Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/628

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
70
HEBREW AND AINU.

adapted by the Japanese, for such words and phrases are never intoned by the people when using them, though in China they could not be understood without them.

From all this it will naturally be concluded that the writer supposes the Ainu to have originally come to Japan through Amur-land or Siberia. Just so. If this be the case are there no traces of Ainu words in the geographical nomenclature of this region ? Yes, certainly there are. Thus for example, take the Russian adjectival ending sk in Tomsk away and what do we get. Just Tom. But Tom is distinctly Ainu and also Tartar! Or again, take ohkots and eliminate the final s. Okhot, oukot or ok-ot is left. Again purely Ainu words. There are many other words and names of a like nature which might be given, as the rivers Yenise and Ocha, and also the names, Atchan, Avatcha, Kamchatka, Paratopska and Utka, with Tarinsky, Porochinna, Paratoonka, Ischappina, Arapetcha Araumakkota, and many other places such as have kota after them; but let these examples suffice for present treatise.




§ VIII. HEBREW WORDS RESEMBLING AINU.


Whilst studying the subject presented in this volume, the Author has been very much struck at times by the great similarity found to exist between certain Ainu and Hebrew words. And he has accordingly wondered whether or no there can be any real family connection between them. No doubt one could make no greater mistake in such a matter as this than to rely too much on mere sound. But the comparison of the words given below shows such a peculiar resemblance that it seems too much to conclude, without proof, that all is pure accident. But to be perfectly honest in the matter, and it is truth not fiction the writer is aiming at, one must add here that in so far a mere grammar is concerned no analogy has so far been found to exist between the two languages. It must not be supposed that the Author is building any theory on this matter; the words are simply