日本語は一体どこに起源を持つのでしょう？今日友人と話をして分かったのが、日本語の漢字の読み方が中国福建省の方言と凄く近いそうです。では、福建省はどこかと聞かれると、台湾の対岸、すなわち日本の遣唐使が紀元前773年から838年まで辿ったルートにほぼ重なります。沖縄でも、このルートを通じて古くから中国と交易が有りました。
中国語というと、国語である北京語を皆思い浮かべます。しかしながら、同じ漢字は使えども発音は全く異なります。福建省。この場所に、日本語のルーツを探る鍵が眠っているのではないでしょうか？
北京語を話す妻が日本語を勉強するのを見ると、なぜか不思議な気になります。
Where Japanese language came from? When I was chatting with my friend who was from China, we realized that the pronunciation of some Chinese characters by Japanese is very similar to that of people living in 福建省 in China. There are a lot of dialects in the area and my friend pointed out that Japanese is very similar to one of them. So, where is 福建省? It's located on the opposite shore of Taiwan, which was almost overlapping the route of Japanese messengers (遣唐使) traveling to 長安 from AD773 to 838. Okinawa also had trading with people in that area from ancient period.
People imagine "Mandarine" when they hear about "Chinese", but even Chinese and Japanese people use same Chinese characters, the pronunciation is very distinct. I guess there might be a "key" to figure out the origin of Japanese language in 福建省.
I feel a bit interesting when I see my wife, who is fluent in Mandarine, is studying Japanese.
遣唐使のルート (Route of Japanese messengers)
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ファイル:Kentoshi_route.png
福建省
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/福建省
