Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Text-Book of Colloquial Japanese: Based on the Lehrbuch Der Japanischen Umgangssprache
The relation of the Japanese to other languages has not yet been satisfactorily determined. The attempt to discover an affinity with the Aryan languagesa has, it must be said, not been successful for the words that are identical or even similar are too few to justify the inference of a common origin. The same criticism is applicable to the attempt to establish a relation with the Semitic languageslb A comparison of Japanese roots with those of certain Altaic languages, such as the Mongolian, Tungusic, Manchurian, Turkish, etc., does not bring us any nearer to the solution of the problem. 0 N everthe less Japanese is usually regarded as belonging to this great group of Altaic languages, for the 'reason that it has. In common with them the characteristic known as agglutination. That is, in Japanese, as in all agglutinative tongues, inflection. In the ordinary sense is replaced by a loose attachment of par ticles to the stem as suffixes, while the stem itself remains corn paratively unaffected. But it must be noted, that the colloquial as compared with the classical Japanese seems to be in a state of transition from the agglutinative to the infiectional stage. III regard to syntax also the Japanese is very much like some of the languages that belong to the Altaic group, e. G., the Manchurian.
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