Kyodo News, Feb 20, 2018.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/new ... g-restore-language/
Note:
(a) The title "to Restore Their Own Language" means to restore Atayal language.
(b) "in a thickly forested mountain valley in eastern Taiwan, villagers are not speaking Mandarin Chinese nor Taiwanese but, surprisingly, a variant form of Japanese. Aohua village in Nanao township in Yilan County 宜蘭縣南澳鄉 澳花村 is home to indigenous Atayal people"
Atayal 泰雅族
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/泰雅族
(是在台灣的第三大原住民族群,為典型的高山民族,古有出草獵人頭習俗; 泰雅族的族名原意為「真人」或「勇敢的人」)
(c) In that village, Japanese language "has evolved into a unique variant, with particles frequently omitted."
I do not know how Japanese (spoken or written) can be understood without particles. Early on in my Japanese class, when I first learned it at University of Illinois at Chicago (by choice), the Japanese teacher told us that there is no be verb in Japanese: The 'wa" in "wadashi 私 wa" is not a be verb, but instead has no meaning (except to signal what goes before it is the subject). See Japanese particles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_particles
(助詞: てにをは)
The を indicates what goes before it is the object of a verb.
(d) "Vivian Hsu, a TV personality active in Japan whose mother is a native Atayal."
Vivian Hsu 徐若瑄
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Hsu
(born Bidai Syulan or 徐淑娟 in 1975 to a Taiwanese father; Japanese name: ビビアン・スー [pronounced bibi-an su-; Japanese language does not have a v sound and the hyphen following su means a long vowel]; She was in "Black Biscuits [written in katakana, and pronounced like English] a Japanese dance band")
|