced in China and Japan, respectively, I would only say that he does not seem to me sufficiently to take into account the difference which climate is known to effect on the pronunciation of words even by people of the same race. Many English words, for instance, are pronounced in certain parts of America quite in another way to that in which we pronounce them in England, and South American Spanish also is something very different to listen to from the Spanish of Castile. I believe it is thought that the origin of this difference in both cases is chiefly to be traced to the influence of climate in contracting or expanding the throat. Another of Kaempfer’s arguments against the identity of the two races, the Chinese and the Japanese, is the dissimilarity of their respective religions.
Another is the difference between the characters anciently used by either people.
