Austronesians in the Northern Waters?

Abstract

The following lines are inspired by John Kupchik’s seminal article ‘Austronesian Lights the Way’ that appears in this volume of JEAL. It demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt for the first time that there are reliable Austronesian loanwords in Japonic that reveal quite ancient and profound contacts, because without these profound contacts the borrowing of the names of the most basic celestial bodies, such as the sun and the moon, would not be possible. In my opinion, his article opened a new and an exciting direction in the Japonic historical linguistics. There are, however, two important differences between Kupchik’s article and the present one. First, while Kupchik mostly concentrated on the Amis language from Taiwan, and to a less extent on the languages of Philippines and other Western Malayo- Polynesian, my major focus is on the Philippines languages as potential donors, and much less on other Austronesian languages of the region. Second, while Kupchik looked mostly on mysterious words in the Omoro Sōshi, a collection of Old Okinawan and Amami sacred and folk poems (1531–1623 AD), this article focuses more on Old Japanese in particular and Japonic in general.