Re: Hakka, Tang Dynasty and Japanese.

["Daryl Wong" <darylw@mbox2.singnet.com.sg>]

Dylan,

Thanks for the information.

You might have just been right in analysing how the Japanese had modified
Hakka to fit into their language.  Just imagine this scenerio.  Japanese
has 52 tones in their language.  This gave them a lot of limitation.  In
order to fit any language into their own context, they would have to do the
slight modification as observe by you.

This could very well happened in the Tang dynasty.  2 to 3 hundreds years
later, they did the same thing to English. As you know, this is how they
had modified English.

excellent    -----------> excellento
last            -----------> lasto
department -----------> departmento

Japanese has special affinity to Hakkas.  Some of the studies on Hakkas are
actually done by them.  They could have agreed that their culture was very
much influenced by Hakkas/Tang Dynasty.  I hope that anybody who is
familiar with Japanese culture could shed some light in this area.

Daryl